Greatest American Hoteliers: from Fisher to Statler
NEW YORK CITY - Hotel consultant, franchise expert and prolific author Stanley Turkel speaks with the Blue MauMau community about sixteen of the greatest hotel leaders as revealed in his newly released book, Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry. When pushed, Turkel declares that Ellsworth Milton Statler is arguably the greatest hotel pioneer. But then he follows Statler with the remarkable story of hotel tycoon Carl Fisher. Each of these sixteen movers and shakers accomplished the incredible. Besides building icons to the hotel industry, one spearheaded the first trans-continental highway, while another created a railway over swamp and ocean from Miami to Key West.
When asked how Turkel's career started in the hotel industry, he replies, "It was a series of unexpected opportunities." He started in the family business of commercial laundry services, where he often serviced New York City hotels. Of this experience, Turkel states, "Housekeeping, engineering and maintenance — what is called the back of the [hotel] house was my briar patch." Turkel would later become the general manager of several New York City hotel icons. He later helped manage the overseas expansion of Sheraton Corporation of America. Turkel lectures at the NYU Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management.
This is the first interview of a two-part series.
BMM: You provide a quote in your book that says American hotels are "perhaps the most distinctly American of all our institutions for they were nourished and brought to flower solely in American soil and borrowed practically nothing from abroad." What is so distinctive about the American hotel, besides being from America?
TURKEL: The phrase that you just quoted reflects on the creation of the American hotel before the Civil War. We are talking about the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s, when urban development in the United States was taking place, and in every city a large hotel was being built. It really reflected in some measure the difference between Europe and the United States. Europe was made up of small countries. Travel was somewhat limited. People could not get across borders because there were armed guards protecting national interests.
The United States was a rare kind of place. It was three thousand miles from East Coast to West Coast, from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. There was free access, where there were no military guards on state boundaries. You could easily go from New York to San Francisco, especially after they built the trans-continental railroad, which was a great developmental tool for the building of hotels. Americans have an attitude about travel that is quite remarkable and quite different from a number of other countries. Americans like to move. They like to see what is over the mountain and around the bend. So when they arrived in cities, businesses or vacations, developers made hotels to accommodate them. The transcontinental railroad, which became extended right after the Civil War, enabled people to travel from East Coast to West Coast. All those cities had hotels bigger, more ostentatious, and more elaborate than any built in Europe.
Americans were the pioneers in building great hotels. And American hotels were like no other in the world.
I have tried to write about the pioneers who developed some of these great hotels.
BMM: Who do you think is America's greatest hotelier?
TURKEL: I come down on the side of Ellsworth Milton Statler, who built hotels mostly on the East Coast. Hilton eventually bought his company.
But Statler was a genius in his own way. He never went to hotel school because there was no such thing at the turn of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. He was a smart, sharp, down-to-earth sort of man. Although Statler was not funny, he was ordinary and accessible. He was a guy you could talk to.
He realized very early on, when he built his first hotel in Buffalo, that if he could attract guests to his hotel he could build big hotels.
And he did. I mean the one in Buffalo, his first hotel ever, is I think 800 rooms.
He realized then that taking care of guests was all-important. These days we have human resource departments that tell us that this is important. But Statler learned it in his own experience. He created something called the Statler Service Code.
I have quoted some of it in my chapter on Statler. I have an original copy of the Statler Service Code. I am a collector as well as a hotel researcher. I showed a picture of it in my book. Statler said he founded his business on the simple precept that the guest must be pleased. In 1908 when he established the first Statler hotel in Buffalo, here is what he said:
A hotel has just one thing to sell. That one thing is service. The hotel that sells poor service is a poor hotel. The hotel that sells good service is a good hotel. It is the object of every hotel staff to sell its guests the very best hotel service in the world.
He believed his hotels were operated for the convenience and comfort of guests. That's what he put into his service codes so first his employees would understand that you take good care of guests. If you cannot please a guest, you call your supervisor to take care of whatever problem the guest has. That was a unique attitude for 1908 and the subsequent years when he built other hotels.
BMM: The Statler Service Code sounds way ahead of its time. I mean, was it typical to disseminate a set of rules to not only the company officers but also to the person who cleans the toilet? What possessed Statler to come out with these rules and then send them to everyone in his hotel?
TURKEL: In fact, it was very unusual. He took good care of employees long before "empowerment" became a cliché in human resource language. Statler realized that if his employees were not taken care of that they in turn would not take good care of guests.
