Amorous venture

"We had this romantic notion that we will run a small inn and live like beach bums on the largesse of a few people who accidentally discovers our secluded sanctuary. We expected them to be few. We did not expect a virtual stampede to our place in our early years."CALL it a wild dream.When journalist Gemma Luz Corotan-Kolb and her husband, Klaus, saw the patch of white sand while standing on top of a hill 14 years ago, they imagined themselves spending the rest of their life in a place with the bluest sea in San Juan, Batangas."My husband asked ourselves in our middle age years, do we dare, should we dare dream of having it and making a life there knowing how steep the price we have to pay for that dream," Corotan-Kolb told The Manila Times."Not only the financial cost of acquiring something that beautiful but building and living where no man has lived before. It seemed the sort of wild dream great only in fantasy but foolish in reality, the sort of dream you savored in your imagination but ultimately walked away from."Who needs that kind of excitement in our middle age years where one must hope, be content with peace instead and stability?"The couple, however, dared to ask themselves."Say we only have 20 more years to live, give or take 10 years, and we have a chance, just one fighting chance to change our life, carve a life out of the ordinary, and reach for that proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, do we not owe it ourselves to at least try regardless of the outcome?"Corotan-Kolb added, "And in a life rapidly thinning out, are we not entitled? We are asked for one last push, one last hurrah, to dream one last impossible dream, to flutter our wings as fast and as vigorous[ly] as we can make them and fly those wings as high as we can before we finally rest them."Undaunted, the Kolbs bought the land and built on it."So, we tried, and we dared," she said."The alternative would have been regret. The price we paid was ultimately much, much higher than we were prepared or could afford to pay, paid for in blood, sweat, and tears and heartbreak."They ended up bankrupt in their initial foray to build Casa Amara."But we finished. We were also finished financially, barely hanging on by a thread to the feeble hope that if we build it, people will come."Corotan-Kolb calls it a "miracle" when people started coming."By the Grace of God, for whatever reason, they came to our place at the end of nowhere that could be reached only at that time by traversing long, rough, difficult roads. They came, and whatever we did not finish, the people who came, in a miraculous steady stream, helped us finish."Casa Amara opened in 2015."The goal was to initially build a roof over our heads, nothing fancy or complicated, a private rest house, our future retirement home that would only host family and friends, and a few transients just enough to maintain it."The intention was to slow down, not to speed up. But we built it, and from nowhere, they came. We were not advertising, and I hardly wrote about the place, but they came. I did not know anything about social media or marketing, but what little of it I knew at that time kept us alive and thriving — the power of word-of-mouth."For people like us with practically zero knowledge on how to operate a business, much less a hotel, it all seemed like a beautiful accident and accidental grace."Corotan-Kolb never complained, even when she cooked for two years until her whole arm was put in a cast. "Since then, I have had to hire additional chefs and cooks to manage the kitchen," she shared."We often ran out of bedsheets, water, supplies, and food had to be ordered and delivered again and again, as we were caught by surprise by the surge of people begging almost to book."We had this romantic notion that we would run a small inn and live like beach bums on the largesse of a few people who accidentally discover our secluded sanctuary. We expected them to be few. We did not expect a virtual stampede to our place in our early years."I'm still pinching myself that people actually venture through rough roads and forests to come to us when most of our friends have already warned us no one will come and that we embarked on a fool's dream. I only knew God would provide if we did our part, but not on this scale."Corotan-Kolb's skills as a journalist and writer worked to Casa Amara's advantage and helped the couple greatly."It does not matter how good our product or service is if we don't have the communication and marketing skills to put it out there in a way that makes it unique and stand apart from the competition," Corotan-Kolb explained."We only have our Facebook and Instagram pages to promote our resort, but our page is one of the highest in social engagement among resorts in Batangas and one of the most followed."We also regularly appear in search engines as one of the top and beloved resorts in San Juan, Batangas. We did not have to use other booking portals like Agoda and Booking.com because we already had a surge of booking requests and more than enough, we could handle from Facebook and Instagram alone."Not surprisingly, Corotan-Kolb is one of those people who navigates herself through life with a compass consisting of three words, "Just Do It.""For the most part, the journeys I have taken were blocked by seemingly insurmountable obstacles, starting with my ignorance, and perhaps it was just we well because if I had known better and I had a formal, structured education on most of the things I have attempted, I would have told myself, 'No, this is stupid. I don't have this and that. I don't have a big capital. Don't have connections. Don't even try it.'""I once took a business course after we already set up the business and it struck me that if I had known all the things, they taught me there and all the things they said I should have and should know before going into business, I would never have gone into business. Why?"Because I had very little capital when I first went into business as a real estate builder. I only had my wits and my will, and my pride and my refusal to go down. And where would I be then if I stopped myself from going into business because of my lack of experience and business education?"After the couple built the core house at Casa Amara, they were almost finished financially."We were simply hanging on by a thread to the feeble hope that if we build it, people will come. And by the Grace of God — I call it a miracle — people came," Corotan-Kolb recalled."For whatever reason, they came to our place at the end of nowhere that could be reached only at that time by traversing long, rough, difficult roads, they came and whatever we did not finish, the people who came, in a miraculous steady stream, helped us finish."She called themselves "cash poor" for the first two years of Casa Amara that they even stayed and slept in tents in the big house. "We needed every cent and could not afford to keep a room for ourselves."I remember the first meal I ever served at Casa Amara was three cans of Spam and a few eggs in the pantry. That was the only food we had at that time, split among nine people who were knocking on our doors begging for food."We were quite foolish to assume nobody would ask for food because we told them in advance, we