135 – Suite Spot: Spotlight – The Beatrice Hotel

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

The Suite Spot takes travelers to Rhode Island in the latest Spotlight series episode - The Beatrice Hotel! As one of the most iconic and historic hotels in the nation, the general manager for the property, Jennifer Curtin, gives travelers an inside look at why this hotel should be their next destination. From the rich backstory behind the name, the local attractions in the area, and what the guest experience is all about, this episode covers it all. Tune in now! Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, as always, Ryan Embree. Thank you for joining us. We are here in the content creation studio in Maitland, Florida at our Travel Media Group headquarters, and have another fantastic edition of our Suite Spot: Spotlight series. This time with a fantastic property that we're gonna be showcasing and in with me today to talk about this beautiful property is Jennifer Curtin, the general manager of The Beatrice. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining me on the Suite Spot. Jennifer Curtin : Good morning, Ryan. Thank you so much. Really happy to be here. Ryan Embree: Yeah, we're excited to have you. And you know, we're gonna get to The Beatrice and your beautiful property here in a second. But as we do with all of our new guests, this is your first time to the Suite Spot. Talk to us a little bit about your background and hospitality journey that led you to The Beatrice. Jennifer Curtin : Yes, absolutely. Happy to and actually it's, it's quite a full circle story that I have. So my career actually started right here in Providence, Rhode Island. I attended Johnson Wales University, majoring in hotel management, and that's actually located just steps from the Beatrice Hotel. And so this is where I started, I was working in multiple different operations through school. So I worked with Hilton Hotels. I worked in a luxury residential community here in Providence. And then in the summers I used to live on Cape Cod and I worked at an amazing it was a five star resort, Chatham Bars Inn down on the Cape. And so, really for me throughout school, I wanted to get exposure in multiple different operations and environments and really get a sense of what it is that I wanted to choose for a path outside of college. And so for me, it was really that luxury boutique space. That's really where my heart lies. And so upon graduation, I started with Kimpton Hotels first in Boston, Mass, which is home for me. So that was a natural starting point. And then from there I moved with them to Aspen, Colorado and then to Seattle, Washington. And it was when I was in Washington, Seattle that I got the call and moved back to open the Beatrice again, you know, back here in Providence, Rhode Island. Ryan Embree: I'm sure that was such an exciting call to be called back to your hometown where it all started and you went to school for hospitality, which I will tell you of all the hospitality industry experts that we interview on this series in others, it's rare, but I'm seeing more and more of it. I mean, you're talking to another grad of a hospitality management program down here at UCF. More and more people are going to school to get into our industry, which is amazing because most of the time you're gonna hear people say, well, I just fell into the industry, or I was doing a job in college and fell in love with the industry. So it's so great to see and hear stories like yourself, Jennifer, where you knew you had a passion for it, but also finding and having a journey within it and finding a segment and space that you reall...