A business dream alive!

A business dream alive!  by Neil Darish

Meet Neil Darish, our guest blogger from Alaska and a remarkable man with his own wonderful, for others maybe strange or at least remarkable, dreams like serving 5 star food in a town like McCarthy.

It was a pleasure to write for Share Today a few years back about our unique group destination in Alaska. I was reminded of how unusual our tourism operations are recently when, a few weeks back, I was asked to make a presentation to the members of the Alaska Travel Industry Association about developing travel related businesses in remote Alaska. We are located far “off the grid”, have only a four-month season, and must hire, train and ramp up in just a few weeks. Needless to say, realizing a small business dream in remote Alaska creates challenges that can be daunting. Each year starts with interviewing and hiring 34 staff for two small hotels, a fine dining restaurant, a saloon, a few stores and the support team to keep it all running, and these are the obvious obstacles.

Logistics and hospitality on an extreme level, while providing a memorable experience for adventure seeking travelers is something we do each season. Not easy, but not impossible. It starts with passion. But the real key to successfully operating with so many difficult parameters is to run each business by Performance Ratios. What is the potential of the business?  What does the industry already know about each cost as a percent of revenue?  Once you know those two key points, measuring and closing the gap between potential and performance becomes easier. What our tourism operation presented was a path to keep a unique hospitality products viable and sustainable. 

Imagine your next incentive group having an Alaska ghost town to themselves. In a remote Alaskan wilderness, surrounded by the highest concentration of mountains and glaciers in North America, sits McCarthy Alaska. With a population of just a few dozen people, this use to be one of the largest towns in Alaska.  Today, the town has about 50 buildings remaining from the 400 or so that were built during McCarthy & Kennicott’s heyday, 100 years ago. “Authentic, memorable, sustainable“, that’s how National Geographic describes the McCarthy Lodge & Ma Johnson’s Hotel, deep in the very center of America’s largest National Park, Wrangell St-Elias in Alaska. Keeping the ambiance real and maintaining a high level of service is what our hospitality goal is all about. Running a business on performance ratios in such a remote setting adds additional logistics most small business owners never have to consider. It is the remote aspect that is the both a curse and a blessing from a business standpoint. But the financials, especially performance ratios are what keep a business dream alive, without creating a nightmare!

About Neil; After travelling the world in an international job he came at a point where he thought is this it (don’t we all?) A friend of Neils’ grew up in McCarthy and had some property there that he still owed money on. He convinced Neil to travel to Alaska to check out the town. Neil paid the balance owed on the property, and dreamt for years of going back and restoring some of the town. It took many years after that first visit to realize that perhaps it is time to stop all the travels and start the McCarthy restoration. Now he is highly visible in town and owns the only accommodation in the town of McCarthy and the only bar for 60 miles. Time to share this extraordinary place with the world. www.McCarthyLodge.com

Read also our earlier post about this wonderful little town.