Around the world hospitality

Being an accountant in Guam, St. Lucia or the Marshall Islands has its perks. Lonny Watne, ’94, said his favorite was St. Lucia in the Caribbean.

These days, he’s the controller at The Allison Inn and Spa in Newberg, the jewel of Oregon Wine Country.

Watne has traveled the world bringing hotels and resorts back from the brink of bankruptcy. He enrolled at EOU in 1975, but left before he had completed a degree. His career started in Heppner as a cashier and loan officer.

Eventually, though, he realized he’d need to complete his degree in order to move up the ladder. His return to campus as a non-traditional student gave Watne a different perspective.

“I was the Lecture Committee Coordinator, and I was working in the student activities office,” he said. “As a non-traditional student I got to know professors by their first names.”

Diploma in hand, he moved to Portland for a job fixing accounting issues within a bank.

“I got on an airplane Monday morning and got off of it Friday night,” Watne said. “The first project was in their payroll department where they hadn’t reconciled their accounts, then the credit card processing team, then the automated banking transfers department — project, after project, after project.”

The experience prepared him to enter the world of hospitality. He started at the Governor Hotel in Portland as an accountant, then went on to Saipan at the Pacific Islands Club. He fixed their problems in a year, then went to Outrigger Resort in Guam for 18 months. He was a controller on Majuro in the Marshall Islands, and turned that property around. Then he moved to St. Lucia to fix a budgeting problem there.

“I’m not an accountant or a CPA, but I love building budgets and helping others make better decisions,” Watne said.

In 2003 he moved back to Oregon, and started working at the Inn at Cape Kiwanda in 2005. After a few years, though, he moved to Virginia to manage a small hotel. Then Watne went to Santa Fe and helped a hotel try to outrun the Great Recession. He spent a while in California, but got burned out on long hours in the resort business and the San Francisco traffic. So he started working in country clubs like Lake Merced Golf Club and San Luis Opisbo Country Club.

Until about a year ago, when he moved back to his home state to work in one of Oregon’s best luxury resorts. The Allison Inn and Spa has established itself as a center of wine culture in Yamhill County. The resort hosts festivals, and is intertwined with an industry that its guests are passionate about.

And this time, Watne is doing more growth management than damage control.

“Here, I’m maintaining the financial set-up and expanding on it,” he said. “We’re in the process of changing from monthly to daily reporting, so managers have up-to-the-minute data and can make great decisions for tomorrow.”