Claude Dubois, General Manager, Wyndham Deerfield Beach Resort
In an interview with Invest:, Claude Dubois, general manager of Wyndham Deerfield Beach Resort, shared strategies for maintaining excellence in a competitive hospitality market, detailed the resort’s focus on multi-generational family experiences, adaptive seasonal offerings, and deep community integration, saying “the foundation of our success is having the right people in place.”
What strategies have you implemented over the past year to maintain your standards of excellence, and how do you plan to sustain it moving forward?
The foundation of our success is having the culture and people in place. This begins with hiring the talent that fits our operation. We created and maintained a strong training program to ensure our team is fully prepared to welcome our guests and make them feel comfortable with us. We focus on flawless and genuine execution. We diligently follow up on any guest feedback. We operate under a continuous improvement program where we identify specific areas of improvement. Our goal is to consistently reach that 90% threshold for guest satisfaction in all of our departments.
What adjustments have you made to cater to a younger demographic?
The most important is our recruitment strategy and ensuring our team members feel that we care about them as much as we care for our guests. Our team members are not numbers. We are fundamentally a family hotel. Our focus is to ensure parents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren all have a memorable experience with us. We consider ourselves a multi generational guest experience property, as we have families who first stayed with us 30 or 40 years ago and continue to return. To that effect we want team members who value our guests. We created an internship program at the property where we host six to eight students from various universities in South Florida each year. We develop a comprehensive plan for them to experience the various departments of the property. They spend time with managers who mentor them while they undergo training. We have been very fortunate that some of these individuals have returned to us as employees, either after their internship or while still completing their studies. Hospitality can be a challenging business in which sometimes we work long hours. Some days are better than others. We feel what our guests feel. I truly believe that working in hospitality is a vocation and when coming to work you have to enjoy the positive aspects as well as the challenges that employees and guests present. It truly is an amazing industry.
What trends are you observing in guest preferences for amenities, dining, and recreational activities in the South Florida market?
We serve two distinct clienteles. Our winter clientele is affluent and seeks to escape the snowy months of New York, Boston, and the Northeast. They are extremely grateful for the palm trees and warm weather as well as the more laid back atmosphere that South Florida offers. We have added beach chairs and umbrellas as part of the property’s amenities, so guests now pay 50% less than they did previously when the City of Deerfield Beach managed the beach. Our ownership, Chase Enterprises owns three parcels of the beach in front of the hotel, which, very unique in South Florida. We also offer food service on the beach, though we are not permitted to serve alcohol. Our summer clientele, during the offseason, is primarily looking for favorable rates and packages. They understand that hotels in South Florida have lower occupancy in the summer due to the heat. This clientele is mostly from Florida and states close to the sunshine state. They seek advantageous rates , such as 20% off, reduced parking fees, reduced hotel service fees, and inclusive packages that bundle the high-demand amenities we offer in the winter.
Given Deerfield Beach’s ranking as one of Florida’s top beaches, how do you leverage this recognition to attract guests and differentiate the resort?
We probably are the only hotel from Palm Beach to Pompano Beach that owns its beach. We work very closely with the city, which maintains a very clean and environmentally friendly beach. We have a lot of nests from local sea turtles in the summer months, so it is a protected area. We leverage this by offering families a clean beach with great service. Deerfield is a small townon the beach, we do not have high rise buildings like Boca Raton or Fort Lauderdale. More recently, just a few months ago, the city granted us the right to host private events on the beach. We are now the only hotel in a 20- to 30-mile radius that can host a full wedding on the beach under a tent. This gives us a significant level of exclusivity in the area.
With the competitive labor market in hospitality, how have your employee retention and engagement initiatives evolved over the past 12 months, and what impact have they had?
We are very fortunate to have employees who have been with us for 20 to 30 years which shows how much we care for our team members. It also gives our guests peace of mind that they will be recognized as well as taken care of as they have in their previous stays with us. I have been there for nine years myself, which is considered a long tenure for a general manager. We take care of our team members by offering competitive pay and very good benefits. We had to increase our benefits after COVID because the labor market was extremely difficult. Hospitality does not always have a great reputation for long hours. We respect people’s time at home. We encourage our team members to take their days off and to use their vacation time. Our managers have a work life balance . It is about respecting the employees on and off the clock, being kind, and taking care of them. We have employees who have left us and came back on numerous occasions. This stems from our ownership, Chase Enterprises. The best owners I have worked with in more than 25 years in hospitality. They truly care for the team working at the property. It goes a long way.
With the current economic landscape, how has Wyndham Deerfield adapted its pricing and service offerings to maintain competitiveness?
Again, for example, in September of 2025, we are offering 50% off parking and also 50% off the hotel service fee, along with a reduced room rate. The summer months are challenging months, and we are extremely grateful for the locals supporting us, from the Florida West Coast, Georgia, Alabama, and states that are close to Florida. We adjust our rates and offerings during leaner months. The same applies in the restaurant where we extend happy hour and we offer specials on the menu. The season is really December, January, February and March, up to Easter. From there on, we are in the off-season. We have more of the off-season months than we have of the in-season, so our summer guests are very, very important to us.
How do partnerships with local attractions, like Lion Country Safari and Dixie Divers, enhance guest experiences and the resort’s appeal?
We have done some partnerships with some companies. It has not always yielded as much business as we would have wanted, but for us, working with the local community is essential. We prioritize local businesses over overseas businesses or out-of-state companies. Sometimes we do not have a choice, of course, but we leverage as much of the Wyndham name as we can for local corporate accounts and so on. Working with Dixie Divers has helped us as it has generated some room nights. Again, it is not groundbreaking, but sometimes people look at local businesses and then they look at the hotel on the beach, and we happen to be in the same area. So that does benefit us. We bring a lot to the community in terms of being the only hotel that is extremely well located. During COVID, when we closed for a few months — we were also hit by Hurricane IRMA in 2017 — during that closure, local restaurants lost 25% of their business because of us not bringing the foot traffic they were used to. We work very, very closely with the local community. We work very closely with the Convention and Business Bureau of Fort Lauderdale, the Boca Chamber, the Fort Lauderdale Chamber where we are very active. Our ownership is very involved with the local community. We sponsor up to 15 events a year with two significant ones. Friendsgiving in November in which we partner with the Broward Sheriff’s office and the City of Deerfield Beach to feed up to 100 guests in a low income area. In December we fully sponsor “Santa on the Sand”. Santa comes to the beach with his jet ski and greets up to 50 children who suffer from autism. This is in collaboration with a local school, BSO and the City. Such events are extremely rewarding and go a long way in helping families in our local area.
