The Legends of Rezidor
How a small, Scandinavian hotel company continues to influence the world
My first job in hospitality was as a security guard at the flagship property of SAS International Hotels. It was 1987, the hotel, SAS Scandinavia, was in Oslo, Norway and the chain had about 25 hotels. 24 of them were in Scandinavia. One was in Kuwait, but that’s another story
What do the CEO of Fairmont, the CEO of the Indian Hotel Company Limited (Taj Hotels), and Meininger Hotels, as well as the former CEOs of Generator and Emaar, and the Chair of the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, all have in common?
They all have backgrounds from the small company that grew to become Rezidor Hotel Group, and then Radisson Hotel Group.
How did such a small regional player produce so many legendary leaders?
It’s the people!
Hospitality is all about human interaction, building relationships, and creating connections between people. Guests, employees, owners, investors. At the end of the day, we’re all people.
This article is a shoutout to some of the legendary leaders that built the company and provided a platform for my 31-year, basement-to-boardroom career there.
Veteran colleagues that became my informal mentors.
This post is a shoutout to four of them.
The Technical Guy
Knut Solberg-Johansen, may he rest in peace, led the development of many projects during a period when the company was expanding rapidly into new markets. He taught me about communicating respectfully, understanding the big picture, and seeing things from owner, guest, and employee perspectives.
I fondly remember the day at Manchester Airport when Knut convinced a contractor that the faucets for the bathtubs had to be shorter than the ones the contractor wanted to use. Knut didn’t want water from the shower head to drip onto the faucet and potentially leave spots. That wouldn’t look good from a guest point of view and it would also look like housekeeping wasn’t doing a good job. Knut was a man that was always contributing. You couldn’t keep him down.
He was so persistent that I attended three of his retirement parties! (Further below you can read about our legendary CEO - he always said. “the good ones always come back”)
Sales isn’t about selling - it’s about building connection
The first time I met the late Steinar Bergvoll, he had just been released from Iraq, where he’d been sent as a “human shield” after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. He was a Director of Sales and had lost all of his presentation slides (and most of his personal property) in the invasion. My colleagues and I helped Mr. Bergvoll as he took new pictures.
His presentations were legendary. “If you don’t believe me, you probably don’t believe a cockroach can ride a bicycle.”, he would say just before showing a picture of a cockroach riding a bicycle. He always served a glass of champagne to participants when, in the middle of a talk, a random photo of a sunset would appear. “It’s important to reflect, dream and sip champagne “, he would say. Mr. Bergvoll personified “edutainment”.
One of my favourite memories with Mr. Bergvoll was when a local journalist came to interview him about his time in Kuwait, the invasion, being a human shield in Bagdad, and then restarting his career back in his homeland, Norway. We were headed to the rooftop for a photoshoot. Michael Jackson was in Oslo, but he was staying in a competitor’s hotel. As we rode the elevator to the 21st floor, the journalist asked me why Michael J wasn’t staying with us. “We prefer real VIPs to celebrities.”, I said. The quote made it into the interview article. Mr. Bergvoll congratulated me. “You get it!”, he said, “You could work in sales!”
Mr. Bergvoll taught me that sales was about building trusted formal and informal relationships, and having fun while doing it.
The best man for the most challenging assignments
Christian Gartmann was another of Rezidor's legendary leaders. From global events in challenging locations to creating results in struggling markets, Mr. Gartmann was the go-to guy.
In Amman, Jordan, a hotel that was undergoing renovation hosted an AGM for a global transportation association. The hotel was unfinished. Staff was flown in from sister hotels all over the Middle East and Europe to support the event. The lobby bar was unfinished and unbranded. Mr. Gartmann called SAS headquarters in Stockholm and asked them to send crew uniforms and as many old posters as they could find. The posters were plastered on the walls, mannequins were outfitted with the uniforms and the bar was named “Wings”. It was a creative, temporary fix, but the bar kept the name and branding for years! The AGM was a roaring success and to thank the staff, Mr. Gartmann took everyone out for a night on the town in Amman. For some, it was a career highlight.
No matter the challenge, no matter the situation, Mr. Gartmann, always focused on the most important part of hospitality. Guests, owners, and employees have one thing in common. They are people. From Copenhagen to Cape Town, and from Reykjavik to Warsaw, Mr. Gartmann taught me to value every person as an individual.
Best boss ever
Werner Kuendig was my boss while he served as company COO and personal advisor to the President. The company was growing at almost a hotel a week and Mr. Kuendig had more direct reports than anyone else. I dare say he was the busiest person I ever worked with.
Before I met him, I knew him only as a myth, a legend, and someone that demanded respect. (I later learned he earned respect more than he demanded it.)
My first meeting with Mr. Kuendig was in the lobby of the aforementioned hotel in Amman that Mr. Gartman was tasked to lead through the renovation process. My boss in Brussels phoned me and told me to travel to Amman and “see if it’s ready enough for us to brand the hotel”.
I flew to Amman. The hotel was a construction site. I phoned my boss and said he could have seen from Brussels that the hotel wasn’t ready. “Mr. Kuendig is flying in today. Go for a walk, enjoy the city, and meet him for coffee at 4 p.m.”
“I’m the fall guy”, I thought. “The demanding Mr. Kuendig is going to demand things of me that I can’t deliver.”
