|
Dailey Dynasty A master's degree in international business and Latin American studies was not crucial for the two things for which Mike Dailey is best known: polo and hotels.
The Dailey family has been
Timeline
long involved in two ventures:
Hotels and poloBy Erika Engle
eengle@starbulletin.com
Active in polo all his life, Dailey is president of Hawaii Polo Inn and its management company, Honolulu Hotel Operating Corp.; his wife Rebecca is vice president and his mother Elizabeth "Murph" Dailey is a director.
The company operates the 68-room hotel, a beach cottage, special tours on an occasional basis and will soon take over 40 units in the nearby Marina Tower.
Right out of graduate school, Mike Dailey went to Santiago, Chile, where he worked for a company exporting fresh fruit, onions and wine and importing steel pipe for oil and water lines, he said.
The college education supported a two-year career.
Meanwhile, parents Fred and Elizabeth had laid the foundation of the Dailey dynasty and of the rest of their son's life. They were luminaries on the Waikiki hospitality scene in an industry which had paid his way through school.
The Daileys developed the Waikikian Hotel and its once wildly popular Tahitian Lanai restaurant. The hotel opened in 1956.
Also in the 1950s, Fred Dailey was a key figure in reviving polo in Kapiolani Park and then moving the sport to Mokuleia.
"He was really a fine horseman," Hawaii hotelier Andre Tatibouet said. The Daileys "were instrumental in really moving it into a very popular sport," bringing teams from around the world to Hawaii.
Mike Dailey says he "followed the polo muse around the world and played for various teams ... then I got into the promotion and club management side."
Dailey also got into his father's business, which by the 1960s had expanded to include the Driftwood Hotel, which Fred and Murph developed, Tatibouet said.
|
In 1964 the Mokuleia polo grounds opened and Fred Dailey was "very involved until he retired," Mike Dailey said. "Then another group took over for a couple of years and then Ron Rewald was involved. The club got into trouble when he got into trouble."Rewald drew millions into his investment company but in 1985 was convicted and sentenced to 80 years in federal prison for the theft of more than $20 million from some 400 investors.
Due to the negative association, polo fell out of vogue and ended at Mokuleia in 1983. That sent the younger Dailey to Chicago's Oakbrook Polo Club with its status as a leader in promoting the sport, complete with "corporate involvement, social members and large crowds at their matches," he said.
Back home the next year he took over the lease at the old stomping grounds and revived the Mokuleia event. "We promoted it heavily to the public," he said. "With corporate involvement, sponsors, social members and parties. We always had a band afterward."
The bands would include musicians such as former Cream drummer Ginger Baker and former Police drummer Stewart Copeland.
As popularity and problems coursed through the polo portion of the Daileys' lives, the hotel business was no less active.
In 1978 the elder Daileys were ready to retire. "Fred and Murph wanted to scale back," Tatibouet said. "So I put a deal together to take over the Waikikian and the Driftwood." He later sold the properties, the Waikikian to the Weinberg estate and in 1990, the Driftwood, in a "small world" kind of way -- to Mike Dailey.
"This is Hawaii," Dailey said.
Fittingly, the hotel on Ala Moana was renamed the Hawaii Polo Inn.
|
Wife Rebecca Dailey, a designer, decorator and photographer "put her skills to work," he said, "making the Hawaii Polo Inn a pretty unique boutique hotel" at a time when the concept was coming into popularity. She also does freelance work and has other hotels among her clients.The business has had its ups and downs and, incredibly, 2001 was not among the downs.
"Last year was our best year ever," he said. "I think it's our business mix."
"We're not dependent on corporate meeting travel or Japanese travel," factors which hammered the large beachfront properties, Dailey said. "With mid-price off-beach properties that wasn't quite the same."
The hotel does its own advertising but also has a marketing agreement with Aston Hotels & Resorts.
Tatibouet spoke of his "nice relationship" with Fred and Murph. "They were wonderful people, gracious hosts" and "strong advocates of Hawaii tourism," he said.
Fred died several years ago, and Murph is now frequently off traveling. Their grandson Devon turned 18 Friday and their granddaughter Mariah, named after the family farm in Virginia, is 16. Devon plays dad's form of polo and has been offered polo scholarships at two mainland colleges. Mariah's preference is water polo and is on the varsity team at Mid-Pacific Institute. Neither one has expressed a definite desire to enter the hotel business but Tatibouet cautions his colleague not to sweat it.
"My parents started a 14-room hotel in 1948," he said, called the Royal Grove Hotel. At age 7 after school Tatibouet would scrub toilets and clean.
At age 18 he wasn't sure he'd follow along and later went into real estate, stepping back into the hotel industry in his early 20s. His parents stayed with one hotel, "but I was young and ... wanted to grow (the business).
"There's lots of time (to decide succession)," he said.
In partnership with venture capitalist Patrick Brent, the Hawaii Polo Inn picked up 10 floors, 40 units of the adjacent 136-unit Marina Tower over which it will assume management May 1.
"It's ready to go, it's an Outrigger product," Dailey said, adding that any rebranding and redecoration will be done in increments.
The next big polo development is that Dailey has secured a lease for the old Mokuleia polo grounds beginning in 2003.
"It will have been five years since there was polo on the North Shore," he said. Times have changed since the conspicuous consumption of the 1980s, but "the idea is, it's a day in the country, a sporting event and a social event. Roll all three into one, and you give people a reason to go."
BACK TO TOP
|
Dailey days
1948 >> Andre Tatibouet's parents started a 14-room hotel at Kuhio and Uluniu called The Royal Grove Hotel. 1950s >> Fred Dailey revived polo at Kapiolani Park and the Waikiki Polo Club is born 1956 >> Fred and Elizabeth "Murph" Dailey open the Waikikian Hotel, which they developed 1960s >> Fred and Murph develop the Driftwood Hotel 1964 >> Polo opens at Mokuleia 1978 >> Fred and Murph sell Waikikian to Tatibouet and retire 1983 >> Play stops at Mokuleia 1984 >> Mike Dailey goes to Chicago, plays at Oakbrook Polo Club 1985 >> Dailey takes over lease at the old polo club in Mokuleia 1990 >> Mike and Becca Dailey take over the Driftwood Hotel from Tatibouet, renovate it and rename it the Hawaii Polo Inn 1992 >> Dailey relinquishes lease at Mokuleia polo field 2002 >> Dailey dynasty expands with 40 units in the Marina Tower, adjacent to Hawaii Polo Inn 2003 >> Daily's Hawaii Polo Club to resume play at Mokuleia