PRESIDENT INTERVIEW: Life in the fast lane
He had wanted to become a motorsports racer but after nearly four decades in the hotel business, Hilton Worldwide area president - Middle East and Africa Rudi Jagersbacher’s career shows no signs of slowing as the group doubles its regional portfolio. Here, he reveals his proudest moments, the challenging transition from GM to VP, and mulls a future in CSR
A relaxed Rudi Jagersbacher sits back in his chair at Hilton Dubai Jumeirah’s BiCE Sky Bar overlooking the emirate — with several of the firm’s properties under development in view — having summed up the best part of 38 years in the hotel industry.
For Jagersbacher, it all began at the prestigious London Hilton on Park Lane in 1974 when he began a corporate traineeship as a steward. Today, he oversees 57 hotels across the Middle East and Africa, but becoming a hotel-industry veteran wasn’t always the plan, he tells Hotelier.
“I’m a car maniac and was already doing go-kart racing and wanted to become something to do with motors... but it didn’t happen because my family said ‘no way, you need a job’.”
Growing up in Austria, Jagersbacher was exposed to the tourism industry which formed a vital part of the country’s economy. His father ran a couple of small inns, which Jagersbacher “didn’t want anything to do with”, but when it came to the crunch he took his family’s advice and headed off to hotel school in Innsbrook, before completing military service.
“Despite having learnt English and French at school, when I talked nobody could understand me. So I also did one year in Trinity College Dublin and by the time I finished I had two offers; one was from Hilton,” recalls Jagersbacher.
“I moved to London and coming from a small town out of Innsbrook where there’s only skiing and mountaineering, I’d never seen a hotel of this size, it was enormous. We had about 1100 people employed and it was the place to be — the first American group that had come in — I was proud to be there.
“It was run like a military service, very exact, very senior managers, very structured and very little space for errors. Throughout that period I lost a lot of good friends who couldn’t stand the pace and decided that it wasn’t for them,” he says.
*CLICK THROUGH TO THE LAST PAGE TO REVEAL THE FIVE PEOPLE WHO HAVE DRIVEN RUDI JAGERSBACHER TO SUCCESS *
Over the years he worked his way up to the finance department, before being transferred to Hilton in Munich as F&B controller, which he describes as his first “responsible, standalone job”.
By this time he had slammed the brake on his race-track ambitions: “You really have to learn very quickly in an American company and you’re either in or you’re out, it’s very simple, and everybody wanted these types of jobs,” explains Jagersbacher.
Taking the lead
Jagersbacher’s commitment paid off when he returned to London Hilton to take up the sought-after GM role at the landmark property.
“The first thing I did was invite all the people who had worked with me [before] and were still there to a big welcome reception. Secondly, I invited all the retired people and their families to come to a dinner I’d organised just to say ‘thank you’.
“We became quite a tight-knit family. This was the proudest moment for me from a corporate trainee, going away and becoming general manager. That hotel was probably the most sought-after property of any GM. If you wanted to go somewhere and you got the London Hilton, you were in.”
During his time at the London Hilton, Jagersbacher introduced a number of significant initiatives, including a “first-name culture”.
“I became Rudi, and everybody addressed each other by first name at a time when most people were sir, madam or mr and mrs. It reduced barriers and we rolled it out throughout the UK and Europe. So that was important and a great achievement I must say.”
Many of Jagersbacher’s approaches to leadership were inspired by his experience at London’s Savoy and Claridge’s, which led up to his return to Hilton to open The Langham London on Portland Place as GM, before going on to accept the same role at London Hilton.
Jagersbacher says working under the late Sir Hugh Walter Kingwell Wontner, chairman of the Savoy Group from 1948 to 1984, was one of the most memorable times of his working life, and a turning point.
“He was probably the most elegant and articulated person I have ever met. He was really interested in service, style and the customer. I was with the Savoy as director of F&B and that was a very tough job,” he says.
“Then I became manager of Claridge’s, which was even more daunting because we did the wedding of Princess Diana, all the state banquets. The staff were running this hotel impeccably. So that particular experience, from a service and quality point of view, changed my attitude overall,” he continues.
“Hilton had all the efficiencies and productivity of a first-class American company, but from a quality and refined standards perspective, there was nothing better than the Savoy. That molded me because I felt I was not just a hotelier, but I was learning the ability – which was not easy – to provide service, and look at it from a different point of view.”
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Getting in gear
Jagersbacher says he loves being a hotelier, describing it as a “great profession, particularly when you’re running big hotels”. However, after a number of years doing just that, his talents were spotted by Hilton’s corporate team and he was offered the position of vice president for the UK, while maintaining his role as GM at the London Hilton, posing one of the biggest challenges in his career.
“Being VP was actually the biggest challenge because I was still the general manager, which really did not work because firstly, I was sitting in a very busy hotel that needed a dedicated general manager, and then you needed someone who really looks after the other hotels full time, we were developing Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester.
“So eventually we decided I would move to our corporate office. That was difficult for a while because suddenly you don’t have the back up. In a hotel you ring a bell and three people come and bring you this or that, you don’t have that anymore and you have to rely on your own skills with a very small team.”
Jasgersbacher says the transition “was not easy”: “I took a lot of coaching because I wanted to be successful in my new job and I didn’t want people to say ‘well Rudi, you’re still really a general manager’. I wanted to move on and I needed help,” he admits.
“Managing people from a distance was probably the most challenging aspect because you can’t just walk around and say ‘excuse me can you do X, Y or Z’. You need to learn to focus on your strategy; establishing your strategy, sticking to the strategy, using the right people for the right matters and obviously making sure that you monitor the progress in a concise and strict manner.
