Cesar Ritz Cesar Ritz (23 February 1850 – 24 October 1918) was a Swiss hotelier and founder of several hotels, most famously the Hotel Ritz, in Paris and The Ritz Hotel in London. His nickname was “ king of hoteliers, and hotelier to kings,” and it is from his name and that of his hotels that the term ritzy derives. Born in Niederwald, Switzerland, to a farming family, he began his career at Le Splendide, a hotel in Paris and was maitre d’hotel at Chez Voisin. In 1878, he became the manager of the Grand Hotel National in Lucerne and held the same position, in parallel, at the Grand Hotel in Monaco until 1888.
Ritz’s strength was his ability to understand the needs and desires of wealthy customers and this led to him pioneering the foundations of what we would come to know as luxury hospitality. In 1888, he opened a restaurant with Auguste Escoffier (thought of by many as the father of modern French cooking) in Baden-Baden, and the two were then invited to London by Richard D’Oyly Carte to become the first manager and chef of the Savoy Hotel. Ritz is quoted as saying that he put together “ a little army of hotel men for the conquest of London”.
Under Ritz, The Savoy went from strength to strength and royalty, extremely rich clientele and the powerful could be seen frequenting the hotel and its supper rooms. In 1898, he opened the celebrated Hotel Ritz in the Place Vendome, Paris, France. He went on to open The Ritz Hotel in London, United Kingdom in 1906, which became one of the most popular meeting places for the rich and famous. The partnership lasted until Ritz had to retire in 1907 due to deteriorating health. Ritz died in Kussnacht, near Lucerne, Switzerland at the age of 68.
Many of the touches that Ritz introduced to his hotels are still standard practice in today’s modern luxury hotels. That is why he has secured his place in the Top 10 Legendary Hoteliers. Conrad Hilton Conrad Nicholson Hilton (December 25, 1887 – January 3, 1979) was an American businessman and investor. He is well known for being the founder of the Hilton Hotels chain. Hilton was born in San Antonio, New Mexico. His father, Augustus Halvorsen “ Gus” Hilton, was an immigrant from Norway, and his devout Catholic mother, Mary Genevieve (nee Laufersweiler), was an American of German descent. Hilton grew up with seven siblings: Felice A.
Hilton, Eva C. Hilton, Carl H. Hilton, Julian Hilton, Rosemary J. Hilton, August H. Hilton, and Helen A. Hilton, Baron Hilton. Hilton served Goss military (New Mexico Military Institute), and St. Michael’s College (now the College of Santa Fe), and the New Mexico School of Mines (now New Mexico Tech). He was a member of the international fraternity Tau Kappa Epsilon. In his early twenties, Hilton was a Republican representative in the first New Mexico Legislature, when the state was newly formed. He served two years in the U. S. Army during World War I. While he was in the army, his father was killed in a car accident.
The most enduring influence to shape Hilton’s philanthropic philosophy beyond that of his parents was the Roman Catholic Church and his sisters. He credited his mother with guiding him to prayer and the church whenever he was troubled or dismayed — from a boyhood loss of a beloved pony to severe financial losses during the Great Depression. His mother continually reminded him that prayer was the best investment he would ever make. Hilton developed his entrepreneurial flair while working as a young boy in his father’s general store in New Mexico. He purchased his very first hotel in 1919, a 40-room property called Mobley Hotel in Texas.
The purchase of the property was a matter of chance, as originally Hitlon planned to invest his money in a bank, but the plan fell through. Luckily it paid off, as the hotel business boomed and he expanded his portfolio across the state. His first high rise hotel was the Dallas Hilton which he opened in 1925 before expanding into New Mexico. However, trouble loomed and when the Great Depression hit, Hilton was forced to sell some of his hotels to avoid bankruptcy. Despite this he was retained as manager of the hotels and bought them back when the economic climate improved.
In 1946 he formed Hilton Hotels Corporation followed by Hilton International Company in 1948. Fuelling American’s desire for travel and business on a global scale, Hilton became the first international hotel chain, a truly remarkable feat. He passed away in January 1979 but his legacy is still thriving as the multitude of international lodging companies vie for opportunities in every corner of the world. Bill Marriott jr. John Willard “ Bill” Marriott, Jr. (born March 25, 1932) is the Chairman and CEO of Marriott International. Marriott is the son of Alice Marriott and J. Willard Marriott, the founder of Marriott International.
He attended St. Albans School in Washington, DC, and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in finance from theUniversity of Utah, where he became a member of Sigma Chi. He served as an officer in the United States Navy. He is also an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. Marriott joined the Marriott Corporation in 1956, was elected Executive Vice President and member of the Board of Directors in January 1964 and president of the company in November 1964, Chief Executive Officer in 1972, and Chairman of the Board in 1985. Marriott is actively involved in various boards and councils including, the U.
S. Travel and Tourism Promotional Advisory Board, the executive committee of the World Travel & Tourism Council, the National Business Council, the board of trustees of the National, a director of the National Geographic Society, and a director of the Naval Academy Endowment Trust. He serves as chairman of the President’s Export Council, a group that advises the President on matters relating to export trade, and serves as chairman of the Leadership Council of the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries. He is an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In an episode of 60 Minutes airing on April 7, 1996 Marriott was interviewed by Mike Wallace regarding his faith alongside football star, Steve Young, and church leader, Gordon B. Hinckley. In 1997 Marriott was called by the church to be an Area Authority Seventy and member of the Fifth Quorum of the Seventy. This was split in 2004 and Marriott joined the newly-created Sixth Quorum of the Seventy, serving until his release on October 1, 2011 However, despite J. Willard being the founder of Marriott and the hotel group’s mentor, it was his son ‘ Bill’ who took the company and turned it into the hospitality giant it is today.
His leadership spans more than 50 years and he has taken Marriott from a family restaurant business to a global lodging company with more than 3, 100 properties in 67 countries and territories. Known throughout the industry for his tireless work ethic and his attention to detail, it was his decision to follow a franchise model that allowed the company to compete on the global stage. His business innovations and ability to oversee a company that is consistently honored as being a top company to work for firmly establishes his position on the list. Kemmons Wilson
Charles Kemmons Wilson (January 5, 1913 – February 12, 2003) was the founder of the Holiday Inn chain of hotels. He was born in Osceola, Arkansas, the only child of Kemmons and Ruby “ Doll” Wilson. His father was an insurance salesman who died when Kemmons was nine months old. Shortly thereafter, his mother, Doll, moved the two to Memphis, Tennessee, where he was raised solely by her. In college Wilson was a member of Chi Psi Fraternity Wilson was married to Dorothy Lee. They had five children: Spence, Robert, Kemmons Jr, Betty, and Carole. Wilson died in Memphis aged 90 and is interred there in Forest Hill .
Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn. The man responsible for creating the hotel chain famously mentioned in Rapper’s Delight by the Sugarhill Gang was a man by the name of Kemmons Wilson. Following a thoroughly disappointing holiday to Washington DC in terms of the standard of roadside accommodation, Wilson decided to do something about it. He opened his first hotel in Memphis in 1952. The story goes that Kemmons’ architect, Eddie Bluestein, joked that he should name it after a reference to a Bing Cosby Movie of the same name. But the idea stuck and other properties were quickly adopting the Holiday Inn name.
In 1957, Wilson franchised the chain as Holiday Inn of America and it grew dramatically, following Wilson’s brief that the properties should be standardised, clean, predictable, family-friendly and readily accessible to road travellers. By 1958, there were 50 locations across the country and 100 by 1959. In 1960 the chain went international. There were 500 hotels by 1964, and the 1000th Holiday Inn opened in San Antonio, Texas, in 1968. By this time the chain was dominating the market, making use of its innovative Holidex reservation system. In June 1972, Wilson was featured on the cover of Time magazine.
Clever innovations such as indoor pools had turned the image of the often run down motel into one of a roadside resort, all to do with Kemmons’ desire for quality accommodation while on the go. Barry Sternlicht Barry Sternlicht is the founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Starwood Capital Group, the private investment firm focused on global real estate, energy, infrastructure and securities trading. He is also Chairman of Starwood Property Trust, now the largest commercial mortgage REIT in the United States traded on the NYSE. Sternlicht is a trustee of his alma mater, Brown University.
He serves on the Board of Directors of The Estee Lauder Companies, Baccarat Inc. , National Golf, Mammoth Mountain, Ellen Tracy, Field & Stream, the International Advisory Board of Eurohypo Bank and Advisory Board of Zelnick Media. He serves as Vice Chairman of Robin Hood and is on the boards of the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA), the Dreamland Community Theatre, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s National Leadership Advocacy Program, and the Business Committee for the Arts. Sternlicht was born in New York City in 1960 and graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1982.
