Hospitality team planning celebratory activities throughout the year
Fort Worden Hospitality (FWH) is charting a new direction in hospitality service assuming management of the accommodations, restaurants, catering and venues at Fort Worden State Park on February 14, 2022.
Fort Worden Hospitality has bold new ideas for the future of hospitality experience rooted in the state park and supported by a service philosophy that will deliver comfortable accommodations, rustic locally influenced and sourced food, conference amenities and a variety of activities available to visitors, guests and residents of Port Townsend to foster a summer-camp like experience year-round.
The non-profit company values its Campus and Community Partners who remain an important part of their footprint. Fort Worden Hospitality hopes to expand its on-site and off-site relationships, bringing together collaborations that can benefit the community and guests in a variety of ways.
Other future plans include improving the amenities in the buildings they operate, updating restaurant offerings, re-opening Taps at the Guardhouse and redefining guest services across the company in line with their new service philosophy, values and mission.
The non-profit hospitality operator will be making offers to hire all current staff and operate at launch under the leadership of Aislinn Diamanti, Managing Director of Administration, and Natalie Maitland, Managing Director of Operations.
“This is a positive time of change,” said Maitland. “Fort Worden is such a special and unique place that having a local company in charge of hospitality operations makes sense on many levels, most importantly the economic impact to our area. There is excitement across the staff and board for the new vision and we are ready to embrace the opportunity.”
With a financially sound business model focused on hospitality services and park experiences, the non-profit company looks forward to being a contributing partner to the lifelong learning center campus and work to foster more community spirit.
“I am incredibly thankful to the staff who are transitioning from the PDA to our new Hospitality Group,” said Board President Matt Gurney. “Fort Worden Hospitality will be spending this coming year stabilizing as a new entity and learning from our Fort Partners, visitors and Port Townsend residents how we can facilitate activities and services that will help make the Fort PT’s backyard.”
Fort Worden Hospitality will fulfill all booked business currently held by the Fort Worden Public Development Authority.
Over the next year the Fort Worden Hospitality team will be growing to meet the demand of guests and groups. They have taken a human centered approach to their employees, putting an emphasis on higher wages, benefits and employee well-being.
“Part of serving our community is creating good jobs for people who live here,” said Diamanti. “Part of running a good business is ensuring our company culture and values are intertwined and employee-led. This is built into our framework and will be expanded on as we add more team-members over the next few months. It’s an exciting time to work at Fort Worden, and a remarkable opportunity to be on the ground floor of something special.”
Fort Worden Hospitality is now hiring with more job postings to come through the Spring. Positions are in all departments and range in type and wage.
With the guidance of an accomplished board of directors, support of the FWPDA and many others who have championed Fort Worden Hospitality in the community, the hospitality team takes on this challenge with enthusiasm, understanding there is a lot of work to be done and opportunity to be realized.
When it is safe to do so Fort Worden Hospitality will announce a community open house launch event.
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MISSION: Fort Worden Hospitality welcomes visitors to a treasured state asset – Fort Worden State Park and Lifelong Learning Center. We connect people to the park’s resources: the lifelong learning center campus, the cultural, educational, artistic, environmental, and recreational programs offered by the park’s partner organizations; the trails, beaches and historic batteries. We also provide hospitality packages; meeting and events spaces; food service; and lifelong learning programming.
VALUES: Community-Passion-Integrity-Environmental Stewardship-Culture of Learning
SERVICE PHILOSOPHY:
Cultivate a community for anyone to feel welcome at Fort Worden.
Attention to detail in every task.
Model of integrity in policy and practice.
Proactively work to ensure guests and employees want to return.
Port Townsend, WA – Dec 9, 2022 – Fort Worden Hospitality, which manages accommodations, restaurants, catering and venues at Fort Worden State Park, is pleased to announce the appointment of Matt Gurney as the incoming chief executive officer. Gurney is an industry veteran whose career includes consulting for community-based enterprises, establishing restaurants and catering business, and most recently over two decades in leadership at Farestart in Seattle.