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Carrying on a Dells traditionInterviewed by Nathan Leaf
Age: 60 Position: President, general manager and co-owner of Tommy Bartlett Inc. in Wisconsin Dells. Company at a glance: Tommy Bartlett Inc. is composed of the Tommy Bartlett Ski Sky and Stage Show and Tommy Bartlett's Exploratory. The company has 16 full-time employees and takes on about 150 seasonal employees, mostly high school and college students, each summer. Background: Born in Rochester, N.Y. Professional history: Chairman, Governor's Council on Tourism, 1986 to 1999. Director of the Wisconsin Dells Visitor and Convention Bureau from 1980 to present. Director of the Wisconsin Tourism Federation, 1985 to present. Education: Bachelor of science in hotel administration, Cornell University, 1968; master of business administration, Cornell University, 1970. Personal: Began dating wife Margaret in high school. The couple has two grown children: daughter Jill, who is the general manager of the Dells' Copa Cabana hotel, and son Jeff, a Chicago venture capitalist. Something extra: Diehl played on the Cornell football team and was offered a contract by the Dallas Cowboys as an offensive guard. "I opted to go get my MBA, so I'm still walking today." Q. Why have you stayed in the Dells so long? A. When I first came out here, everything in Wisconsin Dells was locally owned, second and third generation. I felt there was a tremendous opportunity for this place to grow and I just looked at it long term as a place I'd like to raise my family. The relationship with Tommy was so strong that it took on almost a family image. I've immersed myself in the tourism industry, locally and at the state level, ever since. Q. What has made the business sustainable for all these years? A. Tommy's philosophy was "You have to put a show on that people can't turn on their TV set to see." We have re-themed and re-costumed and (changed) the music for the ski show every two years. The second half of the show, putting in other acts, is where he went out and tried to find things people couldn't see. Back in the '60s, it started with an authentic Polynesian group that he found in Tahiti. Of course now today you can go to restaurants in Chicago and see Polynesian shows. He did the only regularly scheduled skydiving exhibition in the world. ... Just one act after the other. And as the years have passed, with the instant gratification that kids want today because of the computer and technology, it's getting harder to find anything that will actually wow anyone anymore. This summer for example will be the first time we've ever incorporated a stand-up comedian into our show. ... We try to rotate acts in and out and have at least one new act a year. Q. Where do you go in Wisconsin Dells for entertainment? A. I love taking the grandkids swimming to one of the smaller waterparks. This weekend we'll go over to Copa (Cabana Resort) where the indoor water is more designed for young children. Once they get older, they'll want to go to Kalahari or Wilderness or Treasure Island or Great Wolf. Q. What is your day at work like? A. In the off-season the majority of it is spent working on the advertising and promotion that we're going to implement for next season. This year it's the first year with a theme — Pirates of Bartlett Bay. We're trying to have a theme that's going to tickle the fancy of the kids because competition here in the Dells is a great challenge. This time of year, hiring our summer staff takes a lot of time. ... (My job) is constantly managing 150 high school and college kids to project the image that we want projected. Q. What's the hardest part of managing 150 high school and college kids? A. Making sure you've done enough to make sure that the people you're selecting are the right people for the job. I started a program about eight years ago with the Finnish-American society over in Finland because we've got such a shortage of workers for the amount of jobs that have to be filled in the Dells. So every year we bring between 40 and 70 Finnish kids over here. Q. What are Tommy Bartlett Inc.'s goals as an organization? A. Because of the change in the whole Dells area and since we're a disposable time and disposable income business, we have some real challenges facing us today that we didn't have five or six years ago. ...Seventy-five percent of our audience will come to our night show and all of them will in fact be staying over night in the Dells. They don't drive back to Chicago or Minneapolis after the show is over at 11 p.m. So we are highly dependent upon overnight businesses to provide us with the customers. The composition of the Dells has changed, too (with what) a lot of people refer to as indoor waterpark hotels. I refer to them as attractions that happen to have hotel rooms attached. We are a direct competitor to them. When people get into the hotels, they have a high propensity to not move. They're trying to get the best value for their stay and the amenities in these properties are just unbelievable. It's a challenge for us to get people to move out of there. So that's the biggest goal today: to get our market share back. It will never be where we used to be. ... A lot of my time is spent trying to motivate more people to come visit the show. Q. What have you come up with so far? A. Certainly we have tremendous working relationships with all the indoor waterpark hotels, and all of them understand the importance of trying to have movement within the community. We try to provide them with marketing opportunities that will help generate business for their resort (such as free kids tickets). Q. What has been your biggest triumph in 40 years at Tommy Bartlett and in the Dells? A. The biggest one and the most satisfying to me was when I came up with the idea of the premier resort legislation. I knew the community, both the Dells and Lake Delton, wouldn't be able to substantiate a lot of growth if we didn't find a way to provide both municipalities with resources to expand the infrastructure. I mean, we were at the end. The village of Lake Delton was probably the biggest community in the state of Wisconsin that did not have a public water system. Everybody had their own wells. ... Basically what that legislation did was allow areas that had 50 percent of their equalized value in tourism-related businesses qualify as a premier resort area and impose up to a half a percent sales tax. I think I probably worked on that for 10 years before we were successful in getting it passed in 1996. In 1997, the village of Lake Delton was, I believe, at $300 million of equalized value. And here we are eight years later and we're at over $1 billion. All of it directly reflected back to both the city and the village to generate revenue so that they could expand the sewage treatment plant and the sewer lines and build a water system (and) all the things that are necessary. Q. What mistakes have you made during your career? A. I think the biggest mistake was getting into the pari-mutuel dog-track business. When the lottery and pari-mutuel were legalized in 1989, never in our wildest dreams would we have thought that casino gambling would have been on the horizon. And certainly pari-mutuel pales in comparison to casino gambling. ... I wish I'd never gotten involved in it, but it is what it is. madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
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