He got his MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School in 1986. As the founder of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, Barry Sternlicht is a real estate developer with an eye for a property and the ability to realise a brand. Born in New York City in 1960, Sternlicht got his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1986. His first job after Harvard was with Chicago-based JMB Realty, where he became a sensation, but was fired before the savings and loan crisis. He had a friend who handled money for the ultrawealthy Burden and Ziff families who offered to back him with $20 million if he started his own investment firm.
Others joined in, and in 1992, Sternlicht launched Starwood Capital Group. His goal was to buy up multi-family apartment buildings that were being auctioned off in the government’s bailout of the savings and loan crisis. In 1993, Sternlicht sold the portfolio to real estate magnate Sam Zell for more than 20 percent of Zell’s Equity Residential Properties Trust. When Zell took the company public that year, Starwood saw a 100 percent return. Sternlicht later began to purchase hotel sites, focusing on combining his passions of architecture and real estate finance.
Starwood Capital also bought its first hotels, kicking off the series of moves that would realign the hospitality industry. The first was the acquisition of Westin Hotels & Resorts Inc and one month later, Starwood Hotels completed the purchase of ITT Sheraton Corp. for $14. 6 billion. The hotel business, meanwhile, had proven to be tailor-made for Sternlicht’s wide-ranging interests in capital markets, operations, marketing and design. Having shaken up the hotel industry’s dynamics through mergers, he contributed a number of other influential innovations.
In 1999 he started the popular Starwood Preferred Guest program, credited with being the first “ no blackout” program in the industry. In the same year he went on to develop the luxury ST Regis brand following the purchase of the century-old St. Regis Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Paul Dubrule/Gerard Pellisson The influence of men such as Kemmons Wilson crossed the pond in the late 1960s when two Frenchman, who had been working in America, formed the SIEH (Societe d’investissement et d’exploitation hoteliers) hotel group.
Paul Dubrule and Gerard Pelisson had witnessed firsthand the success of the hotel business along major highways and suburban areas and they were determined to bring the concept to France. They opened their first American-syle Novotel hotel outside of Lille in northern France and in 1974 launched the Ibis brand with the opening of the Ibis Bordeaux. In 1975 the company took on the Courtepaille and Mercure brands, followed by the Sofitel brand in 1980. Two years later, in 1982, the SIEH bought out Jacques Borel International, the then world-leading brand offering restaurant vouchers.
In 1983, the Group, which had restaurant tickets and hotels, changed its name to the Accor Group in 1984, Dubrule and Pelisson were elected “ Managers of the Year” by France’s Le Nouvel Economiste magazine. Both men have gone on to represent the hospitality and travel industry in many ways, but it was their determination to bring Europe in line with modern American lodging and the subsequent international brands they developed that secure their place in the list. Jay Pritzker Jay Arthur Pritzker (August 26, 1922 – January 23, 1999) was an American entrepreneur and conglomerate organizer.
Pritzker was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Fanny (nee Doppelt) and A. N. Pritzker. His brother was Robert Pritzker. He was the father of Dan Pritzker. Trained as a lawyer, he early diversified the Chicago-based family business, the Marmon Group, into lumber. With his brother Robert Pritzker, he built a portfolio of 60 diversified industrial corporations. He created the Hyatt Hotel chain in 1957 with his brother Donald Pritzker and owned Braniff Airlines from 1983–1988. In 1979 he established the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In 1996, he and his wife Cindy received the National Building Museum’s Honor Award.
In 2004, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, designed by architect Frank Gehry, was completed as part of Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. When looking at the Pritzkers, the family who founded Hyatt, it is hard to pick out an individual who isn’t worth a mention. Having dominated the Forbes’ rich list since its inception, the business success stories of the Pritzkers are numerous. And while the day-to-day running of the hotel company was originally Donald Pritzker’s role, we are recognising Jay Pritzker for his simple, but brilliant realisation.
