Adam's Mark COO: 'We'll Never Get Our Rep Back'

St. Louis — Rebuffed in stopping the NAACP from picketing its facilities or calling for a national boycott, Adam's Mark Hotels & Resorts is now gearing up for trial this fall in a two-year-old racial discrimination case.

The courtroom wranglings with the NAACP, as well the hotel company's concern over a damaged reputation, has left Adam's Mark battered and bitter.

"If anyone looks at the suit we are preparing for, they'll see that nobody will come out a winner," said Fred Kummer III, executive vice president and COO of the chain. "With what we have lost, we are already a loser."

Last month, a federal judge denied Adam's Mark's request to prohibit the NAACP from calling for a national boycott of the chain's facilities, and to limit its picketing.

Interviewed at the annual meeting of the American Society of Association Executives in Philadelphia, on the eve of the picketing, Kummer said, "We will never get our reputation back from this."

On Aug. 11, some 150 protesters picketed outside the Adam's Mark Daytona Beach in Florida, the site of the event two years ago that triggered the controversy.

Company spokeswoman Sharon Harvey Davis said the boycott has resulted in some lost bookings contracted for as well as anticipated future bookings from leisure and group business. She declined to cite how much has been lost, but added, "The impact has been minimal."

Kummer said, "We've been encouraging our clients to abide by their contracts and let us work it out via the legal process."

The company's position is that, while professional lapses may have occurred in Daytona Beach in 1999, they were not illegal, discriminatory ones.

Initial lawsuits against the chain stemmed from the annual Black College Reunion, a 48-hour springtime deluge of more than 100,000 youths into Daytona's beachfront strip, boardwalk and narrow band of lodging.

To control access to its property, the Adam's Mark Daytona Beach — the citys largest hotel and the event's unofficial headquarters — required black registered guests to wear orange wristbands. Blacks complained, and accused the hotel as well of charging them more for rooms than it did whites and requiring of black guests total payment up front.

The chain's reputation already has been cleared somewhat. First, a class-action suit against Adam's Mark company-wide was quashed, and last spring, a court-appointed civil rights monitoring group found no signs of intentional discrimination in Adam's Mark policies or practices.