Third-generation motelier Danielle Bourassa Collins ’04 keeps a light on for the Quebecois in Old Orchard Beach

Story and photos by Marc Glass

Every spring Danielle Bourassa Collins ’04 readies herself to wake what she jokingly calls “the beast.”

“It’s almost a living thing, something that hibernates in winter,” she says of the KebeK 3 Motel in Old Orchard Beach. “Once it opens for the season, you have to be available all the time.”



For now, her town’s four-lane thoroughfare and wide brick sidewalks are quiet, save for the sound of surf crashing along seven miles of pristine, crescent-shaped beach. Located down West Grand Avenue, about a half mile from the new $20-million Grand Victorian condominium hotel and on the far side of a residential buffer between itself and the town’s landmark pier, the KebeK 3 continues its seaside slumber. But not for much longer.

By mid-February, Collins, manager and part owner of the KebeK 3, had reserved all 35 units for week-long stays in July and August. And, she says, the weather rather than the recession will likely influence last-minute reservations during the off-peak months of May, June, September, and October.

To hear Collins tell it, the economics of the tourism-based hospitality business would seem to parallel a paraphrasing of Newton’s Third Law of Motion: For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. During summer 2008, for instance, when domestic gas prices shot north of $4 per gallon, she says, “Americans weren’t traveling as much,” which led to a decline in guests from New England. But due to a favorable Canadian exchange rate that was “on par with the dollar for the first time in decades,” she says that French-speaking guests from Quebec returned in droves.

“That closed the gap,” says Collins, who majored in business economics and international studies at UMF before earning a master’s in hospitality administration at Southern New Hampshire University. “Canadians are used to high gas prices. In addition, they were shopping like crazy while they visited, buying tires, expensive bicycles, name-brand clothing, even sewing machines.”

Although she smiles and shakes her head when asked if her business is recession-proof, Collins offers a theory on the KebeK 3’s success.

“If the economy isn’t going well, we offer an affordable vacation. We’re kind of middle-of-the-road in cost, and with each unit’s kitchenette, people don’t have to eat out three meals a day,” she explains. “Well-to-do Canadian families feeling the pinch might decide to stay with us for a week rather than rent a house on Cape Cod or fly to Europe.”

Whatever the state of the economy, Collins believes that another thing going for the KebeK 3 is a deep sense of tradition. Since the 1850s, soon after the Grand Trunk Railway linked Montreal with Portland (and, more critically, a train station in nearby Saco), French-speaking Canadians have claimed Old Orchard Beach as their vacation destination. Collins’ maternal grandfather, an optometrist from Quebec City, found Old Orchard Beach land bargains in the late 1960s and built the KebeK 1 (now owned outside the family), the KebeK 2 (now owned by Collins’ aunt up the beach on East Grand Avenue), and later the KebeK 3, now owned by Collins, her mother, Suzanne, and her father, Marc ’79, who spends the off season teaching at nearby Biddeford Middle School. Each ocean-front, L-shaped motel was named for the phonetic spelling of her grandfather’s home province.

Collins says the Quebecois annually account for more than 80 percent of business at the KebeK 3, arriving as early as the Queen’s Birthday long weekend in May, which Canadians celebrate just prior to Memorial Day. Many of those guests are not only repeat customers (sometimes returning within the same summer), but also second- and third-generation customers. And, she says, most seek to reserve the same suite or studio room to be near family and friends year after year—or, perhaps, to celebrate an anniversary after a long-ago wedding at Joseph’s by the Sea restaurant right next door.

“When they check in, some say, usually in French, ‘I wanted to show my kids where my parents brought me as a kid,’” says Collins, who was raised in a bilingual home as her mother is a native of Quebec. “We always answer the phone in French. If people have car trouble, medical emergencies, or if they need a restaurant recommendation, they’ll say, ‘It feels so good to hear French.’ Hearing that adds importance to what you do everyday. It validates all the hard work.”

And there’s plenty of that. During the winter, she oversees upkeep and renovation of the units, summer bookings, and tax accounting. During the four off-peak months of operation, her busiest time of year, she’s largely on her own, handling everything from reservations and billing to hiring. By mid-summer, when the town’s population swells from 10,000 to more than 100,000, the work load actually lightens, as her dozen employees—including some Bulgarian college students working on J-1 visas—take over housekeeping. Collins and her husband, Paul ’04, a southern Maine business banker for Key Bank, serve as unofficial guardians to the international students, providing free lodging, Internet access to keep in touch with home, and shopping trips to the Maine Mall.

“I kind of know what it feels like to be in a faraway land,” says Collins, who spent a semester abroad in Le Mans, France, during her junior year at UMF. “We want them to be happy. Happy employees make good employees, and we rely on them 110 percent.”

On Saturdays, when most of the 35 units see guest turnover, no one on staff gets any downtime.

“People come back because we’re absolutely meticulous about cleaning,” says Collins, who works alongside her staff to scrub kitchenettes and bathrooms, change linens, and restock towels. And, on occasion, she firmly requires that work be redone if it doesn’t meet her exacting standards. “Everybody pitches in. Even my husband, the business banker, vacuums floors on Saturdays.”

It’s a way of life she’s known since she was a child, growing up in a house adjacent to the KebeK 3. After graduating as valedictorian of her class at Old Orchard Beach H.S., Collins came to UMF undeclared and unsure of her major, but certain that she didn’t want to join the family business. She says her studies in business economics and work with UMF’s chapter of Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), consulting with small businesses and nonprofit organizations, provided her with what she calls the “Aha moment” in her career planning.

“Through SIFE I came to see how business development can impact an entire community, and I began to reexamine my family’s own small business and the incredible opportunity that was right in front of me,” says Collins, who served as vice president of SIFE at UMF. “UMF led me to the family business, and the business led me to the master’s degree. I feel fortunate to have this opportunity. And that my parents have trusted me with this.”