Hotelier leaves the business for new growth industry
Kelowna hotelier takes job with medical marijuana company for now but hopes to eventually semi-retire as farmer in Glenmore
Greg Salloum jokes he’s returning to his roots by leaving the hotel business in Kelowna and entering the medical marijuana trade in Creston.
“I have a master’s in plant science and plant biochemistry, but I was in the hotel business for the past 27 years to help out family,” he said with a laugh.
The hotel in question is the 176room Best Western Plus Kelowna Hotel & Suites, which the Salloum family just sold to the Grande Prairie-based Pomeroy Lodging Group for an undisclosed amount. Pomeroy owns 18 hotels in B.C. and Alberta, including properties in Chetwynd, Grande Prairie, Dawson Creek and Fort St. John and Kananaskis.
“I love the hotel business and I love the people I worked with, but it was time to move on for both myself and the rest of my family,” said Salloum.
Salloum, 60, also has an organic vegetable farm in Glenmore, and his semi-retirement dream is to build a house there and become a gentleman farmer.
In the meantime, he’s helping out a friend, who owns We Grow BC, as the quality assurance officer.
The Best Western, at the corner of Highway 97 and Leckie Road, was built in 1964 by Arthur Martin as a 20-unit motel.
Martin also owned the adjacent Central Park Golf Course and a big chunk of land on Dilworth Mountain.
In 1970, Martin sold the motel to Al Salloum, Greg’s dad, and Lawrence Salloum, Greg’s uncle.
Martin sold off the golf course to be developed into the huge shopping centre with Walmart and Home Depot, and Dilworth Mountain was turned into a housing subdivision.
In 1981, Al became sole owner of the Best Western after three additions took the hotel to 108 rooms.
In 2000, the hotel’s most distinctive feature, the 10-storey white tower, was finished. It includes 48 rooms, 3,000 square feet of meeting space, an indoor pool, lobby and view rooftop for special events.
The hotel was one of the first to go green, introducing recycling programs, solar power for heating and laundry, and plug-ins for electric cars.
Salloum left just as the hotel was awarded its seventh Certificate of Excellence by TripAdvisor.com, the world’s largest travel website.
The hotel also just snagged a Director’s Award from Best Western for being in the top 20 per cent of the 2,100 Best Western hotels in North America.
Longtime general manager Rosemary Paterson is staying on.
However, sales and marketing director Brenda Rayburn has taken a similar position with Braemar Group, which owns six hotels in Western Canada, including the Best Western Plus in West Kelowna.