In 1957, Jay Pritzker, a trained lawyer and accountant, had been buying small companies, something he had done since he was 29. He was sat in Fat Eddie’s coffee shop at Los Angeles International Airport and realised it was very busy. Added to this was the fact the hotel it was located in, Hyatt Von Dehn (named after its owner) had no vacancies, writing his offer of US $2. 2 million on a napkin. Pritzker knew, not unlike Kemmons Wilson wanting quality roadside lodging, that business executives like himself would want to stay at a quality hotel near a large airport.
With his brother Donald the pair set about building hotels near airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, then around the country and internationally. In 1967, Pritzker bought a half-finished hotel in Atlanta and turned it into the Hyatt Regency. The first of the giant atrium hotels, the Hyatt Regency Atlanta struck doubters as a white elephant. There were people who even said rainstorms would form inside the lobby due to its size. Pritzker died in 1999, but his legacy continues across the globe. PRS Biki Oberoi
When the eyes of many hoteliers were firmly fixed on the West, Prithvi Raj Singh Oberoi, better known as Biki Oberoi, was looking East. P. R. S. Oberoi, chairman and CEO, EIH Limited, the flagship company of The Oberoi Group, and chairman of Oberoi Hotels Private Limited, is the son of late Rai Bahadur M. S. Oberoi, the founder of The Oberoi Group. Under his guidance, this legendary hotelier has pioneereed the development of the new Oberoi hotels and resorts. But it didn’t always seem that he would make a name for himself. He admitted he did little work until he was 40 as his father had told him to go out and see the world.
He admitted in an interview that the first hotel he ran was Maidens, but he “ didn’t do it very seriously”. “ There was a general manager there, so I used to meet him two hours in afternoon and party in the evening,” he added. But that all changed when he opened Raj Villas, a concept that boasted sprawling gardens with luxury tents and villas. An international audience took notice and it was one of the best hotels in the world, placing India’s flag in the luxury hotel map. More hotels have followed and it is not unusual to see several Oberoi hotels gracing top hotels in the world lists.
He has won numerous international awards and titles for his tireless efforts in hospitality and in January 2008, was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian honour, in recognition of his exceptional service to the country. In the same year he was conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards for redefining design standards in luxury hotels. Ian Schrager Ian Schrager (born on July 19, 1946) is an American hotelier and real estate developer. Often associated with co-creating of the Boutique Hotel genre.
Originally, he gained fame as co-owner and co-founder of Studio 54. Not many people can be attributed with starting a whole new genre of hotel lodging, but Ian Schrager is on our list for doing exactly that. Schrager and Rubell dabbled in nightclubs again by opening Palladium, but were unable to obtain a liquor license, so they set their sights on the hotel business. They were able to purchase the Executive Hotel for the money they had, $60, 000, and due to unusual terms, were able to use the hotel itself as collateral. Reopening it as the Morgans Hotel, in 1984. Morgans houses the highly successful restaurant Asia de Cuba by NY restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow. ) With their success of Morgans, they opened the successful Century Paramont Hotel, as well as acquiring and renovating the Royalton in 1988. [6] Rubell, diagnosed with AIDS in 1985, died the following year. Known outside of hotel circles for being one half of the duo behind the infamous Studio 54 nightclub in New York – the haunt of the famous and beautiful in the late 70s – Schrager had to turn his attention to other revenue streams when he was convicted of income tax evasion on the club.
As he was unable to obtain a liquor license he bought the Executive Hotel. Reopening it as the Morgans Hotel, in 1984, the property became a success and allowed for the opening of the Century Paramont Hotel, as well as the acquisition and renovation of the Royalton in 1988. Schrager’s new company, the Morgans Hotel Group, went on to open the Delano Hotel, in Miami, and the Sanderson Hotel and the St. Martin’s Lane Hotel, in London, the Clift, in San Francisco, and the Mondrian Hotel, in Los Angeles. By 1998, Schrager was the largest private hotelier in New York and was known across the globe for his ‘ boutique-style’ of hotel.
Sometimes known as ‘ design hotels’ or ‘ lifestyle hotels’, typically boutique hotels were furnished in a themed, stylish and/or aspirational manner. They usually are considerably smaller than mainstream hotels, often ranging from three to 50 guest rooms. In 2005, Schrager left Morgans Hotel Group to create the Ian Schrager Company, and collaborated with artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel on the Gramercy Park Hotel. He then formed a partnership with Marriott International, with the EDITION hotel brand, which launched its first hotel in Hawaii on October 15, 2010—The Waikiki EDITION.
