Helping Opryland Hotel keep its head above water Patrick Chaffin

Patrick Chaffin (’97)

When Nashville’s great flood of 2010 hit, few businesses were more affected than the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, a major tourism and convention hotel on the banks of the city’s Cumberland River.

Well, that was really the problem; this nearly 3,000-room facility was no longer on the banks of the river, but in it.

And one of those working hard to save facilities and reputation was Gaylord Entertainment’s Vice President of Strategic Planning and Investor Relations, and Lipscomb alum, Patrick Chaffin (’97).

But it takes just a few steps back in this young man’s life to discover why his regard for his employer and Lipscomb has deep roots. As a boy, there were two things that happened every summer. One, while visiting his grandparents, his family made the annual pilgrimage to Opryland, the beloved Nashville amusement park that closed in 1997. And, two, his father, a Lipscomb alumnus, took him on a walking tour of the Lipscomb University campus with an occasional visit to long-time business professor Axel Swang.

“We would stop by to visit with Dr. Swang and my father would remind him, ‘These are my boys, and they will be at Lipscomb eventually. This is Patrick, and he will be in your classes someday.’ There wasn’t much discussion about where I was going to go to school,” Chaffin recalled.

Chaffin began accounting classes at Lipscomb in the 1990s and after nine years working for General Motors, he found himself returning to that second summer tradition: Opryland.

Chaffin joined Gaylord Entertainment in 2005 and two years later was named a vice president. The company once ran the Opryland amusement park, and still operates the Grand Ole Opry and Gaylord Opryland Hotel, as well as three other convention center resorts under the Gaylord Hotels brand.

Chaffin regularly communicates to Gaylord shareholders across the nation about the company’s performance and outlook. And while there’s no doubt Chaffin is a numbers guy, he’s also a relationship guy, and his personal touch became vitally important when major portions of the Gaylord Opryland Hotel were inundated by floods from the Cumberland River that May.

“I got a call on Sunday that they were getting ready to evacuate the hotel, and from that moment, my wife saw me very little for the next several weeks,” he said. “That night I just did whatever was needed as we worked to handle the challenging situation before us. It was all hands on deck.”

But his focus quickly shifted back to investor relations as within 48 hours he had received several hundred calls from shareholders concerned about the impact of the flooding on Gaylord’s flagship property. “They all asked me if my own family was safe following the flood, but then the conversation immediately shifted to, ‘Tell me about the hotel,’” said Chaffin, who became the central point of contact for Wall Street analysts and Gaylord’s shareholders following the flood.

Chaffin’s business skill was recognized by the Nashville Business Journal last year when he was named a “Top Forty Under 40.”

“A lot of finance professionals are really focused on numbers and don’t take the time to build solid relationships with their coworkers and customers,” he said. “As a finance person, you know you will be dealing with conflict quite a bit, so you have to build solid relationships. That way, when conflict comes, you can work through it from an already established basis of trust.

“During the flood, I was even fielding calls from home late at night as investors sought daily updates on the status of the hotel. The transparent relationships we had worked to build prior to the flood, and the lengths we went to to be available for investors during the flood, instilled confidence in them that we were on top of the situation and would remain responsive to their needs as shareholders,” he said.

“We took a challenging situation and used it as an opportunity to further build on the trust we had established—and it continues to serve us well.”

Relationships are so important, in fact, that many companies have investor relations staff with more communications than finance background. Lipscomb’s accounting training holds Chaffin in good stead in that regard as he can assure his investors that he is not a third-party repackaging financial information. He evaluates the numbers himself and has a deep working knowledge of the drivers behind the company’s performance and opportunities, a fact that helps to increase the effectiveness of his communications with Wall Street and Gaylord’s investors, he says.

Chaffin’s business skill was recognized by the Nashville Business Journal last year when he was named a “Top Forty Under 40.” In addition, College of Business Dean Turney Stevens has also tapped his knowledge for the college’s alumni board.

Chaffin, a father of four, said he aspires to become a CFO, but is spending time evaluating his future against the backdrop of his faith. Chaffin’s hope is that wherever he goes in his business career, he can always be of benefit to not only the company, but to the people he serves and the world around him.