A Westchester learning and conference center managed by FLIK Hospitality Conference Centers and Hotels is seeing increased levels of activity with the easing of the pandemic. That center is the Louis V. Gerstner IBM Center for Learning, located on a 26-acre section of IBM”™s 440-acre campus in Armonk and has as its address 20 Old Post Road.
On Oct. 1, 2018, IBM renamed the learning center on its campus in Armonk in honor of Gerstner who served as company president and CEO from 1993 to 2002. The center, built in the late 1970s, had undergone a significant renovation and continued to be used as a key facility in IBM”™s estimated $400-million annual training and development programs for its workforce.
Fast forward to 2022, and the Gerstner Center finds itself strategically positioned in the hospitality and business conference center industry through serving the needs of select outside businesses and organizations as well as IBM. About 60% of the center”™s usage is by IBM and the remaining 40% is by others. The managing entity, FLIK, is headquartered in Rye Brook and is part of Compass Group North America. Based in Charlotte, NC, that company, which specializes in hospitality, food service and support services reported having more than 280,000 employees and revenues of $20.1 billion in 2019. The parent company is Compass Group PLC, based in Chertsey, England, which operates in more than 50 countries.
Thomas Spanos, director of sales and marketing for the Gerstner Center, told the Business Journal that outside clients include Fortune 5000 companies. He said that many clients are based in Westchester and nearby areas.
“They come in here for learning and development. It”™s an environment where there are no disruptions, period. It”™s strictly all B2B,” Spanos said. “There are no social events here at our conference center. We don”™t have weddings, bar mitzvahs, baptisms of any kind.”
Spanos said that the main conference center has 16,800 square feet of meeting space including 11 classrooms, 14 breakout rooms and a large forum that used to be an auditorium. In addition, there are four residential buildings that have a total of 182 sleeping rooms for guests, a fitness center and outdoor tennis courts. The architecture makes heavy use of stone and wood, making the center”™s structures quite compatible with the scenic terrain.
“There are hiking trails here and outdoor activities that people do here,” Spanos said. “We do a lot of leadership training and development here so we have a lot of team-building events that go on. Executive meetings take place, board of directors meetings, retreats.”
Spanos said that high-tech audio visual equipment allows meetings to be viewed at off-premises locations as well as permitting interactive sessions involving multiple sites. Meeting rooms are equipped with large screen monitors and a special type of film over the windows that face corridors prevents passersby from seeing the on-screen displays intended for meeting participants.
“We just finished a major renovation of the entire conference center, finished it up in 2019. We knocked down all the exterior walls, put in a lot of glass to bring the lights in,” Spanos said, adding that a prototype renovation has been completed on one of the guest rooms and all 182 are planned to be renovated in a project due to shift into high gear in the fall.
Spanos said the pace of the recovery in activity from the Covid pandemic has been increasing.
“You can only come into the conference center if you”™re vaccinated. That”™s a policy by IBM,” Spanos said. “As of the first of March, we got rid of the mask mandates and the social distancing, so with that we opened up our doors.”
Spanos said that after having gatherings canceled by the pandemic, the first outside group came in last September as the virus was somewhat subsiding, then things slowed down when the Omicron variant arrived on the scene.
“It”™s been hard for everybody in the whole industry. It has to change and it”™s definitely changing,” Spanos said. “People are coming in, things are happening. Everybody”™s been very understanding of everybody”™s concerns and needs and everybody”™s operating that way.”
Spanos said that there”™s a parallel between the way the hospitality industry got hit by Covid and the way it has been hit in the past during economic recessions.
The Gerstner Center”™s General Manager TJ Fimmano said a key to achieving and maintaining consistently high quality in the atmosphere at the center along with the service and care provided to guests is in the way the center”™s staff is treated.
“How the team feels is how the guest feels in the end,” Fimmano said. “Keeping people motivated, keeping people happy, making sure they”™re appreciated, doing little things for people that just make their day better.”
Fimmano said that when hiring staff members, the personality of the prospect comes into play.
“We would much rather have people that have little hospitality experience and just have the right personality. It”™s all about that, really,” Fimmano said. “We can train you how to check someone in, that”™s not hard. The hard part is knowing how to treat people, knowing how to interact with guests and having the personality to want to do that, to want to take care of people.”
Fimmano said that while hospitality people have always needed to be flexible when it comes to serving guests, that has intensified lately.
“That”™s just turned up so much over the past, really, five years and through Covid now and coming out of Covid, it”™s really a big change,” Fimmano said. “Different people want different things at different times and for different reasons, whether it has to do with health and safety or whether it has to do with just their whims, so it”™s our job to make sure that we”™re flexible enough to react and deliver to the expectations of each individual.”
Fimmano expressed the view that for Westchester, the Gerstner Center is at the top of the market.
“We have the meeting space, we have the food program that our guests love and that”™s what keeps them coming back and that enables us to really sell this place,” Fimmano said.
Executive Chief William Pfeiffer said that the food service at the center needs to be innovative in its menu items while also being efficient in meeting the expectations of businesspeople who are used to demanding the best.
“You”™ve got to be very organized; the kitchen has to be run very efficiently,” Pfeiffer told the Business Journal. “The culinary world is constantly innovating, it”™s constantly moving forward. If you”™re not staying with the times you”™re going to get left behind, people are not going to be wowed by your food.
“You have to take old ideas, new ideas, you have to create your own fusion. You have to constantly innovate. Research, reading, recipe testing and a lot of thought go into the menus that we do here.”
