VOL 26 ISSUE 47, Nov. 24, 2025
Delaware North’s Transformation is proceeding on two parallel paths, with the Transformation Office leading one focused on four key initiatives to complement the work being done to optimize the company’s portfolio of business lines and locations.
That was one of the key themes of the sixth and final Transformation Information Session of 2025 on Nov. 18 that featured a presentation by Chief Transformation Officer Tom Barney and Vice President for Transformation Annmarie Vanini.
Barney also introduced two other members of the Transformation Office leadership team: Heidi Martin, senior director for Transformation, who has worked in the Internal Audit group for eight years, and Keri Shaw, senior director of the Enterprise Project Management Office, who has been with Delaware North for four years.
A recording of the session, which was held at company headquarters in Buffalo and livestreamed to team members, is available for Delaware North team members with Microsoft SharePoint access.
Jamie Obletz, executive vice president and chief operating officer, provided context ahead of the presentation, noting that progress has been made this year but also that challenges remain.
“All of our businesses are in a very low-growth environment today, (but) the long-term fundamentals are spectacular,” Obletz said. “We have leading market positions in a lot of our businesses. … If we can make the right decisions today with the help of everybody on this call and everybody in this room, (we can) position the company for the future and ensure that we’ve got the right building blocks, the right foundation, the right technology and the right people in the right mindset.”
The sale of the Travel subsidiary to Areas, scheduled to close Nov. 24, provides additional context for Transformation, Obletz said. The company made a “strategic decision to divest ourselves from that business line and take every dollar from the sale and put it right back into Delaware North to reinvest in other business lines that we believe have more longer-term growth prospects for the company.”
Barney, who has three decades of experience with Delaware North in Sportservice, Travel, Parks and Resorts, Patina Group and corporate across various financial and leadership roles, reviewed Delaware North’s performance aspirations:
- Elevating hospitality standards and experience
- Pursuing operational excellence and efficiency
- Becoming a data-driven enterprise
- Driving market innovation and differentiation
“We need to convince our customers to spend their hard-earned money with us,” Barney said. “If we don’t have a better value proposition, they have other choices. They will go other places.”
He said the Transformation Office’s focus is on the four key initiatives aimed at supporting the business lines for their portfolio optimization:
- Service Optimization
- Global Shared Services
- Technology Transformation
- Zero-Based Budgeting
“How do we support those businesses in a way that makes them thrive?” he said. “How do we give them what they need and not too much of what they don’t want? How do we have on one hand regulation, process and procedure and on the other hand flexibility to do what they need in real time. It’s finding that appropriate mix that is that never-ending challenge in business.”
Among the examples he cited were centralizing routine processes so that field teams can focus on operations and streamlining the numerous different point-of-sale systems the company uses.
Vanini has been with Delaware North for eight years, primarily in Procurement and Information Technology leadership positions. She said the team is “actively prioritizing” work on many initiatives by using three guiding principles:
- Strategic focus on what will drive the most value for the business.
- Process discipline to eliminate obstacles, inefficiency and waste in the cross-functional process.
- Having the right tools in place to automate and govern the process.
“We’re working on the top programs and projects that are going to deliver the best value to the company,” Vanini said. “Process validation has to be part of that. We need to make sure that we have a strong process in place and then change management.”
Barney and Vanini also answered several questions after the presentation and provided updates on current work, including the completion of the 2026 zero-based budgeting process, benchmarking of the operating model, technology transformation assessment and leadership onboarding.
Barney noted that Delaware North has decades of experience transforming destinations and operations such as Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, racetracks into casinos and more recently how golf fans can have a premium food and beverage experience at golf tournaments such as the Ryder Cup.
“So, on one hand, Transformation seems scary, right? It’s hard to define. It’s hard to grasp. On the other hand, we’ve done this for (110) years. When I look at the places that Delaware North operates and how we’ve changed them over the years, this is what we do!” Barney said.