I went for a walk, and as I descended the hill leading down to the hotel, I saw a crane was set up and the external signage covering the long side of the facade was being hoisted into place…
Mr. Kuendig met me in the lobby precisely at 4:00 pm. His timing was as Swiss as his demeanour. He started questioning me. Who did I think I was and what made me think I was qualified to make such an important decision and did I know what it would cost if the company lost face and didn’t host the AGM that was just months away?
I struggled to answer, but I couldn’t cave. I tried to explain that it was just too unsafe to put our name on the building but I admitted that with the sign already up, it was a moot point.
Suddenly, Mr. Kuendig leaned back and broke into contagious laughter!
“We have a plan for the sign, but thank you!”, he said, “I needed to see if you had a spine. We have so many “yes-men” in this company. Thank goodness you’re not another one of them!”
A year or two later, I reported directly to Mr. Kuendig. My department was definitely the smallest of the many under his oversight, but he followed up on every email and every conversation he had that touched on my area of responsibility. Mr. Kuendig was challenging and demanding, yet always kind, courteous, and supportive. He taught me leadership simply by leading by example.
The most legendary of legendary leaders
My first knowledge of Kurt Ritter was when he was promoted to CEO of SAS International Hotels in 1989, a position he held for more than two decades.
He and Mrs. Ritter lived in the hotel where I worked as a security guard. Very early every morning we unlocked the indoor pool area so he could go for his morning swim, and later, but still before 6:00 am, we’d open the garage door when we saw the taillights of his Porsche on the video monitors. Mr. Ritter had an incredible work ethic.
Mr. Ritter had grown up in a hotel. He was educated in hotels. He understood hotels.
He was also frustrated that hotels were too conservative, too risk-averse, and too afraid of changing the status quo.
Under his leadership, SAS and subsequently Rezidor, became innovators. The long check-in desks were replaced by individual pods so guests and staff could engage more personally. It was still the 90’s when Mr. Ritter decided the internet shouldn’t be a profit centre but a guest amenity. We introduced free, fast internet at a time when some of our hotels were charging almost $100 per day for access. It was the right decision to make and led to dramatic increases in guest loyalty. Mr. Ritter also allowed us to take chances on innovations like installing the world’s first online lock and access control system in a large hotel. (Newsflash: network technology wasn’t up to speed and I got a three a.m. phone call almost every night for over a year when the system crashed. Still, it was a huge learning experience with many of the system’s innovations now standard on the systems running on wireless networks in hotels today.)
“Working in hotels has to be fun and rewarding”, was a favourite of Mr. Ritter’s sayings. The status quo is boring and unrewarding.
He was also one of the visionaries pioneering an asset-light strategy and constantly reminding us that for hotels to be successful, the three sides of the “Triangle of Excellence” needed to be balanced.
“Happy guests, Happy employees, Happy owners.”
One of my favourite memories with Mr. Ritter was based on a major disagreement.
In the late 90’s my role was more than corporate safety and security. I was “Special Programmes Coordinator” and the “special programmes” I was tasked with coordinating included loyalty programme affiliations and accounting, travel agent commission payments, and database marketing (digital marketing in analogue times).
With the hotel group expanding at almost one new property per week including properties in new and challenging markets, I felt the time was right for safety and security to become a full-time role at corporate level.
Mr. Ritter disagreed.
At the end of the year, I handed in my resignation to my boss in Oslo.
Mr. Ritter phoned me immediately from HQ in Brussels.
“Are you trying to put pressure on me?”, he asked.
I explained I’d been trying to convince the company for over a year, and that the answer always came back, Mr. Ritter says “No, not yet.”
“Since we’re in complete disagreement, one of us has to take the consequences and resign.”, I said, “and I’m guessing it’s not going to be you.”
He laughed and said he accepted my resignation, but that didn’t end our conversation.
We had a long, very personal chat that included very legitimate reasons why he couldn’t change the organization and make safety and security a full-time role.
“I’d like to think it might be different in a year,” he said, “but I can’t guarantee that it will and I don’t want you to hang around in hope while your frustration continues to grow. It’s better you leave now.”
I didn’t really know how to respond, especially because he had trusted me and shared some very confidential reasons why things were going to stay the way they were. Then he said something that I’ll never forget.
“Paul, the good ones always come back!”
Less than six months later, I was back as a consultant. Not long thereafter my only role was corporate safety and security and I remained loyal to the company for twenty more years.
The secrets of Rezidorian success
These simple stories probably give you an idea of why a small Scandinavian hotel group, a minor subsidiary of a government-owned airline, has produced some of the true leaders of today’s hotel and hospitality world.
Yes, their people-first focus was key. Mr. Ritter had been GM in Kuwait, and years later staff there told me he still knew them and their family members’ names and even what grades their children were in at school.
All of these leaders served the company for many years. Their loyalty was also a major success factor. We were innovative and our leaders stayed on and accepted the consequences of every innovation. The ones that were successful, and the ones that weren’t. Their loyalty inspired us all to be loyal.
They understood all their qualities and all their faults. They understood that everyone else had qualities and faults too. Discussions could be open, honest, and tough, but there was always respect and there were always reasons behind decisions that didn’t go your way.
Most importantly, they were hoteliers. They understood operations, owners, accounts, guests, and employees. When things were decided at a corporate level, they understood the impact it would have on hotel operations. No matter what role our leaders had, hotels were in their DNA.
Hotels and hospitality: It’s the people!
Stay safe, Always Care
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