Guiding Glacier Park Inc. ‘Working in God’s country’ suits the woman in charge of park lodging

Cindy Ognjanov has one of the best jobs in the hotel/motel industry — or that’s what she thinks, anyway.

Great Falls Tribune

At least it’s one of the most interesting. When a bighorn ewe followed some construction workers into the Many Glacier Hotel’s lobby this spring, leaped behind the front desk and registration area, cracked the huge front window and ultimately crashed through a side window to escape, it was just another day on the job for Ognjanov.

She is the president and general manager of Glacier Park Inc., the hotel and transportation concessionaire that operates seven properties in the Glacier National Park area — five in the park, one on the Blackfeet Reservation and one in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta. Glacier Park Inc. is a division of Viad Corp.

The seven properties are Glacier Park Lodge, East Glacier Park; Lake McDonald Lodge, west side of the park; Many Glacier Hotel, east side of the park; Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton, Alberta; Rising Sun Motor Inn, east side of the park on Going-to-the-Sun Highway; Swift Current Motor Inn, east side of the park; and Village Inn, Apgar.

Ognjanov, who spends her winters at company headquarters in Phoenix. Tribune Business Editor Beth Britton sat down with her this week to talk about her position, the challenges facing the park’s lodging properties and her goals for the future.

Q: This is your first summer as president and general manager. What are your responsibilities and your management style?

A: I have eight directors who report to me in the areas of human resources, food and beverage, engineering, rooms and others. They cover all the facets of operating the company and they answer to me. The location manager at each property also reports to me.

I am a very hands-on manager. I understand the situations the workers face everyday. I spend much of my day problem solving and troubleshooting. I’m also a very proactive person, looking for a solution instead of reacting quickly with anger. I go and poke my nose in everywhere, and when I visit the various properties, I get a good sense of how things are going and where work is needed. Little problems can become huge problems quickly, especially with some of the inexperienced people working here in their first hotel job. You have to know what to fix right now.

I mean, we sell everything from worms to fine china. It can make for some very long days in the summer.

Q: Why was this a position you wanted?

A: I don’t think you’ll ever find a hotel manager that doesn’t want to do it the rest of their life. It gets in your blood. And this is such a beautiful place; it’s like working in God’s country. I really like coming to work in the morning, and this position gives me an opportunity to prove myself.

Q: You worked for Glacier Park Inc. before. How has the operation changed since that time and what are you working to improve?

A: The biggest improvement has been in human resources — how we hire, the kind of people we hire. Turnover has always been a great big problem for various reasons, and the human resources department has had to change the way it does things.

We hire between 800 and 1,000 seasonal employees annually. Today, we have about 150 international students, and we’re hiring more retired people than we used to. We have a RV park and some housing for married couples. That’s given us a stability we didn’t have before.

Glacier Park Inc. has roughly 35 to 40 year-round employees, including the reservations staff in Columbia Falls.

In the short-term, I would really like to see everybody come here and enjoy their jobs. That’s my biggest wish, and in the long-term I look forward to seeing Many Glacier Hotel’s rehabilitation finished.

Q: How long has Glacier Park Inc. been the concessionaire in the park?

A: It’s been 23 years. Our 25-year contract is up for renewal in 2005. We have to bid on it like everyone else, and the contract will now be for about 10 years. We’re just the third concessionaire. The Great Northern Railway and Don Hummel preceded Glacier Park Inc.

Q: What are the unique challenges facing a seasonal operation in a national park?

A: We have to plan for unpredictability; it becomes part of the business plan. Forest fires, floods, roads washed out, power outages. You always have to have an alternative plan.

At the end of the season, you just pray that you closed it all up good enough, and the location engineers and the winter keeper at Many Glacier Hotel work year-round checking up on things.

There are many things we face that other property owners cannot imagine. For example, how many hotels have to deal with Bighorn sheep that see their reflections in first-floor windows and smash the windowpanes? Those are unexpected expenses.

There also is added responsibility to working in a national park. When people have complaints about a company, they may write to the company president, but when people have complaints about what happens in a national park, they may write to the president of the United States.

Inside a national park, I think people feel a bigger kinship towards the property because it’s everyone’s national park. It’s theirs, and we need to understand that.

Q: How does the company work with the National Park Service?

A: We have a good relationship with the National Park Service. Here we need government approval for everything, and that’s OK. We know what the rules and parameters are. It’s just a different way of doing business.

For example, we perform a comparability study to determine our room rates. We are required by the National Park Service to find other properties that are similar and keep our rates in line with them. It’s to keep the concessionaire from running a monopoly, and each year we take a look at rates. It’s a huge process.

Q: How is business this year?

A: Tours are still coming, but the domestic tour business this year is soft. But overall our business is very good and we’re having a close-to-record year with more individual families and travelers. I truly feel they think this is a safe place to come. After 9/11, our business went up.

Q: What do you do in your free time here in the midst of Glacier’s grandeur?

A: I used to hike when I was younger, but my favorite thing to do is golf. But by choice I don’t have much time off. Anyone else in the hotel business would be envious because we work very hard from May through September here in the park, and the rest of the year we have Monday through Friday jobs and holidays off.

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