Speaker: Franklin Dusserre
Please introduce yourself and tell us about your properties
Franklin Dusserre: Hey, I'm Franklin Dusserre, Founder and CEO of French Cowboys. French Cowboys is a boutique hospitality company focused on the affordable luxury segment, and all of our properties are currently located in central Texas, really between Austin and the Texas Hill Country. Our model is pretty simple. We typically acquire older inns, lodges, and small boutique properties, usually around 50 rooms or up, and that are a bit dated in need of a refresh. Our team then comes in, redesigns, rebrands, and then, redevelops / renovates the properties, bringing, bringing them back to life with, better design, and a focus on the outdoor amenities.
How did you end up in hospitality?
Franklin Dusserre: I've always gotten a lot of enjoyment out of organizing experiences for other people and seeing them enjoy it. Even when I was back in high school, I was usually the person organizing get-together with friends, sports activities, trips, that kind of thing. The same thing in college, I was always planning social events, travel with friends, weekends away, away, and at the same time, I always loved design and hospitality in general, restaurants, hotels, great spaces. It's honestly where I spend most of my disposable income. Early on in my career, I worked in real estate, but I always knew that I eventually wanted to start my own business, and so boutique hotels ended up being a really natural, fit for what I was looking for, real estate design and creating experiences for people.
What does being an independent hotelier mean to you?
Franklin Dusserre: Being an independent hotelier today, today means for me picking the hard path. It presents a lot of challenges, but also opportunities, on the challenging side, you're competing with much larger players, big hotel brands with established loyalty programs, big marketing budgets, and significantly larger pools of capital and resources, which are all things that are, challenging to compete with, but at the same time, I also think the industry is moving more and more towards independent hotels, because that's what guests are looking for, truly unique places with personality rather than something that feels standardized.
What hospitality ‘rule’ does your property break?
Franklin Dusserre: In terms of hospitality rules that we break, I think, there's a lot of them. The first one is we don't believe that the check-in experience as it was previously designed makes a ton of sense. Our guests check-in at the bar, with the front desk staff, they've already completed pre-check-in instructions before they get to the property, and so there's no need for them to pull out a passport, to spend 10 minutes at the front desk filling in admin work, and so they can actually also check themselves in directly into the room because we have keypads on the doors that allow them to do so.
What’s your most-used phrase on a busy day? (anything goes)
Franklin Dusserre: My most used phrase is, was this in the budget?
What part of you lives inside your property?
Franklin Dusserre: My mind definitely lives inside our hotels. I'm constantly thinking about them, thinking about what to improve, what we could change, randomly, it's when I'm working out, when I'm at dinner with friends, I have these random ideas and thoughts pop out. So, my brain is a permanent resident of our hotels.
If you could remind hoteliers of one thing, what would it be?
Franklin Dusserre: In the end, it's going to be all right and guests don't notice nearly as many things as you do. Every time I walk in a room, I have a million comments about small touches, small issues, PM things to do, and then what I actually realize is most of the time guests are not nearly as difficult or judgmental of our room product and of our service as I am.
