Donald Bowman, general manager of the then-Mandarin Oriental Hotel San Francisco, was celebrating the hotel’s Forbes five star award in Naples, Florida, on February 11 when he heard it was being sold.
Bowman had just sent a message back to his 200 employees congratulating everyone on the 158-room hotel’s success when he was told that the 1987-vintage property was going to Loews.
He had absolutely no inkling that this was in the offing. “I had two hours to compose myself and then had a conference call to as many of my team as I could muster. I did not want them to hear from any other source,” he recalled. Ironically, the reception in his Naples hotel room was so bad he had to sit in the bathroom to make contact.
He then rushed straight back to San Francisco and had two months to affect the hand-over. Instead of a wake he hosted a team celebration party. “We recognized 27 years’ success and, especially, 20 of the team who had been there from the start. Two of the four earlier GMs, Cliff Atkinson now running Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas, and Alain Negueloua, Mandarin Oriental Boston, joined us,” he said.
Bowman and his wife Ellen Charnley returned to their home in Las Vegas. “Although it was somewhat heart-stopping losing Mandarin Oriental’s first hotel outside Asia, I have always relished a challenge,” said the Scotsman, whose first entry into the hospitality world was serving afternoon tea scones in Edinburgh.
His current challenge is getting a 90-minute documentary, HEART: Flatline to Finish Line, into the movie festival circuit.
Three years ago his ultra-fit wife was training for another triathlon when it was discovered she needed immediate open-heart surgery, after which she went on to finish Ironman, which resulted in her book Living Life to the Full: My Ironman Journey.
With seven other heart survivors, Bowman and Charnley founded the Ironheart Foundation. Donald Bowman subsequently has been working more than full-time producing a true-life awareness documentary. “Making and financing a movie, through two rounds of crowd-funding, with the incentive to big donors to have screen credit, actually has many similarities with running a hotel imaginatively, within budget,” he said.
And, as in hotels, moviemaking brought up many unforeseen crises. One of the seven other open-heart survivors tragically passed away, not on set. Four, including Ellen Charnley, did finish the Ironman, and they were joined by their late colleague’s widow.
Bowman will be back in hotels when the right opportunity occurs. Meanwhile, he is determined to get the movie to Cannes or Toronto. Move over Steven Spielberg.