Transcription of Raymond Brunyanszki for the show Hospitality, #109
Dr. Lisa: Maine is fortunate to have many wonderful places to stay and to eat. Up and down its coast and into the interior and up to the very tip of Maine, but there are really only a few places that I think of when I think of luxury and true luxurious pampered hospitality. One of these places is the Camden Harbor Inn, which is a joint venture of Raymond Brunyanszky and Oscar Verest. Both, originally, who are Dutch.
Raymond has been a friend of mine for a while, as is Oscar, and I’ve had the good fortune to stay in their inn and also eat their restaurant, Natalie’s. I’m so pleased that you came to talk to us today, and I’m also so pleased that you brought the Camden Harbor Inn to Midcoast Maine. It’s a wonderful, wonderful jewel.
Raymond: Well, thank you, Lisa. I’m really happy to be here, and excited to talk a little bit about what we’re doing and the product that we have and the luxury that we try to give to our guests. It’s been an interesting seven years.
Dr. Lisa: Well, tell me about that. Obviously, you and Oscar are Dutch, and you’ve had many other things that you’ve done before now. I believe that you worked in the tour industry for a while, and Oscar was a pharmacist for a while. You’ve done different things, you’ve been to different places. Why did you choose Maine?
Raymond: I think we were at sort of a crossroads in our lives. I had been consulting hotels in the Far East and the Middle East. Oscar, as you said, had a pharmacy that he owned and run for 10 years. He was ready to sell his pharmacy and I was ready to do something else. We were vacationing in Maine in 2003. It was a leaf-peeping trip and we did a three-week tour from Boston to New Hampshire to Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, and the truth is that I fell in love immediately with New England in general, and when I was in Vermont, I had this vision that I should start writing and buy a house in Vermont, and Oscar was like, “There is no way that we’re going to do that because it’s not practical. You have to fly for seven hours to Boston, and if you so desperately want to write, then buy a house in France, which is only five hours driving, and you can do that in the weekends.”
But we both liked the area, and almost by coincidence, we were able to … Well, we were also too early that year. I mean, we were mid-September, and there was no foliage yet, so we didn’t see anything really. We just saw the beautiful New England. A year later, we were actually off about the same time at the beginning of October, and we said, “Well, let’s try it again and now actually see the foliage.”
At that point, Oscar was more thinking about really selling his business and I remember we were standing on a beach in Ogunquit and for the manyith time, I said to him, “Why don’t we move here?”
He said, “Well, I can see myself living here on the ocean. I don’t see myself living here for long, but I can see myself living here on the ocean.”
That was the beginning. That was when we decided, okay. Now I’m going full force and it took us another four years, three years, before we were able to find the right property. I think we looked over a hundred properties, and we went to Vermont and New Hampshire, and all the other states. Finally we run into the Camden Harbour Inn, and I, at least, instantly knew that it was the perfect place for us. I had an immediate vision with this property and how it should be.
Camden felt right. It is a year-round community. As most coastal towns are closing down for the winter, Camden is vibrant in the winter as well, with lots of restaurants and with Rockland nearby with the Farnsworth Museum and people living there year-round. It felt comfortable. So we bought Camden Harbour Inn.
Dr. Lisa: What was it about the Camden Harbour Inn specifically out of all the places that you looked at in these various New England states?
Raymond: I think it was a growing process. We started with a six-room bed and breakfast in Ogunquit we looked at, and the idea was that we would just run it for the summer and close it down in the winter, and maybe go to Thailand and enjoy the beaches in Thailand in the winter and then come back in the summer or in the spring to run the business. The more and more we looked at the business, and we were not looking for a lifestyle. We were looking for a business, and more and more we started looking at the properties and the asking prices and the money that you were able to make with those smaller properties.
We realized that it was a lifestyle and you were banking on the property becoming more worth over years, the real estate, but the business itself was hardly sustainable. And you had to nickel and dime everything. You almost had to calculate how many muffins you were going to give for breakfast, and that’s not who I am. It didn’t feel right.
So, slowly in the years that we were looking for the right property. The business got bigger and bigger and at some point we realized that we needed more privacy. We were staying at a lot of hotels or small inns and bed and breakfasts, but there was no privacy where the owners would constantly be on top of you. Where you had breakfast every morning with all the people at the same table, and I don’t do well in the morning with other people at the same table. I don’t want to talk to other people. I just want to have my privacy when I’m vacationing.
So, more and more we understood that while we wanted to run, you should be able to offer privacy. It should be able to feel like a luxurious, Ritz Carlton, but at the same time have that feeling of a small bed and breakfast as well. The small warmth and coziness of a smaller property.
Slowly, bit by bit, our property got bigger and bigger, and our vacations to Thailand in the winter got completely eliminated in the process. We also realized that we wanted to have a restaurant, if we wanted to be open year-round, and so I think when we walked into Camden Harbour Inn, Oscar was still very hesitant about Camden Harbour Inn, but when I walked into that building, there was space for restaurant. In the past 10-15 years ago, they were running a restaurant there, and everything was so dated in that building. It was such an old Victorian building with tons of curtains in front of the window, and flowery wallpapers and everything was a big mismatch, and it just … I understand why people would walk in there and say, “Oh, my God. I’m not even starting with this property.”
But it had one thing. It was on, as you said before, it’s on the hilltop overlooking the entire harbor and Mount Battie and all the highlights of Camden, and the views are just sensational. When I walked into that building, I was like, “We just need to open it up. We need to just open it up to the outside again and we will be fine.” Everything else is just renovating and updating and I can do that, but I cannot find a better location than this, so I convinced Oscar that this was the right property, and we bought it.