Tom Luersen’s introduction to hospitality started as a child growing up in Louisville, Kentucky. His father, Paul Luersen, was a hotelier working for an independent owner, and he eventually operated the largest hotel in the state of Kentucky along with two additional hotels.
Long before Tom Luersen knew hospitality would be his chosen career, he worked in a variety of roles within his father’s hotels, including culinary services, housekeeping, bell services, front desk and maintenance.
That set the foundation for a career in hospitality that started at Opryland Hotel in Nashville. From there, Anheuser Busch recruited Luersen to open Kingsmill Resort, a luxury resort community in Williamsburg, Virginia. After its successful opening, he was recruited to The Woodlands, Texas, to lead operations of the hospitality division of Mitchell Energy and Development in the master-planned community of The Woodlands.
“My hotel career started in the traditional urban hotel environment, and I made a move to leave that environment to pursue an executive role in resort communities that was quite different from operating hotels,” Luersen said. “The resort communities were anchored by real estate sales, and learning how to integrate the resort component within the real estate environment of the business led me to a successful career whereby, 35 years later, I remain in similar environments.”
Eventually, Luersen joined Lowe Enterprises, owner of Destination Hotels & Resorts, to operate its master-planned community resort in Central Oregon. In 2016, after a series of acquisitions and sales, CoralTree launched, and today it is recognized as one of the Top 20 Management Companies in the country, with Luersen serving as president.
CoralTree Hospitality is a subsidiary of Los Angeles based Lowe, a real estate investment, management and development firm. “CoralTree is consistently rated among the top independent hotel management companies in the U.S. by Hotel Business magazine,” the company said. “The company provides marketing licensing, hospitality and asset management services to hotels and resorts in the United States.”
The company’s clients include properties such as Terranea Resort on the Southern California coast; Hotel Lincoln in Chicago; The Woodlands Resort in Houston; Sunriver in Oregon; Suncadia Resort in Washington; the Eddy Taproom & Hotel in Golden, Colorado; four Magnolia Hotels in Denver, Houston, St. Louis and Omaha; and the new Lake Nona Wave Hotel in Orlando, Florida.
“Our industry is 365, seven days/24 hours a day. My young family included three children and a wonderfully supportive partner/ wife,” Luersen said. “Finding and constantly recalibrating my work/life balance could have been a great risk in my personal life yet, fortunate for me, my wife and children (now grown with their own families) were supportive and we figured out a way to make it work.”