Nowadays, that's a given in companies like the Marriott Corporation. It is what John Willard Marriott believed and his son Bill Marriott believes.
But it really was Statler who was the originator of that. It was a rare and unusual management prerogative that Statler installed and instilled in his hotels and with his employees.
If you read my chapter on Statler, you will see that his service code aroused so much interest that ultimately the Statler Corporation made it available to its guests as well as to its employees. When you registered in a Statler Hotel, you were handed the Statler Service Code, a 22-page booklet. It informed guests what to expect in the way of service from employees. If a guest did not receive that kind of service, they had every right to complain, to speak with a supervisor, and to get whatever was not right, rectified.
A rare bird was Mr. Statler.
Statler's widow sold the Statler Company to Conrad Hilton of the Hilton Corporation. At the time it was the largest real estate transaction ever. One hundred eleven million dollars is what Hilton paid for the 16 Statler hotels that were in existence. At first, the hotels were called Statler Hilton. Eventually the Statler name was dropped. The only place to find the Statler name now is on the campus of the Cornell School of Hotel Administration in Ithaca, New York. There is a Statler Inn, where the hotel students learn their trade on the job. It was named for Statler because his foundation, through his widow, contributed to the Cornell School to create and build that hotel.
BMM: When you speak of the greatest hotelier, it sounds like the criterion that comes to your mind is of someone who reinvented the rules of the industry.
TURKEL: Yes.
I have not even gone into the innovation of his hotel designs. He created the Statler plumbing shaft, which put bathrooms back to back, using a common shaft for the sewer lines, the hot and cold water lines and even the electrical lines. Each of those were a revolution in the way hotels were designed.
He put restaurants back to back. He had two restaurants in a large hotel with a common banquet department so he could have one kitchen that would serve all the outlets. These were remarkable ideas that he pressed his architects to do.
BMM: Not everyone on your list of sixteen great hoteliers stayed successful. One of the brightest, Carl Graham Fisher, went bankrupt during the Depression. Tell us about him.
TURKEL: You will not find his name on any hotel because he did not put his name on any. The only name of him that remains is Fisher Island in Biscayne Bay, between Miami and Miami Beach, where many wealthy people live.
Carl Graham Fisher was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was a champion bicycle racer and ultimately a bicycle seller. He sold bicycles and repaired them. That eventually led him into automobiles, which were just beginning to become prevalent.
He perhaps was one of the first automobile dealers (franchisees) in Indianapolis. It was for Reo trucks and Stuts Bearcat automobiles. He was a race car driver in his early years. What he and a couple of other investors discovered was there was no place to race or at least try racing cars. There was no oval. The tracks were not sufficient so he created the Indianapolis Speedway. It is still in existence to this day, the so-called "Brickyard." After some serious trouble with gravel, which did not work, he and his partners determined that bricks were the best surface for the roadway.
He also determined that U.S. roads were very poor. You could not drive out of a city without running into unpaved, muddy roads. As a young man, he, with automaker presidents who were investors, helped create the Lincoln Highway, which preceded the interstate highway system by a good thirty years. It went from New York City to San Francisco.
It was the first time you could go by car across the United States – 3,000 miles.
Having barely begun his life, Fisher went down to Miami Beach because his wife, who had congestion and respiratory problems, needed warmer weather. He discovered a barrier island off the coast of Miami, which we now call Miami Beach. At the time, it was filled with dense mangrove swamp.
But he thought it would make a wonderful resort area. With other investors, he cleared Miami Beach and laid out a grid from South Beach to Bal Harbour. He began selling lots to individuals who wanted to own their own home. Of course, he had to clear out the mangrove swamps. He had to bring sand from other places in the Caribbean to build up the beaches.
He created Miami Beach as we know it today.
Still not done with his life, Fisher bought a million acres of land in Montauk, eastern Long Island [New York]. He was intent on developing Montauk as a resort for summertime, when Florida became too hot. He went so far as to dredge the bay so that ocean liners could dock there. He built the Montauk Manor, which is still standing.
Carl Graham Fisher lived up until the Depression. When hurricanes ultimately damaged his holdings in Florida, the Great Depression finally did him in. He could not survive. He died a broken and penniless man after a fabulous career.
Read Part 2: Greatest American Hoteliers: from Hammons to Marriott
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Related Reading:
- Buy the book at www.GreatAmericanHoteliers.com
- Stan Turkel's blog
- Franchise topic:
