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@Work: Host U

Sam ReyYou can’t miss the message when you walk into Sam Rey’s office in the Smith Bay Business complex. The walls are adorned with framed awards, certificates, tributes and family photos. Typed, printed, and handwritten slogans abound:

“What’s important to you is a priority for us!”

“Empower your staff.”

“It is better to under promise and over deliver.”

“If you want prosperity for 100 years, grow people.”

Platitudes? Not to the man who worked his way up from menial jobs in the hotel industry to founding his own hospitality training center, Host U. Established 12 years ago, Host U offers education and training, employment, outsourcing and consulting services.

“We are the hospitality temp agency for St. Thomas-St. John,” said Rey. He places people at hotels both on a long-term basis and to fill requests for short-term casual labor for special projects that may last as little as a few days. His long-term staff generally number about 30, he said. Occasionally, he also provides “head-hunting” services.

In training sessions, he has to get by the myth that hotel work is somehow demeaning. He tells his trainees that no one really works for another person; we all “work for” ourselves and our families.

Rey developed his own work ethic early in life.

“My mom is a hard-working lady,” he said. Originally from Anguilla, Rose Rabsaat raised eight children – Sam was near the middle – and worked a number of jobs, mostly cleaning.

Her son describes her as the kind of person who never wastes an opportunity; if there were a space between her house and the next door neighbor’s, she’d plant a garden in it. “My mother makes things happen.”

When Rey began earning money doing odd jobs, he gave it to his mother to help out. Later he learned that she routinely put part of it aside for his future.

“I never met my father,” he said. But his mother was a major influence on him and he discovered resources in himself. “I created the environment that I wanted to be a part of.”

By the time he graduated from Ivanna Eudora Kean High School, he had already created a good impression and the start of a career. He was awarded the four-year Alton A. Adams hospitality scholarship to Webber International University in Florida. In 1984 he graduated cum laude.

Meanwhile, he spent his summers as a management trainee at Marriott Frenchman’s Reef Beach Resort on St. Thomas, where he got to know the then-managing director, Nick Pourzal who, he says, “has always been a positive influence on me. He’s still my mentor.”

At the Reef he learned how a hotel operates by serving in various departments, from kitchen help to front desk. “I did it the old way, by getting my hands dirty,” he said. “It’s not the only way, but I think it’s the best way… You have to know what’s happening below before you go up top… I have to take care of my employees. I’m nothing without them.”

In 1988, Rey took the position of resident manager at Sapphire Beach Resort and Marina. Later he moved to management positions at Sugar Bay Resort and the former Hyatt Regency on St. John.

And he has always kept learning. He took courses at the University of the Virgin Islands. He became certified as a Hospitality Educator by the American Hotel and Restaurant Management Hospitality Institute, a distinction he continually updates. He earned a master’s degree in education and curriculum development from online institute, the University of Phoenix.

“I said by age 40 I wanted to open my own business,” Rey said. “Through God’s grace I worked toward obtaining that goal.” He made it with four months to spare.

Host U opened in downtown Charlotte Amalie in December 1999. “ We had one room on Goat Street,” Rey said.

Now, there are several interconnecting offices for Rey and a small administrative staff, as well as the SunRay Lounge and Training Center – an 800-square foot facility that he rents out for private functions when he isn’t using it for in-house educational seminars. And, in fact, he owns and manages the entire Smith Bay Business Center at the bottom of Cassi Hill. Well, he says with a smile, “It’s me and Banco Popular.”

Business success is obviously important to Sam Rey. But, he says, “The greatest thing in life is building relationships with people.”

That’s another maxim he lives. Rey is an active member of his church and is vice president of the Smith Bay Community Action Foundation. He is husband to Sandra and father to Samantha and Semone, one attending UVI and other at Southern Adventist University in Tennessee.

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