Edward Staros, vice president and managing director of The Ritz-Carlton Resorts of Naples, Florida, is HOTELS 2019 Independent Hotelier of the World. Read his story below (and the sidebar), and find out more about Nakul Anand, ITC Ltd.’s executive director and 2019 Corporate Hotelier of the World, whose story we told yesterday.
Ed Staros’ high school grades suffered because he couldn’t finish tests fast enough, but his love for the hospitality business didn’t let anything get in his way of realizing his dream of becoming a hotelier.
So he leveraged a fortuitous introduction to the dean of nearby Florida State University’s hospitality program to plead his case for entrance into the school. His persuasiveness got him accepted and his resolve earned him a place on the dean’s list every semester.
That’s the kind of determination, focus and organization HOTELS’ 2019 Independent Hotelier of the World award winner has summoned throughout his career and certainly over the past 36 years as one of the original leaders and legends of the fabled Ritz-Carlton brand.
“I just knew my love for hospitality was there. It was in my blood,” says Staros, who for the past 20 years has run The Ritz-Carlton Resorts of Naples, Florida, most recently as vice president and managing director. This post came after Staros helped the luxury hotel company get on its feet in the 1980s, working alongside two of his mentors, Horst Schulze and Colgate Holmes, and helping create legendary? credos such as “ladies and gentlemen? serving ladies and gentlemen.”
“I had 100% confidence,” a 70-year-old Staros says today. His father, who ran a concessions business on Long Island, New York, beaches for years, introduced him to hospitality. “I loved my father’s energy — he just had a work ethic like no other human being on the planet. I have emulated that all my life and it really has helped me in my career.”
Staros was seduced into the business as a youngster watching the magic of concession workers managing 300 hotdogs on the grill, while at the same time making families happy with their service. But what really excited “Eddie” was going to business meetings with his father in Manhattan, which exposed him to the niceties and luxuries of The Plaza and Waldorf Astoria hotels.
“I just fell in love with serving the public. I fell in love with watching dad keeping so many people happy,” he recalls.
Earning his stripes
Fast-forward to 1972, when Staros took his first hotel job in San Francisco, working for Hyatt 60 hours a week and volunteering for banquets and reservations on his days off. “All I was doing was emulating my father’s work ethic… I was thrilled.”
During 11 years with Hyatt, Staros was continually recognized for his intense level of curiosity and desire to learn about every aspect of the business. He was even asked by Hyatt legend Darryl Hartley-Leonard to become an executive housekeeper to further his credentials. Naturally, Staros asked to take over the worst housekeeping department in the system. And, naturally, he delivered exceptional results.
By July 1976, Hyatt sent Staros to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to work for a demanding GM named Horst Schulze. “He would tell me, ‘Ed, I only bark at people I truly care about because I’m just trying to make you better,’” Staros remembers. “I liked that — I liked that a lot and we bonded at Hyatt.”
The next fateful assignment brought Staros to Chicago as the rooms executive under another tutor, Colgate Holmes, who was running the big Hyatt Regency Chicago convention hotel. Holmes asked Staros, then aged 28, to create his first monthly forecast and he stood tall when he came within two points of the actual result. Holmes, however, didn’t quite see it that way, suggesting that coming within two-tenths of a point would have been a better place to start. Needless to say, Staros dug in and improved his forecasting skills.
Staros says the exacting Holmes imparted a lot of knowledge during their years together, but one of his favorite Holmes quotes: “When you look, son, see.” He meant observe everything within the hotel. “I started seeing the smallest tear on the seam of a carpet and turned it into the maintenance department,” Staros says. “I would see one dead flower on an arrangement and called it in. I took his comment and just kept reliving it in everything I saw. I still do today. It was Colgate’s influence that gave me that exactness.”
In 1983, Holmes and Schulze received calls from developer Bill Johnson, who was creating a luxury hotel company originally called Monarch. Both men joined Johnson and shortly thereafter called on Staros to become the first rooms director. He accepted and at the same time proposed marriage to Tricia, who he remains devoted to today.
The company’s name changed in the months ahead when Johnson purchased the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company of America. Within a year of the first hotel opening in January 1984, Ritz-Carlton had four hotels open and had grown from 50 employees to 2,000. Staros was rooms director for the company and simultaneously ran the rooms department at the Buckhead property.
“The first time I met Ed was when I had my first GM job in Pittsburgh,” Schulze recalls. “Ed was my rooms exec. How did he do? Well, when a few years later I started the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, I called on Ed Staros to join me. He was a major contributor in the birth of The Ritz-Carlton and what the company became. In fact, I don’t know if we could have accomplished the early successes of The Ritz-Carlton without Ed’s diligent, well-organized and totally focused support.”
By 1986, Staros was promoted to general manager of the downtown Atlanta hotel and in January 1988 became regional vice president and GM of the Buckhead property. Five years later he was promoted to vice president of operations and helped open multiple properties around the world.
Perhaps the biggest feather in the caps of the original Ritz-Carlton leadership team came in 1992 and again in 1999 when they won Malcolm S. Baldrige awards, which recognized companies that implemented successful quality management systems.
“I wasn’t going to let Horst down. If he wanted to win the Baldrige Award, we were going to win the goddamn Baldrige award,” Staros says. “I wanted him to get his satisfaction and the only way I was going be satisfied was if I accomplish his goal. In my business life, that stands out the most — being a part of the team to make that happen.”
The knack
The Ritz-Carlton was sold to Marriott International around 1995, and despite the awards and the excitement of traveling the world to open hotels, Staros missed his family and his wife needed him around more as they were raising a child with special needs. So, in 1999, he landed the leadership role of The Ritz-Carlton, Naples, where ownership was adding a 50,000-square-foot spa and sister golf resort.
With the opening of the spa, Staros knew he could increase the room rate and charge an annual fee for a limited number of spa memberships. He raised rates by US$50 and sold 300 memberships, which today stands at US$75,000 per year in revenue and overall in excess of US$15 million.
Less than 10 years later and after surviving the impact of 9/11, Staros was faced with his biggest challenge when the 2008 financial crisis hit the U.S. hard. Many of the Naples hotel’s Fortune 100 company business were canceling meetings, but Staros persuaded most of these groups to leave their deposits at the hotel.
“We kept 98% of the deposits with their consent and sold them on the idea of ‘maybe you’ll need those funds for an upcoming meeting, and because you’re going to go through this recession, too, you may not have the funds for meetings,’” Staros says. “It really was a great decision.”
In fact, throughout his career Staros showed a level of thoroughness and rigor, as well as a knack for making the right decisions that elevated everyone around him. “We knew he had a great deal of integrity and that he was intense when he got a hold of an issue,” Holmes recalls. “He dug in and solved it.”