did not serve food and they should bring their food themselves. Many brought food as instructed. Just as many did not, and just like that, we were reluctantly thrust kicking and screaming into the catering and food industry knowing nothing."Corotan-Kolb's husband, Klaus, who is a distinguished man in Germany and lived a comfortable life before he met her, even did the laundry."I only knew how to work with my mind, but I did the cooking, teaching myself to cook from the internet and from the recipes taught by my friends. Who knew that one day we would host a big group of German chief executive officers and captains of industries for whom I had to cook for and at the end? Many of them came to me saying they had been to the most luxurious hotels in the world, but they had never eaten better.""Then one day, my staff — barrio lasses from a nearby village who could not even fry an egg properly — cooked everything while I just watched, and they did it properly, if not divinely. I thought I would cook and slave over a stove forever. I cried."Corotan-Kolb likens Casa Amara to her, "a rebel who risks, provokes and pushes the envelope on good taste and does not really care what you think of the things she hangs on her walls as long as she likes and loves them, but invites you anyway to discover her multiple layers and the love at the heart of her quirky choices."Casa Amara sits on a 2,000-square-meter property with seven independent family units that cater to different group sizes — from a family of four to a whole company of up to 100 people."Our weekends are often fully booked, but we get a good enough number of guests during the weekdays, especially during the peak summer and holiday season," Corotan-Kolb shared.The edge of Casa Amara over the competition is that the "unique shape" of the property alone ensures every spot directly faces the sea.Today, it is even a popular events place in the south."I bought and chose every table and chair and tablecloth down to the last leaf and flower," Corotan-Kolb beamed."Because of my taste for the eccentric from my travels abroad, it was never going to be a bland, boring, generic hotel standardized to cater safely to the average taste."The pandemic is one of Casa Amara's best seasons."Believe it or not, those were actually one of our best seasons," Corotan-Kolb said."After the most stringent of restrictions were lifted in the first year, we had small groups and families starved for travel and mobility willing to book the whole resort for themselves to avoid getting infected by other groups. And we were booked almost every day."After the worst of the pandemic was over, people practically went on a stampede to travel again, and those resorts nearest Manila had the advantage during a time when air travel was still highly restrictive and difficult."Casa Amara was named after the Indian Sanskrit word amara, which means love."It was chosen because my husband and I met in India at an ashram, where I went on a spiritual retreat after the breakup of my first marriage. Klaus also happened to be there also recovering from a relationship crisis."Casa Amara had expanded through the years from a core house of only four bedrooms to a whole beach resort estate that can cater to couples, families and whole companies of up to 100 people."We have built on all the land available already, so there is no more room for expansion. Unless we build another Casa Amara branch, which may or may not happen as our hands are already full from the first one alone."After nine years of managing and running Casa Amara, which she has undeniably turned into a Santorini-like resort, Corotan-Kolb finds her job very fulfilling. She has embraced her work and position successfully. "After reading all the reviews and testimonies of our guests, saying how happy they have been at Casa Amara and how important they have been made to feel, Casa Amara is not just a business for me, but a business to create joy and an advocacy to spread love," Corotan-Kolb admitted."Underneath our skin, we are all the same; we crave for love. Hopefully, they find it at Casa Amara in the way we have built and decorated it and find love in the kind of holiday we designed for them, the delicious food our guests often rave about that we serve them and how we serve them."Kolb is a journalism graduate of the University of the Philippines and practiced journalism for a good 15 years. She twice won Best in Feature Writing from the Catholic Mass Media Awards, several awards from the Jaime Ongpin for investigative journalism and a National Book Award."So, I think I did put my college course into good use," she said."I was instantly hired fresh from college by the late Louie Beltran to join him at the Philippine Daily Inquirer. I had stints with Manila Standard, Manila Chronicle, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and The Manila Times as Sunday Times editor."I only really wanted to be a writer and journalist and the best that I could be. But destiny had other plans, and it's always my philosophy to make the best of where I am and bloom where I am planted. I still write occasionally, so that dream did not really die, and my writing had a large role to play in the success of Casa Amara."Corotan-Kolb and her husband have been married for 14 years. They met in India and decided to reside in the Philippines since her children from a previous marriage did not want to relocate abroad."Klaus actually prefers the laid-back life in the Philippines and loves our people so much that it is more home to him now than Germany," Corotan-Kolb offered."When the virus erupted, I just stayed in Manila and, like everyone else, went into gardening. I did not travel for quite a while. Nowadays, my husband and I travel to Europe at least twice a year."Quick questionsWhat is your biggest fear?Losing my family.What really makes you angry?Bullying and a mean spirit.What motivates you to work hard?To be pleasing to God and to be an example to my children.What makes you laugh the most?Pinoy humor, Pinoy humor memes and their sense of the absurd.What would you do if you won the lotto?Set up several schools that will teach children relevant life skills not taught in school like how to be alone, how to be in a relationship, how to make your first million, how to change a tire, how to be financially independent, how to love, etc.If you could share a meal with any individual, living or dead, who would he or she be?Sister Gloria Ross, my late spiritual director who taught me much about how to live a good life.What was the last book you read?"Conversations with God" by Neale Donald Walsch.Where do you see yourself in 10 years?I will be 70 by that time. Hopefully, enjoying my grandchildren, and still running and climbing mountains. There would probably be another branch of Casa Amara, still well-known as a place guaranteed to give guests an encounter with love and in 10 years, I hope it has evolved into a training center for self-empowerment training and workshops.Which celebrity would you like to meet for a cup of coffee?Elon Musk for his amazing vision and courage to dream and reach for the impossible.What is the most daring thing you have ever done?Build and actually run a hotel with no experience.What is the one thing you will never do again?Not forgiving.