Alfred Pisani, founder of Corinthia Hotels, has operated in survival mode more than once. Now he has his sights set on competing with the best in luxury hotelkeeping.
The native of Malta started his hospitality career by happenstance at age 20 when his father unexpectedly died, leaving a steep mortgage on a brand new home. The budding entrepreneur helped turn that home into a restaurant, and the rest was history.
In 1964, when Malta was gaining its independence and needed to diversify an economy dependent on the British Royal Navy, Pisani developed a grander plan. “We had a lot of ground and made an application to build a hotel. I received a $US2.5 million loan, became my own contractor and built the 150-room hotel, which opened as the Corinthia Palace in 1968, and that was the beginning,” Pisani says.
Today, 50 years after opening that restaurant the founder and group chairman of Corinthia Hotels now leads a company with nine branded hotels and a handful of third-party managed hotels across the Mediterranean, central Europe and a new flagship in London.
HOTELS Editor In Chief Jeff Weinstein recently conducted a teleconference with Pisani to write a feature for the June issue of HOTELS Magazine. Read “The Interview” in the June issue of HOTELS to learn more about his journey, his hotel company’s philosophy and its future.
Below are three video clips from the interview.
The first discusses how Pisani and his team managed to operate the only hotel that stayed open in Tripoli during the Libyan revolution.
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The second video clip details Pisani’s service philosophy.
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In the third video clip Pisani discusses Corinthia Hotels’ expansion plans.
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