On July 1, Davidson Hospitality Group President and CEO Thom Geshay became chair of the American Hotel & Lodging Association's board of directors—the latest role he has held after more than 40 years in hospitality. And for almost all of those 40-plus years, Geshay has been with Davidson, assuming his current role in early 2022 after three years as president and three years as COO.
In his words, Geshay got involved in the hospitality industry by “happenstance” when he was a teenager. Immediately, after graduating from high school, while driving from Wisconsin to North Carolina with his father, the two men worried about what he could do for a career. Turning a corner, they noticed a “Help Wanted” sign on a new Holiday Inn that was about to open. “It wasn't that I was attracted [to the industry],” he recalled. “It was that that reader board was right there in front of me, calling out my name—and me, wanting to silence my dad.” The younger Geshay went into the hotel’s office and was hired on the spot. “The next day, I started moving furniture into the rooms of that hotel.”
Geshay remained with the property as a bellman and van driver once it opened and he started his studies at North Carolina State University. Over the years, he spent time in a range of departments, working as a breakfast cook, bartender and DJ before joining the team at the front desk. The excitement and energy of working in an airport hotel with plane crews coming and going at all hours—and with a dedicated nightclub, as well—helped Geshay appreciate what hospitality could be.
Over his time at that Holiday Inn, Geshay estimates he held some 20 positions—but even after graduating with his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering, he did not expect hospitality to become his career. “I always thought I was going to be an engineer, because that's what I went to school for,” he said, noting that his father and two brothers both worked as engineers. “It was kind of our family thing.” With that in mind, Geshay took a job at IBM—“which made my father very happy”—but stayed there only six months, until his former GM at the Holiday Inn called and offered him a job at a bar owned by the same company that owned the hotel: Davidson Hospitality. Even then, Geshay turned the gig down until he was also offered the title of beverage director. “A director at age 21?” he recalled thinking. “That might work.” He left IBM—with a $24,000-per-year salary—to return to hospitality for $17,000 per year. “I never looked back.”
Rising Up
Geshay first came to know Davidson Hospitality Group when it took over the Holiday Inn, not long after he started there. “I've literally been with Davidson since I was 17 years old.” (Officially, he acknowledges that he has worked full-time with the company since 1988, but began on a part-time basis in 1984.)
Once he selected hospitality as his career, he remained with Davidson, working his way up through the ranks and helping it grow as “that opening guy,” he recalled. “They'd buy a new hotel, I would go in, hire the team, get the operation balanced, maybe execute a renovation, help put it together, get it stabilized, then I would move to the next one.”
From there, he moved to the corporate side as a regional vice president, overseeing a portfolio of hotels before becoming the company’s first corporate sales-and-marketing expert. “And then I shifted to the real estate side and … went out to the West Coast to help us develop our portfolio [there].” In that capacity, he helped find new locations, but assets and reposition them, figuring out the logistics behind the deals—in hindsight, he said, probably his “favorite” role of all he has had with the company.
Geshay oversaw real estate for more than a decade before becoming chief operating officer—a role he never expected to hold after so many years on the real estate side of the business. But John Belden, then the CEO, believed firmly that Geshay was the right person for the job, and Geshay stepped up to the role, launching the Pivot and Davidson Restaurant Group verticals. “He had planned, in his mind, I was going to be the one that would replace him when he would retire in the CEO chair, and he knew that I needed the experience to get back into the operation,” Geshay said. “His plan came together. I became his retirement plan.”
He became the company’s president in early 2019 and added CEO to the title three years later. “It's important to do a great job at the job you have first, and the leaders around you will recognize the job that you're doing, and they will elevate you—when the time is right—to the position that you deserve to be in,” he said of his career path.
Core Values
“Although I've been at the same company a long time, I've done so many different jobs,” Geshay said of his career. “I've never really seen the need to have to look elsewhere or go somewhere else.” That, he continued, comes down to the company’s culture and core values, which “run through everything that we do” and are regularly discussed during team meetings and check-ins. (The values, he added, have been updated to meet changing expectations.)
The first value is to be passionate and serve others with love. “Honestly, if you get that right, the other core values and your business sort of fall into place,” Geshay observed. Those others are, in order:
- Always do what’s right;
- Create value in all that you do;
- Have each other’s backs;
- Be inclusive—we’re stronger together;
- Stay hungry, stay humble; and
- Greatness requires risk.
Those values, Geshay said, give him a sense of purpose. “I feel like I'm making a difference. I go to work every day. I love the people that are around me. I love what I do. I love the industry I'm in. I have no need to look elsewhere, go elsewhere, do anything differently.”
And after more than four decades of rising up to the top spot, is grateful for the team around him and what they have taught him. “Surround yourself with people that are smarter than you, better than you, that you can learn from—and don't be so hung up on trying to be the expert and know-it-all,” he said. “If we're dealing with something, [if] we're trying to come up with a new initiative, [if] we're trying to push something through or handle a challenge of some sort—everybody's opinion matters, and everybody's voice is great.”