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Icon: Mark Hoplamazian, CEO, Hyatt Hotels
SmartPlanet.com
July 30, 2013
By Heather Clancy
Running an international hotel chain was the furthest thing from Mark
Hoplamazian's mind when he took on a graveyard shift at a two-star
tourist hotel on Edgware Road in London.
The young Harvard undergraduate student just wanted to earn enough
spending money to travel Europe after his exchange term at the London
School of Economics. But that six-month stint as check-in
clerk/sometime security guard/general go-fer proved invaluable 30
years later, when Hoplamazian was tapped virtually out of nowhere by
the Pritzker family to run the venerable Hyatt Hotels.
`There were certain people in the hotel that were really bringing a
lot of themselves to what they did every day, and there were a couple
of people that I interacted with who were punching the clock and
basically were there to get by,' Hoplamazian, now 49, recalls during
an early evening phone call wedged into his schedule on an early July
road trip.
`There was a huge difference in my experience with those individuals
and also guests' experiences with those individuals,' he continues.`
So my own personal goal in life was that you've got to be something
that you really have some passion for but that also makes you feel
like you want to bring a piece of yourself to what you are doing.'
Trained as an analyst and numbers guy, the financial whiz channeled
that memory when he took over as Hyatt's president and CEO in
2006. Plucked from within the Pritzker Organization, where he had
helped manage the family's real estate portfolio and holdings since
1989 and was considered somewhat of an honorary family member, the
intention was for Hoplamazian to find a permanent CEO. The Pritzker
family sought someone who could negotiate family politics and create a
more cohesive identity across the hodgepodge of hotel brands. Six
months into the search, Hoplamazian realized he wanted the job. `My
primary motivator was the people,' he remembers.
Seven years later, the Hyatt hospitality brand encompasses 508
properties across 46 countries worldwide (as of March 2013) that cater
to business and luxury travelers. It added 22 hotels during 2012,
including the hip luxury property, Andaz Amsterdam Prinsengracht, in
the Netherlands; and its first select-service hotels (that's extended
stay for the layperson) outside the U.S. market in Costa Rica and
India. Over the past decade, Hyatt has opened almost 200 new
properties - an investment of close to $10 billion. There are now
seven distinct brands under its umbrella generating $4 billion in
annual revenue.
For perspective, that's much smaller than the competition - Hilton
boasts approximately 3,800 properties while Marriott International has
around 3,700.
But Hyatt's leadership is focused less on size than on becoming the
`preferred brand for our colleagues, guests and owners,' as
Hoplamazian and Hyatt Chairman Thomas Pritzker write in the company's
2012 annual report. `We believe that our culture and the relationships
amongst our colleagues ultimately position the Hyatt brand to
represent human care - and to go beyond service to our guests as a
hotel company,' they tell shareholders.
The latest illustration of this philosophy is `Ready to Thrive,' a new
component of the Hyatt Thrive corporate social responsibility
program. The idea is to encourage local literacy and career
development programs in communities where Hyatt is managing or
developing properties. The plan will include the United States but
emerging markets are getting the initial attention.
During the first year, the program will focus on Brazil (among other
places); a Grand Hyatt is scheduled to open in Rio de Janeiro in
2015. The company has made a $750,000 commitment over the next two
years to training. In partnership with the Youth Career Initiative,
Hyatt has run similar programs at its hotels in Sao Paulo; Warsaw,
Poland; Amman, Jordan; Mumbai, India; and Cancun, Mexico. So far,
those hotels have wound up hiring 45 percent of the graduates.
`You get amazing results when you put kids coming out of difficult
neighborhoods or family environments and you put them together with
people who also may have started in those same places, those
neighborhoods,' Hoplamazian says. `It gives them an example of what it
may look like if you can get yourself plugged into something that
provides you a career opportunity.'
When he isn't out-of-town visiting one of Hyatt's actual or soon-to-be
properties, Hoplamazian and his wife Rachel Kohler (yes, the same
Kohler family behind the well-known bath and kitchen company) are
fixtures within the Chicago educational community. He's a trustee for
the Chicago Latin School (where his children attend classes), a board
member for New Schools for Chicago and an adviser to Facing History
and Ourselves, an organization dedicated to combating racism,
anti-Semitism and prejudice through school curriculum. The latter
affiliation is a nod to his Armenian heritage.
