Steward of the Queen: Concordia grad manages Montreal’s famous Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth hotel

As it turned out, Connor didn’t merely review topics he already knew well by taking Concordia’s Master of Business Administration: he also learned a lot of new things. “I loved those two years, and they’re what really launched my career in senior leadership,” he says.

“When you’re going through a degree, you don’t necessarily feel the iterative changes, because they happen slowly,” he continues. “But my wife noticed that I was changing the way I think, speak, respond and put things together.”

In hospitality, people are paramount

A hotel, especially a large one, is like a city in itself, according to Connor. “In the case of The Queen Elizabeth, we have 650 employees,” he explains. “And there’s every discipline: sales, marketing, finance, administration, service, culinary arts, engineering, plumbing, electricians and so on.”

When Connor first came on board in 2017, The Queen Elizabeth was closed for major renovations. He hatched the idea of offering tours of the ongoing construction work.

“We’d put people in steel-toed boots, hard hats and fluorescent jackets, and our director of engineering at the time would show them around the site,” he says. “It took off. Every session was full.”

Plenty of employees were among the participants. “We have staff who’ve been here for decades: folks who have given their lives to working in this one place,” Connor says. “So this was a way to keep them engaged and to show them what we were doing to their hotel.”

Although Connor oversees every aspect of running The Queen Elizabeth, he believes its team is key to its success.

“I look for a specific type of person,” he explains. “Of course, you need to have the hard skills that are relevant to your position. But beyond that, I want people who understand that we do this together: that every link in the chain is needed so that clients will say, ‘Wow! This is a great place to be.’”