You don’t have much room for error because it impacts the business in a much bigger way. That was a challenge, but I had really good mentors that helped me through this.”
Jagersbacher also went back to school to brush up his business skills at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Today one of the key pieces of advice he offers to those looking to follow in his success is to “find a mentor”.
“Secondly, you want to make sure you’re extremely well educated to have the brain power to move up the levels. We want business people running our business, not key holders and greeters,” he says.
One key aspect of the new role Jagersbacher did not struggle with was the people side of dealing with around 12 general managers, plus their 2500 team members.
“What I always managed to do well, and do still today, is sit with our team members. It might be a different story to talking to other people higher up in the hierarchy; you find out if it’s a happy team.”
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Beyond the finish line
Having successfully crossed the bridge from general manager to vice president, Jagersbacher went onto a number of other VP roles, including in the Middle East which involved setting up Hilton’s Dubai office.
He says many of the relationships cemented during that first period in the Middle East have led to a number of the firm’s most recent signings in the region. After Dubai, he was appointed VP in Europe, based in Brussels, before accepting his current role of area president, Middle East and Africa in January 2011.
“There were two jobs available, one was a very senior job in Europe, but I discussed it with my partner and this is quite a unique and addictive area in the way you do business and have the opportunity to drive growth. Europe is more confined,” he says.
“I recognised the opportunity in terms of what we could grow and I was right, that was three years ago. Look at the development pipeline today.”
The group currently operates 57 properties in the region and has an impressive 52 signed hotels in the pipeline. One of Jagersbacher’s main priorities alongside this expansion is to fulfil Hilton’s “responsibility to the communities” in which it operates.
“I would like to see local general managers in a lot of properties, this is my mission. If I have properties in Saudi, wouldn’t it be great to have some Saudi general managers? The same goes for our African portfolio. There’s a challenge in these places but we already have a third line of senior people who we’ve identified that we want to train. We would like to have local people running our business.
“We’ve partnered with 13 colleges in Saudi Arabia whereby our people go and we teach, we recruit, we develop, and that is the way we’re able to fulfill the quota of team members,” he reveals.
This “soft spot” for CSR goes back to Jagersbacher’s earlier years with Hilton, when he became a founding member of the Hilton in the Community Foundation — a grant-making organisation that fundraises throughout properties in Europe to support disadvantaged young people.
“I always felt we have to have this type of responsibility,” Jagersbacher tells Hotelier, and expresses a desire to focus on the CSR side of the business in the future.
Asked what comes after area president, he says: “I could probably see myself going more towards that area of challenges. CSR is honestly where I think I can add value, commitment and expertise. It’s not just about how great we are and how many hotels we have… we need to be far more transparent and committed towards that cause.”
FAST FACTS: Hilton Vital Statistics
Operating hotels: 57 under six brands
Pipeline hotels: 52 in the MEA region
Recent openings: Four hotels since January 2012: Hilton Beirut Habtoor Grand and Hilton Beirut Metropolitan Palace in Lebanon; Hilton Doha in Qatar and the Conrad Pezula Resort and Spa in South Africa
Recent signings: 13 including DoubleTree Resort by Hilton Marjan Island; Hilton Riyadh King Fahd Road; DoubleTree by Hilton Bur Dubai; DoubleTree by Hilton Doha — Al Sadd; Hilton Erbil Hotel & Spa; Hilton Giza Pyramids; Hilton Alexandria King’s Ranch Resort; Hilton Tanger City Center Hotel & Residences; Hilton Garden Inn Tanger City Center; DoubleTree by Hilton Seychelles-Allamanda Resort & Spa; DoubleTree by Hilton Upper Eastside, Cape Town, South Africa; Hilton Garden Inn Tabuk; DoubleTree by Hilton Bujumbura
Expected openings by end-2013: Nine in UAE, Jordan, Qatar, Seychelles, South Africa
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The people who inspire me
Jagersbacher is a source of inspiration for many in the hotel industry, but who has spurred him to success?
1. Jochen Rindt — the famous race-car driver is a great example of someone who embodied a spirit for success: talented, competitive, controlled, focused on the details, prepared, thoughtful and a risk-taker. Though his life was cut short, he lived it to the fullest despite his humble beginnings.
2. Bill Gates — he is passionate about realising his dreams for his business and just as zealous and determined to succeed in his philanthropic work. He is a symbol of imagination, determination and inspiration in making Microsoft a successful global company alongside his foundation, which helps to create sustainable communities around the world for the next generation of leaders.
3. Conrad Hilton – for obvious reasons. He set a foundation for the hospitality business that continues to shape and lead the industry, but he did this while creating a work environment that values making a difference as a pillar of success when it wasn’t the ‘norm’. He connected hospitality to talent development and community engagement on all levels and his legacy to bring ‘positive’ to work, life and community continues in almost 4000 hotels.
4. Sir Hugh Walter Kingwell Wontner – MD of the Savoy hotel group from 1941 to 1979 and its chairman from 1948 to 1984, he continued as president until he died in 1992. He was probably the most elegant and articulated person I have ever met. He was really interested in service, style and the customer and this was reflected throughout the organisation.
5. Grandfather – a true journalist and businessman who started a national/regional newspaper in Austria. He was insightful, wise and I watched him build nothing into something. His entrepreneurial spirit and hard work taught me where to look but not what to see – that encouragement to learn from the past, live in the now and explore the unknown drives everything I do in business and family.