`[Education is] sort of the only thing that I spend my time on, other
than my family and my work, just because I think it's the core of
what's needed to really put this next generation in good standing,' he
explains. `Especially, in the United States, I think there is a great
need for maybe a different mindset with respect to school reform than
has existed in the past. So my level of engagement on educational
issues is quite high.'
More than anything else, Hoplamazian wants the dialogue around reform
to be more open-minded, an attitude shaped perhaps during his own K-12
experience at the elite Episcopal Academy in suburban Philadelphia,
which professes to educate the whole student. `I think in some ways,
school reforms efforts historically have been around fixing a
structure that dates back decades, but may not be relevant or as
relevant to the future as it needs to be,' Hoplamazian muses.
He is likewise open-minded about how properties should be run,
trusting `colleagues' and guests to provide direction rather than
dictating policies from on high. When he first became CEO, Hoplamazian
spent nine months visiting Hyatt properties, asking `ostensibly stupid
questions,' as he recalled in one interview. One of the first
extensions under Hoplamazian's direction was the Andaz boutique brand,
born in London and renowned for its hip lobby scene, which skips
check-in lines. Arriving guests settle in the lounge, while clerks
with iPads handle the minutiae. There's even a whole series of `salon'
events associated with the properties, which are cropping up in China,
India, the Caribbean, Hawaii, Costa Rica and Mexico.
Right now, boutique hotels are the fastest growing segment of the
global hotel industry, which Euromonitor International estimated at
$457 billion for 2012. But what's next?
`Our experience around the globe is that consumer tastes change
rapidly, and in some cases, I would say in emerging markets in
particular,' Hoplamazian says. `So if you look at buying behaviors and
attitudes in China among consumers there, it's really evolving very,
very quickly as those individuals get more exposure to brand and
different inputs and stimulus from different markets. So being able to
stay alert to that and be responsive to that in real time is really
important.'
Two years ago, he hired someone from outside the industry to
institutionalize that alertness. Hyatt Chief Innovation Officer Jeff
Semenchuk had no hotel industry credentials, but he did have plenty of
entrepreneurial experience with the likes of Citigroup and Pfizer.
`I recognized that we wanted to have a discipline around better
innovation, and doing it faster and more effectively,' Hoplamazian
explains. `And have it be a discipline that exists within the company
but not to create an ivory tour approach to innovation where it
happens in some office or in the corporate office somewhere and then
is bestowed upon the hotels.'
While Hoplamazian prefers face-to-face feedback, he is a strong
proponent of social media as a means of gauging guest sentiment. Hyatt
was the first to adopt a Twitter concierge service. It also uses
another social service, called Branch, to facilitate better
communication with its community of guests. `We wanted to actually
begin a conversation, in this case, with travelers and understand more
about what they are thinking and what we are getting right and wrong
along the way. But have it be more of a two-way dialogue,' he says.
I can't resist asking him to share his own worst hotel
experience. Hoplamzian recalls a long-ago visit to Erfoud, a Moroccan
oasis city on the edge of the Sahara Desert that was part of the
location shoot for his favorite film, Lawrence of Arabia. The room was
like an oven in the daytime heat, an icebox during the desert
nighttime chill, and frequented by many unwelcome, multi-legged
visitors. `We left a day earlier than [we] were supposed to, just in
order to move on,' he says, laughing.
Although his family doesn't typically join Hoplamazian on the frequent
trips that are now part of his job, together they have logged
adventure travel miles on African safari and hiking in Central
America, among other places. One of five children, Hoplamazian's own
father died of a heart attack when he was just 12. Accordingly, his
meeting-packed days in Chicago typically begin early enough so he can
end them with his three children whenever possible. The trim
executive's daily routine usually includes three to four miles on the
treadmill or stair machine, with some yoga mixed in, before he dons
his habitual suit and tie for the office. Hoplamazian ran the Chicago
Marathon back in 2005, but that was two knee operations ago, and his
daily jogs are now `more about the head than the waist line.'
On long cross-country or transoceanic flights, he gravitates toward
non-fiction or biographies from which he can draw ideas that might
benefit Hyatt. At the time of our interview, he's making his way
through Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of
Business, co-authored by Whole Foods Market co-founder John Mackey and
management professor Raj Sisodia.
But when Hoplamazian needs to recalibrate his own priorities, there's
one author he recommends above all others, because of the heartfelt
passion he put into his life's work: `If I need a dose of great
inspiration in terms of prose and in terms of content, I'd say that
Martin Luther King is second to none. His ability to express himself
and, oftentimes in incredible circumstances, is pretty amazing.'
