THE PROUD DUDE RANCH MANAGER
(CASE PROBLEM)
Bob Foster's workday usually begins at 6:30 A.M. at the Lost Valley Ranch, a four-star guest ranch, about ninety miles from Denver. The rest of his family is a sleep, but Foster has already scheduled activities that will keep him busy until the next morning: payroll, payments, meals with guests, horseback riding with guests, telephone calls to suppliers, correspondence, and guest reservations.
"If we were large enough, I would hire someone else to take care of some of this," he said during at 10 P.M. break one Saturday night. "Because we're small, I wear many hats." (The Lost Valley Ranch has a 100 guest capacity)
Thirty-nine-year-old Foster is the general manager at Lost Valley, a horse and cattle ranch nestled on 26,000 acres of national forest. Foster interact with his guests frequently.
"In this business you really have to be a people person. Someone will usually come up to me at dinner and invite me back to the cabin to talk after the square dance. Before you know it you look at your watch and it's 12:30 A.M."
According to magazine editor who interviewed him, Foster is highly qualified to run one of the few luxury dude ranches in Colorado. She observes, “Not only does he have the personality to endure people contact at sometimes excessive levels, but he’s an expert horse person and solid business man. He’s also an expert who’ll take on any job at resort, despite his title.”
He says that he enjoys taking reservations. For one thing it helps keep finger on the pulse of business. He learns what “people want and where they heard about us. ”Taking reservations by himself also allows him to screen out guests that have an unrealistic expectation of the services provided at a dude ranch.
Foster joined the dude ranch, a family business, after graduating from a program in hotel administration. He believes he has overcome most of the problems that ordinarily plague a family business. He says, “The best thing that I’ve learned is that as long as may dad is around, I put may personal taste aside and don’t get eaten up by small, pretty issues. As long as he’s active, if the feels strongly about something, then that’s it. You don’t have to turn everything into World War III.”
Foster’s objective when he returned to the ranch at age twenty-eight was to convert Lost Valley from a six-month-a-year business into year-round business. Basing some of his ideas on project he worked on in a hotel course, he added a new wing to main lodge. The expansion enabled the ranch to enlarge its capacity from 60 to 100 guests and to provide housing for more staff. Foster also started cultivating off-season business by appealing to small corporations, associations, and city councils that wanted subdued settings for their meetings.
