Staff Writer
VAN BUREN — With the sun shining on brightly colored flowers filling numerous planters and multi-colored balloons swaying in the breeze, over 107 interested individuals attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Aroostook Hospitality Inn Van Buren (AHIVB), located at 95 Main Street in Van Buren, on June 28.
Many community well-wishers were present for the ceremonial ribbon cutting signifying the opening of the Aroostook Hospitality Inn Van Buren (AHIVB), which has been open to customers since Memorial Day. Jim Duplessis, Chanel Bouchard, Rena Franck, AHIVB General Manager Scott Cormier, Jackie Duplessis, AHIVB Owner Scott Dobson, Paul Vaillancourt, AHIVB Owner Steve Dobson, Van Buren Town Manager Thomas Cannon, Michel Thibodeau, AHIVB Owner Prudy Dobson, Steve Perreault, Town Economic Development Director Daniel LaPoint, Alyre Levesque and Gary Levesque, both of the Town Council. The ceremony drew over 107 individuals.
The AHIVB, open for customers since Memorial Day, is the second hotel under the ownership of Steve Dobson, who has owned the Aroostook Hospitality Inn (AHI) on Route 164 in Washburn for the past nine years.
“I’m very pleased with the way the community has welcomed us; it’s just amazing, the people that have stopped to talk with us and they welcomed us with open arms,” said Dobson, “I’m just stunned and astonished with the way the community has welcomed us.”
Both the community and customers have received the AHIVB openly.
“Last week, we had six rooms with walk-ins,” Dobson said. “I didn’t expect that; I figured that we would build on reservations and family reunions and whatnot. The walk-ins, I did not expect.
Walk-ins may be unexpected, but Dobson is hoping that he can expect a different kind of customer in the upcoming months.
“Something that we intend to do here is bring snowmobiles back to Van Buren,” he said. “The last few years, the snowmobilers haven’t been to Van Buren. We go to a lot of snowmobile shows, and my other property (AHI), we’re fairly well booked for snowmobile season already.”
Dobson has worked hard bringing snowmobilers to his first hotel, and plans on working hard to bring snowmobile business back to Van Buren.
“The better this building does, the better everybody on Main Street does,” Dobson said. “The more people we have staying here from away, they go to the restaurants, they buy gas, they go to the store and buy some snacks, everybody is going to benefit the better this place does,” he added.
The AHIVB is a unique motel, offering amenities such as free continental breakfast, free wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) and, a rather progressive feature, offering free calls throughout Maine, Canada, and the United States right from the phone in the customer’s rooms.
While it may be fortune, luck, or word of mouth that’s been driving business at the AHIVB, Dobson believes that he is very fortunate for one particular aspect of the businesses success.
“I have a gentleman by the name of Scott Cormier who is the general manager here,” he said, “Scott has 14 year’s of service in the motel business. He’s well respected and well liked in the community, and that makes a tremendous difference and I’m very lucky to have had Scott come in [and work at the AHIVB], and that was just luck, or divine intervention,” Dobson joked.
Cormier, a Van Buren native who gained much of his motel experience in Kennebunkport managing upscale motels, has shown that his commitment to customer service extends far beyond the lobby.
“We had an older gentleman stay with us a few weeks ago,” Cormier said, “his daughter had made the reservation, and when I spoke with her on the phone, she told me that it was probably her dad’s final visit to Van Buren, which is where he was originally from. The woman and her husband brought her dad over [to stay at the motel] for three days while visiting old friends that were still around and to see the changes in Van Buren,” Cormier recalled.
One morning, during the breakfast service, the gentleman approached Cormier and asked for a good place to find high quality maple syrup in Van Buren. That evening, while the gentleman was playing a game of cards in the Great Room of the AHIVB, Cormier went down to the local grocery store, purchased a nice bottle of 100 percent pure maple syrup, and left it in the gentleman’s room with a card.
The next morning, when the family was enjoying the continental breakfast before they checked out, the gentleman told Cormier that he would never forget how [Cormier] went out of his way to make their stay so great.
“We have a small staff, but we do everything,” Cormier said. “When you check in, we hand you the key, escort you to your room, turn the lights on for you as you enter the room as well as help you carry your bags, so it doesn’t have the chain feel at all,” he described. “What I can tell you that would go along the lines of a chain hotel or an upper scale chain hotel is that we provide our customers with comfort, utmost cleanliness, and consistency.”
“For instance,” Cormier explained, “if you enjoyed your cup of coffee at breakfast during your first stay, we can guarantee you that when you come back for your next stay, you’ll have the same cup of coffee, the same brand. When we find something that works for us, we stick to it.”
While there were plenty of smiles and pats on the back during the ribbon cutting, the success of the day was the culmination of months’ of hard work.
After purchasing the property on January 16, 2009, Dobson encountered a couple of unforeseen bumps in the road.
“When I bought the building, the pipes were supposedly drained and air put through them, so nothing was supposed to be frozen,” Dobson explained. “When we came in and started looking, there’s a two-inch main black iron pipe that runs the length of the building, and it was broken in four places; all the heat was broken, all the flush inserts were broken and all the faucets were broken,” he described. “In order to fix those, we had to tear all the rooms apart because everything’s run through the walls. Once we got them fixed and put them back together, the pipes had been under such stress that they broke again somewhere else, so some of those rooms have been taken apart and put back together four and five times,” Dobson recalled, “it was just a tremendous amount of time to put these rooms together.”
From the reaction of the individuals taking room tours, the rooms were worth the effort.
While many of the rooms were unavailable for viewing due to occupancy, visitors wound their way around the motel looking at the spacious double bed rooms, which will soon have one queen bed and one double bed as oppose to two double beds, and Dobson’s personal creation, the businessman’s room.
“The businessman’s room has a queen bed, a couch, a little chair to sit in and a desk,” Dobson described. “People have received the room very well, and I figured that for the traveling businessperson or the traveling single person, it’s hard to sit down and watch television in bed, and you don’t want to sit at the desk all day while using your computer, so you can sit on your couch or in the chair,” he said. “Some people said that we might not want to do that, but I’m glad that we did. It’s gone over well.”
The King Room was occupied, but Dobson had a smile on his face as he described it.
“It’s just beautiful,” he said, “It could be an apartment.”
With extensive care given to renew the hotel, the general feeling is very clear.
“Historically, when the old Colonial Hotel was built in 1969, it became a well known fact in Van Buren that it was a ritzy hotel as well as a nice resturant, and we’re looking to bring that back,” Cormier said. “We’re working with local restaurants right now, and they’re catering for us; we can handle small functions — up to 80 people —in our Great Room,” he added. Ultimately, the goal is to set the kitchen back up and lease the space to a restaurateur.
The AHIVB is looking to keep as much money in the town as they can, “meaning we buy our cleaning supplies from P&E Distributors in Van Buren, we get all our provisions for the nice expanded continental breakfast that we do from Saucier’s IGA,” Cormier said. “We’re trying to keep everything in Van Buren.”
While owning two hotels can be exhausting, Dobson is finding that having two hotels can help him serve his customers better, though customer service doesn’t seem to be lacking at AHI or AHIVB.
Last fall, at the AHI in Washburn, Dobson received an interesting phone call from France. A gentleman, who tours people through the United States on motorcycles, decided that he wanted to try a tour east.
“He said that this would be his first tour, and he asked if we could accommodate him,” Dobson recalled. “I said ‘sure, we’ll do whatever you want.’”
The gentleman stated that they would need a little different accommodations, as they wanted a traditional meal.
Because the AHI doesn’t have a resturant, and given its country setting, Dobson had no qualms about offering a good-old hot dog roast.
“The gentleman asked what a hot dog roast was, and I said ‘you take a piece of meat, put it on the end of a stick, and roast it over a fire,” Dobson told, a smile creeping across his face. “There was a big pause [on the other end of the line]. A big pause. The gentleman said ‘you really do that?’ and I told him it’s an Aroostook County tradition, beans and hot dogs on a Saturday night,” Dobson explained, “The gentleman said, ‘perfect, that’s what we want.’”
Dobson served up the works for the group, including beans, hot dogs, coleslaw, potato salad, and whoopie pies.
“We bought five pounds of hot dogs, and we had to go get another five pounds,” he said. “They kept saying, ‘Man, these sausages are smaller than ours, but they taste better than ours!’”
Dobson set up a bonfire for the group, who came equipped with two harmonicas and a clarinet. Some of them stayed out until 11:30 p.m. singing around the fire.
The next morning, Dobson found out that the group intended to cross the border in Van Buren, so he suggested that they stop by the AHIVB to have a cup of coffee, use the facilities, and relax a little bit before they crossed.
The group took Dobson up on his offer, and stayed at the hotel for a couple of hours joking with Cormier before continuing their trek east.
The group leader called Dobson after the trip, and from now on, the same trip will take place twice a year.
“That’s my plan, is to be able to work the AHIVB in with the AHI to put together skidoo packages [involving staying at both motels].
“We’re looking forward to going to a lot of snowmobiling shows and ATV shows trying to bring those people back [to Van Buren] because the trail system in this area is excellent,” Cormier said, “you can’t find better riding.”
The Aroostook Hospitality Inn Van Buren can be reached at 445-8567 or 484-6200.