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
SmartPlanet.com
July 30, 2013
By Heather Clancy
Running an international hotel chain was the furthest thing from Mark
Hoplamazian's mind when he took on a graveyard shift at a two-star
tourist hotel on Edgware Road in London.
The young Harvard undergraduate student just wanted to earn enough
spending money to travel Europe after his exchange term at the London
School of Economics. But that six-month stint as check-in
clerk/sometime security guard/general go-fer proved invaluable 30
years later, when Hoplamazian was tapped virtually out of nowhere by
the Pritzker family to run the venerable Hyatt Hotels.
`There were certain people in the hotel that were really bringing a
lot of themselves to what they did every day, and there were a couple
of people that I interacted with who were punching the clock and
basically were there to get by,' Hoplamazian, now 49, recalls during
an early evening phone call wedged into his schedule on an early July
road trip.
`There was a huge difference in my experience with those individuals
and also guests' experiences with those individuals,' he continues.`
So my own personal goal in life was that you've got to be something
that you really have some passion for but that also makes you feel
like you want to bring a piece of yourself to what you are doing.'
Trained as an analyst and numbers guy, the financial whiz channeled
that memory when he took over as Hyatt's president and CEO in
2006. Plucked from within the Pritzker Organization, where he had
helped manage the family's real estate portfolio and holdings since
1989 and was considered somewhat of an honorary family member, the
intention was for Hoplamazian to find a permanent CEO. The Pritzker
family sought someone who could negotiate family politics and create a
more cohesive identity across the hodgepodge of hotel brands. Six
months into the search, Hoplamazian realized he wanted the job. `My
primary motivator was the people,' he remembers.
Seven years later, the Hyatt hospitality brand encompasses 508
properties across 46 countries worldwide (as of March 2013) that cater
to business and luxury travelers. It added 22 hotels during 2012,
including the hip luxury property, Andaz Amsterdam Prinsengracht, in
the Netherlands; and its first select-service hotels (that's extended
stay for the layperson) outside the U.S. market in Costa Rica and
India. Over the past decade, Hyatt has opened almost 200 new
properties - an investment of close to $10 billion. There are now
seven distinct brands under its umbrella generating $4 billion in
annual revenue.
For perspective, that's much smaller than the competition - Hilton
boasts approximately 3,800 properties while Marriott International has
around 3,700.
But Hyatt's leadership is focused less on size than on becoming the
`preferred brand for our colleagues, guests and owners,' as
Hoplamazian and Hyatt Chairman Thomas Pritzker write in the company's
2012 annual report. `We believe that our culture and the relationships
amongst our colleagues ultimately position the Hyatt brand to
represent human care - and to go beyond service to our guests as a
hotel company,' they tell shareholders.
The latest illustration of this philosophy is `Ready to Thrive,' a new
component of the Hyatt Thrive corporate social responsibility
program. The idea is to encourage local literacy and career
development programs in communities where Hyatt is managing or
developing properties. The plan will include the United States but
emerging markets are getting the initial attention.
During the first year, the program will focus on Brazil (among other
places); a Grand Hyatt is scheduled to open in Rio de Janeiro in
2015. The company has made a $750,000 commitment over the next two
years to training. In partnership with the Youth Career Initiative,
Hyatt has run similar programs at its hotels in Sao Paulo; Warsaw,
Poland; Amman, Jordan; Mumbai, India; and Cancun, Mexico. So far,
those hotels have wound up hiring 45 percent of the graduates.
`You get amazing results when you put kids coming out of difficult
neighborhoods or family environments and you put them together with
people who also may have started in those same places, those
neighborhoods,' Hoplamazian says. `It gives them an example of what it
may look like if you can get yourself plugged into something that
provides you a career opportunity.'
When he isn't out-of-town visiting one of Hyatt's actual or soon-to-be
properties, Hoplamazian and his wife Rachel Kohler (yes, the same
Kohler family behind the well-known bath and kitchen company) are
fixtures within the Chicago educational community. He's a trustee for
the Chicago Latin School (where his children attend classes), a board
member for New Schools for Chicago and an adviser to Facing History
and Ourselves, an organization dedicated to combating racism,
anti-Semitism and prejudice through school curriculum. The latter
affiliation is a nod to his Armenian heritage.
