The Kahala’s Roseann Grippo: GM breaks out of traditional roles to inspire others

Roseann Grippo was promoted to GM of The Kahala Hotel & Resort after fewer than six months with the property. Not only is that impressive, it carries distinction: She is the first female GM in the luxury Honolulu resort’s history.

The independent hotel, which is managed by Landmark Hotels Group, is accustomed to high-profile guests. Every U.S. president, from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush, has stayed there, as have Hollywood celebrities. The Emperor and Empress of Japan were recent guests, and the Presidential Suite was renamed the Imperial Suite in their honor. (The suite costs upwards of $4,000 per night. Regular room rates begin at around $395 per night.)

Grippo’s appointment is the culmination of 20 years in the hospitality industry, working at some of the biggest hotel brands: 10 years with Hyatt Corp. and 10 years with Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide. Before joining the Kahala team in June as resident manager, she was hotel manager at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel. Prior to that post, Grippo for several years was director of food and beverage for Starwood in Hawaii and French Polynesia.

Beginnings

She began her hospitality career just after college, working in a hotel as a hostess. “I fell madly in love with the hotel business, and decided it would be my career,” she said. Grippo first got involved with the F&B side of the industry, and the culinary world remains a passion of hers today. Six years ago, she came to Hawaii to work on a Starwood project, and found where she belonged.

Originally Grippo called Florida home, but during her years with Hyatt and Starwood, she lived in 17 different cities. She opened hotels in the Caribbean and South Florida, and spent time in the Chicago, San Francisco and New York.

Her travels, she said, gave her the ability to understand different cultures, and to infuse that knowledge into everything she does.

“A few years back, I was chosen by Starwood to work on four different divisions,” she said. “I believe my success came from knowing all those cultures. Now, each of my associates is different and has different needs. Getting to know something about each employee is vital to the success of the hotel.”

While at Hyatt, she met her mentor Philip Kendall, who was VP of F&B for the company. “He taught me to be relentless in the pursuit of quality, and to look at things through different sets of glasses,” she said. “He said, ‘Get out of the box. Do something different. Be different than what the customer has seen.’”

A food-related metaphor encapsulates how Grippo tries to be different: Noting how trendy sushi had become in the past few years, she and her team were considering how to do something unique with sushi for banquet facilities, particularly for breakfast meetings. “We are very much about farm-to-table, indigenous fruits,” she said. “So we got some sushi chefs with great knife skills and we created a ‘frushi’ bar.” The chefs who know how to slice fish now slice and prepare delicate displays of fruits, replacing wasabi with chutney or salsa.

Independence

An independent hotel like The Kahala offers a greater amount of creative freedom than a branded hotel, where Grippo said the creative process can become very regimented.

“With an independent hotel, there’s no red tape,” she said. “We can make changes and add elements. I don’t have to go to corporate executive chefs. I get together with my team and we decide what to try. You can’t do that in a corporate environment, because people make those decisions for all of the hotels. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s also not how I would choose to spend my career. You can really think outside the box—it’s encouraged, instead of following Standard Operating Procedure. In a nutshell, we write the Standard Operating Procedure; we don’t inherit it.”

The right team

As a GM, that creativity can extend to hiring, and Grippo feels that one of her main objectives is to surround herself with the right team.
“It’s about past relationships, and going out and finding people who are extraordinary,” she said, noting that this could mean someone with a solid reputation in the industry or someone who simply thinks differently.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, given her own position, The Kahala now has its first female F&B director, first female chief engineer (possibly the first in all of Hawaii, Grippo noted) and first female director of spa and recreation.

“All of these amazing and dynamic female managers have worked their way through the ranks,” she said. “It sends the right message: We do have great talent here. It’s about taking talent to the next level and giving people opportunities.”

Traditionally, she added, Hawaiian companies have looked to the mainland for talent, but like many traditions, that is falling by the wayside. “You have to grow [with] the people you have," Grippo said. "That’s your best talent.”

When asked what her greatest challenge has been, Grippo did not hesitate to answer. “I’m a female in a male-dominated world,” she said. “Women didn’t come out of culinary backgrounds. Now, it’s 50/50.”

She belongs to several notable food-and-wine societies that have traditionally been exclusively male, and is very active within the groups.

“While it was challenging, I believed that I would get to where I needed to be. I just had to work harder,” she said. “If a profession is filled with one kind of person, being the opposite of the norm for that position makes you have to try harder, and I enjoy doing that. I [worked with] great people at Hyatt and Starwood who believed in me and told me to try harder.”

Now she looks at people as individuals when considering them for positions, rather than considering whether they fit the cliché of the role. “It’s about talent, attitude and the ability to bring greatness to the position,” she said.

It used to be that when anyone asked Roseann Grippo what her dream job was, she’d say it was to work at a boutique hotel where the focus was on quality and where she could have carte blanche to do whatever she needed to. “I’m now living the dream,” she said. “Not a lot of people get to say that.”