“We’re definitely not entertainers.”
Despite Arlene and Sam’s insistence to the contrary, the couple of 58 years has managed to create a peerless luxury Passover getaway, entertaining hundreds upon hundreds of guests every year since 1988.
Prior to Lasko Getaways, Sam was the principal of a Jewish day school, and Arlene—who holds two Master’s Degrees—was the principal of an early education and elementary school
So how do two educators end up as preeminent luxury getaway proprietors?
“We kind of fell into it,” Arlene explains.
The Passover program trajectory starts when Sam was fired from his role as a Jewish day school principal. But really it starts the Passover beforehand when a friend approached Sam to be the Judaic Coordinator at a program in the now-demolished Mount Airy Lodges in the Poconos.
Sam and Arlene described that original program as “very well thought of,” saying they were thrilled to be bringing their whole thrilled at bringing the entire family along to Pennsylvania.
It quickly became a whole family affair as Sam and Arlene’s oldest sons, David and John, said they wanted to make a little money and join the program as tennis instructors.
“We laughed because neither one of us knew that they had ever played tennis before in their lives.” Still laughing today, Arlene adds, “They were basketball players!”
Even with the admission that David and John weren’t exactly tennis pros, the team at the program were “thrilled, thrilled, thrilled, thrilled” to welcome the help.
As the Lasko family sat down for the first seder that year, inspiration struck Sam. “I turned to Arlene and said, ‘I am going to do this for you.’”
“And you said I was going to be a princess,” Arlene notes with a smile.
It wasn’t long before Arlene's first opportunity to become royalty presented itself.
“We had gone to Bonaventure to visit at one point, and we loved it,” Sam tells us. “So I went and talked to them about hosting a program there. They told me they had just signed somebody else on, but they would think about us for the next year or so. Suddenly it’s three weeks before Passover, and I get a call from Bonaventure saying that the program didn’t get enough people, would we like to take it on?”
It seemed like all the pieces were falling into place, but Sam and Arlene sensed what a crazy undertaking that would be—assuming control with less than a month until guests started checking in—and they opted to decline.
“I said no, we’re not taking on a program three weeks in advance, but we will definitely sign up for next year.”
“And that’s exactly what he did,” Arlene adds with a sense of pride.
In those early years, Sam and Arlene really put a focus on the kids programming—as we do now with KIDZ Central.
They put their education background to use because Arlene felt “we could sell through our day camp.” Especially considering that most other day camps just wound up being “glorified babysitting.”
The two remember that first year fondly. Working 25-hour days and doing “a ton” of learning on the job. All that learning seemed to have paid off because, by the next year, they already had a great reputation and the program started to grow.
Lasko Getaways hosted 250 guests that first year. By year two, it more than doubled to 600 guests. And by year three, they sold out for the first time.
Looking back at doubling in size from year one to two, Arlene remembers thinking, “My G-d, how fabulous we are!”
What no one told her—and what they’d soon come to realize—is that doubling the amount of guests doesn’t mean twice as much work. More realistically, it meant four to five times as much work to get the program done. But they got it done.
They attribute the payoff to Sam’s commitment: “We made a commitment to be great at what we do, and that’s what we try to do every year. We work very hard at making people happy and satisfied.”
But the true secret sauce of what makes Lasko Getaways so special is the family behind the scenes. Over the last 30+ years, every member of the Lasko family has pitched in to run around, help organize, and execute the day-to-day of the program.
“We never could have done it without our kids,” Arlene states matter-of-factly.
“Because we were a family, guests would go to any one of our kids if they had a problem, not necessarily a complaint, maybe they just couldn’t find something in their rooms, our kids were very wonderful about making sure they found the answer and helped the guests through it.”
Everybody played their own role.
When the program grew too large, Sam made the decision to branch out into other hotels. Arlene makes it clear that this was Sam’s decision, because she “really wanted the whole family to stay together.”
With each new hotel brought into the Lasko Getaways family of programs, Sam and Arlene’s kids, their wives and children would go off to run one of the new programs.
So instead of focusing on the incredible programs the children ran at their own properties, Arlene remembers the years they were all under one roof.
She recalls how helpful their daughter, Lisi, was with keeping the program organized, making sure people got through the door, to their rooms, and settled in. Or the year that she stepped in to run the boutique on Chol Hamoed. “She was a better shopper than me anyways.”
They laugh thinking about the unruly amount of Coca-Cola guests would stockpile in their rooms.
“Some people wanted bottles of soda to take back to their room. At the end of the holiday, the cleaning people would come to us literally with cases of Coke and seltzer that we unopened,” Arlene says through laughter.
“Anybody who wanted anything would go to Avi, and he would go running. He would go to the chef and say, ‘Listen, somebody needs matzah and butter now because they didn’t have breakfast,’” she recalls. “Nobody would ever say no to him. They would say no to me, but they would never say no to him.”
Sam and Arlene can’t help but shep a little Nachas as they think about their 30+ year history in this business—a business they found by accident—to where they’ve come now. With the Coca-Cola-hoarding Avi at the helm alongside their grandson Noah.
They describe Noah and Avi as the perfect team. Despite being Nephew and Uncle, the new duo behind Lasko Getaways are just three and a half years apart.
“They truly are amazing together.”
And it’s a business they see continuing through the newest generations of Laskos. Arlene’s quick to produce a laundry list of grandchildren and great-grandchildren she thinks could take the reins one day, singing the praises of each of them individually.
But for now, she’s happy with who’s at the helm, even when Avi has to remind her, “We’re in the 21st Century now, Ma.”
“They’re doing a great job,” Arlene assures. “When they tell us that they have only a handful of rooms left, it’s such an incredible feeling, as a parent, especially Sam, who really started this whole thing.”
To think it all starts with Sam getting fired.
Arlene takes us back to that day:
“He left his job in the middle of the day, and came to the school where I was the principal. He calls my secretary—who loves him, by the way—and asks her to get me outside. So I oblige, and what do I see? He’s sitting in a brand new car, a green Oldsmobile Omega. ‘Why are you driving this car?’ He said ‘I just bought it. I got fired and I decided that I needed something to pick me up.’”
“That is what I have been going through for the last 58 years,” Arlene says, taking a loving swipe at her husband of nearly six decades.
“But thank G-d, it all worked out. It really did.”
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