`[Education is] sort of the only thing that I spend my time on, other
than my family and my work, just because I think it's the core of
what's needed to really put this next generation in good standing,' he
explains. `Especially, in the United States, I think there is a great
need for maybe a different mindset with respect to school reform than
has existed in the past. So my level of engagement on educational
issues is quite high.'
More than anything else, Hoplamazian wants the dialogue around reform
to be more open-minded, an attitude shaped perhaps during his own K-12
experience at the elite Episcopal Academy in suburban Philadelphia,
which professes to educate the whole student. `I think in some ways,
school reforms efforts historically have been around fixing a
structure that dates back decades, but may not be relevant or as
relevant to the future as it needs to be,' Hoplamazian muses.
He is likewise open-minded about how properties should be run,
trusting `colleagues' and guests to provide direction rather than
dictating policies from on high. When he first became CEO, Hoplamazian
spent nine months visiting Hyatt properties, asking `ostensibly stupid
questions,' as he recalled in one interview. One of the first
extensions under Hoplamazian's direction was the Andaz boutique brand,
born in London and renowned for its hip lobby scene, which skips
check-in lines. Arriving guests settle in the lounge, while clerks
with iPads handle the minutiae. There's even a whole series of `salon'
events associated with the properties, which are cropping up in China,
India, the Caribbean, Hawaii, Costa Rica and Mexico.
Right now, boutique hotels are the fastest growing segment of the
global hotel industry, which Euromonitor International estimated at
$457 billion for 2012. But what's next?
`Our experience around the globe is that consumer tastes change
rapidly, and in some cases, I would say in emerging markets in
particular,' Hoplamazian says. `So if you look at buying behaviors and
attitudes in China among consumers there, it's really evolving very,
very quickly as those individuals get more exposure to brand and
different inputs and stimulus from different markets. So being able to
stay alert to that and be responsive to that in real time is really
important.'
Two years ago, he hired someone from outside the industry to
institutionalize that alertness. Hyatt Chief Innovation Officer Jeff
Semenchuk had no hotel industry credentials, but he did have plenty of
entrepreneurial experience with the likes of Citigroup and Pfizer.
`I recognized that we wanted to have a discipline around better
innovation, and doing it faster and more effectively,' Hoplamazian
explains. `And have it be a discipline that exists within the company
but not to create an ivory tour approach to innovation where it
happens in some office or in the corporate office somewhere and then
is bestowed upon the hotels.'
While Hoplamazian prefers face-to-face feedback, he is a strong
proponent of social media as a means of gauging guest sentiment. Hyatt
was the first to adopt a Twitter concierge service. It also uses
another social service, called Branch, to facilitate better
communication with its community of guests. `We wanted to actually
begin a conversation, in this case, with travelers and understand more
about what they are thinking and what we are getting right and wrong
along the way. But have it be more of a two-way dialogue,' he says.
I can't resist asking him to share his own worst hotel
experience. Hoplamzian recalls a long-ago visit to Erfoud, a Moroccan
oasis city on the edge of the Sahara Desert that was part of the
location shoot for his favorite film, Lawrence of Arabia. The room was
like an oven in the daytime heat, an icebox during the desert
nighttime chill, and frequented by many unwelcome, multi-legged
visitors. `We left a day earlier than [we] were supposed to, just in
order to move on,' he says, laughing.
Although his family doesn't typically join Hoplamazian on the frequent
trips that are now part of his job, together they have logged
adventure travel miles on African safari and hiking in Central
America, among other places. One of five children, Hoplamazian's own
father died of a heart attack when he was just 12. Accordingly, his
meeting-packed days in Chicago typically begin early enough so he can
end them with his three children whenever possible. The trim
executive's daily routine usually includes three to four miles on the
treadmill or stair machine, with some yoga mixed in, before he dons
his habitual suit and tie for the office. Hoplamazian ran the Chicago
Marathon back in 2005, but that was two knee operations ago, and his
daily jogs are now `more about the head than the waist line.'
On long cross-country or transoceanic flights, he gravitates toward
non-fiction or biographies from which he can draw ideas that might
benefit Hyatt. At the time of our interview, he's making his way
through Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of
Business, co-authored by Whole Foods Market co-founder John Mackey and
management professor Raj Sisodia.
But when Hoplamazian needs to recalibrate his own priorities, there's
one author he recommends above all others, because of the heartfelt
passion he put into his life's work: `If I need a dose of great
inspiration in terms of prose and in terms of content, I'd say that
Martin Luther King is second to none. His ability to express himself
and, oftentimes in incredible circumstances, is pretty amazing.'
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress