CommonWealth Magazine - Summer/Fall 2005
Proper Bostonians
Isenberg School Alumni Thrive in Boston's Hotel Industry
Bruce Leaver '81
Alumni Profile: Bruce Leaver '81
Owner and General Manager
Best Western Adams Inn in Quincy
At first glance, Best Western Adams Inn in Quincy may appear far afield, but it’s only seven miles south of Logan Airport and five miles from the new Boston Convention and Exposition Center, observes the Inn’s owner and general manager, Bruce Leaver ’81. In other words, the 99-room guest facility regularly attracts its share of visitors to Boston. Every convention center event, for example, requires set-up and breakdown of the event, which involves a lengthy stay by supporting personnel. “We often get a piece of that traffic,” he explains. “Quincy itself has a thriving business community, including a large distribution center for Boston Scientific Corporation; headquarters for Stop & Shop and large corporate campuses for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and State Street Corporation; and many small- and mid-size businesses. We want our function rooms and business services to be assets to them all.” And the Inn, with its boardwalk and signature gazebo on the Neponset River, is a natural draw for weddings, clambakes, and other social events. You can’t miss it from the much traveled north-south artery, Route 93.
Before Leaver and a partner bought the Inn in September of 2004 (they raised capital from nine investors, including four UMass alumni), the HTM graduate was general manager for eight years of the 161-room Best Western Boston-Inn at Longwood Medical. The hotel’s owner, The Druker Company, Ltd., is a long-time Boston developer and owner of office, retail, residential, parking, and hotel properties (including the Colonnade Hotel, also profiled in this article). Leaver first worked for Druker in 1992 as general manager of the 159-room Midtown Hotel in Boston. “At Druker, I worked for David Colella ’75,” he reminisces. “I was pleased to inform him that, with our purchase of the Adams Inn, I had finally broken into the real estate side of the hospitality business.”
The Adams Inn in Quincy regularly attracts its share
of visitors to Boston.
With its more than 4,100 independently owned and operated hotels in 78 countries, Best Western is the world’s largest hotel company operating under a single brand name. “You may be surprised to learn that we are a membership association—a democracy—whose members pay dues, elect governors, and vote on issues of policy and practice,” observes Leaver. “The arrangement gives individual owners considerable leverage through brand identity, reservations systems, facilities design, purchasing power, marketing, and education and training.” Each hotel is independently owned and operated. Membership dues and fees are considerably lower than at other franchise organizations due to the association’s unique non-profit structure. As a result, 99.5 percent of its hotels renewed their membership last year.
Leaver’s education in hospitality at UMass Amherst included courses with professors Fletcher in food engineering, McCollough in food service, Cournoyer in law, and Lattuca in food and beverages. For the program’s work requirements, Leaver did stints at the Lodge at Mt. Snow and Smugglers’ Beach Motor Lodge in South Yarmouth. Back on campus, he sold students Spring Break travel packages marketed through Garber Travel. Leaver’s commitment to Greek life also reinforced his commitment to his major. “At my fraternity, Beta Kappa Phi, twenty-four of us were HRTA majors,” he recalls. “A former fraternity member, Mike Hislop ’77, periodically recruited me and other BKP members to work weeknights at the Chateau de Ville in Framingham, where Mike was a banquet manager.” Leaver notes that many of the Beta Kappa Phi alumni remain connected through the fraternity. “Every year, the Beta Phi Scholarship Foundation awards up to $20,000 in college scholarships to lineal descendants of Beta Phis,” emphasizes Leaver, who is a former BKP trustee and director.
After graduation, Leaver joined Marriott Hotels and Resorts, where he pursued a marketing track as sales manager, director of sales, and director of marketing at hotels in Maryland, Colorado, and Virginia. In 1987, he returned to the Boston area as director of sales and marketing for the 300-room Tremont House Hotel. “In 1989, I went to work for UMass Amherst alumnus Rick Kelleher ‘73 at Guest Quarters Suite Hotel in Boston as the hotel’s sales and marketing director,” recalls Leaver, who lives in Scituate with his wife, Karen ’82, and their two children. “For me, joining The Druker Company two years later in 1992 was not only a change of employers but a move into general management.”
With his new-found independence as a hotel owner, Leaver is moving aggressively to expand the Inn’s market base. At the end of the summer, he will break ground on the hotel’s six-acre lot for construction of a 10,000 square-foot, two-story conference center that will target the market for small corporate meetings. “We have a large commercial base in our backyard,” he observes. “We have a highly visible location on the water and I-93; we are priced competitively; and when the conference center opens next April, we’ll be more than able to handle the corporate demand.”
Featured in this article:
 Jonathan Crellin '87 |  Rick Colangelo '84 |  David Colella '75 |
 Denise Coll '76 | Bruce Leaver '81 |
HTM Advisory Board Member List | |