Afterthoughts: Why There is More than One Essay About Bromley

Whenever I needed a stimulating, occasionally colorful, comment about what was going on in the hotel business, I’d call Stan Bromley. Something about hotel food and beverage or housekeeping? Call Stan. An opinion of a newfangled, yet utterly insipid, hotel management strategy? Bromley, of course. A brand extension that made absolutely no sense whatsoever? Stan had ideas. A comment or two about the competition? Even though, wherever Stan worked, he was surrounded by 5-star and 5-star wannabe hotels, he welcomed the fight and told me of strategies he deployed that worked.

He was for me what Henry Kissinger was for every hard news reporter during and after the Nixon years: the reliable go-to person for suitable reflection on an issue; for quotable quotes: a soundbite, perhaps, that would rock the world. Was there anyone else reporters could depend on? Not many. Furthermore, for TV reporters, who else had that voice?

Just as Kissinger’s name would appear regularly in the news media, mentioned regularly during newscasts, so would Stan’s, every once in a while, in my columns. If I was looking for a candid, no-frills put-down of common sense gone haywire, Bromley had unadorned and, every once in a while, off-color jabs galore. Then, too, during moments of casual conversation when we might be talking about a ballgame, a great dinner, a wonderful novel, a terrific bottle of wine, or the dissing of fools (some of them suckups begging Stan for comps because they were, after all, comp-worthy), he’d recall something spur of the moment that had little to do with what we were talking about (something about an event that had just taken place at his hotel or his thoughts about a competitor who had done something reckless), I would make a mental note to use some of what he said with or without credit, the focus of a future column.

Of the more than 300 feature stories I wrote, Stan was the subject of four or five. The number was beside the point—column or feature; four, five or 100—he was a source of reliable, witty, candid, intelligent and, often, provocative thought. I trusted him, he trusted me. Why wouldn’t I want to go to him more often than I would to others, most of whom, unlike Stan, would hedge their comments, inflate advantage, milk the truth about themselves and their company or property, and be unfairly or irresponsibly critical of the competition, market conditions, and the state of the industry?

This also is worth noting: Stan retired October 2005 from an illustrious career as one of this country’s finest hotel executives. His last fulltime job: West Coast regional v.p., Four Seasons; and g.m., The Four Seasons, San Francisco. He had been with The Four Seasons in various roles for 23 years. Before that, with Hyatt Regency where he rose from general manager of the Ford Motor Co.-owned, Dearborn Hyatt to corporate v.p., food and beverage.  If today you were to ask anyone in the hotel business to name the top 10 innkeepers ever in the United States, my bet is that most would mention Stan as one of them. Currently (2014), Stan is a consultant for Meadowood Resorts ($500 rack), Napa.

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