Sir Rocco Forte: Making His Own Noise
By Jeff Weinstein, Editor In Chief -- Hotels, 10/31/2009 11:00:00 PM
During the interview for the Corporate Hotelier of the World award, 2009 honoree Sir Rocco Forte made several references to the importance of the highest standards of service. He referred to mentors like Giulio Gelardi, who ran London’s Savoy Hotel for Trusthouse Forte and taught an impressionable Forte about layout, staffing and organization. Forte also talked about just having returned from a memorial service for Bruno Rotti, longtime restaurant manager at Claridge’s, who Forte remembers as a meticulous professional, extremely elegant, cultured and having an incredible eye for detail. “Then you see some of the people running around today giving themselves a lot of credit and they know nothing in comparison—and it irritates me,” Forte says.
An old-school edge like that probably would have sounded similar to a line one might have heard from Sir Rocco’s late father, Lord Forte, an Italian-born entrepreneur who created Trusthouse Forte starting with a single London milk bar in 1934, established a hotel and catering empire, and eventually won this very award in 1982. “He was an incredible man with a sense of loyalty and duty to his business,” Forte says of the man from whom he learned the most. “He had a sense of honesty and charm, yet a certain toughness taking many difficult decisions. All of those things to some degree I either inherited or learned from him.”
But even now—as the truly affable chairman and chief executive of an admired brand of European luxury hotels founded in 1996, The Rocco Forte Collection—Forte, a youthful and quite fit 64-year-old who remains a competitive triathlete, understands quite clearly that he has a long way to go to truly match the heights of his father. He also makes it clear that he is determined to accomplish much more.
“Fourteen hotels is not a huge empire,” says the man who aspires to create the largest luxury hotel brand in Europe. “But we do make a lot of noise for our size.” Comments like that would, no doubt, make his father proud and probably explain why the soft-spoken Forte, knighted by the Queen of England in 2004 for his service to UK tourism, says he is far from retirement and has no intention of calling it a day for quite a while.
That sort of understated confidence best defines Sir Rocco Forte today, who has come a long way since 1996 when he was harshly criticized for the loss of his father’s company to Granada, which eventually sold off most of the holdings and, according to Forte, ran the rest of the organization into the ground.
“Sir Rocco was criticized a lot when they lost Forte Hotels, but I can assure you that he was not the one responsible,” says Hervé Houdré, now regional director of operations for IHG who enjoyed working with Forte in the ’80s and ’90s. “His father was still handling everything and cutting his wings constantly when Rocco was really setting up the company for success. He is a good person and people were simply jealous of his background.”
Certainly disappointed with the loss of Trusthouse Forte, but not one to linger on the past, Forte says he did not create his company to prove a point or find vindication. “It is what I can do and I like doing it,” he says. “What is in the past is in the past. It is sad we didn’t have a chance to finish what we started. But you move on and it created a new challenge, which I have enjoyed rising to.”
Learning The Business
While Sir Rocco no doubt had the advantage of being his father’s son, he certainly was not handed the business on a silver platter. In fact, while Lord Forte encouraged his son’s interest in the business at a young age and had him working summers in the hotels from age 15, when the time came for Sir Rocco to get seriously involved in the operation, his father was very slow to give up the reins. “He didn’t want me to make big decisions as he didn’t want me to make mistakes,” Forte says. “You only learn from making mistakes—and eventually I made some big ones.”
Forte—from Bournemouth in the UK and educated at Pembroke College, Oxford—didn’t get started at Trusthouse Forte until after qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1969. He spent three years “numerating” (or paying for his sins, as he puts it) before getting fully involved in the hotel business.
During his tenure and eventual chairmanship of Forte Plc, Forte was responsible for more than 800 hotels, 1,000 restaurants and almost 10,000 employees in 50 countries. He transformed Forte from a UK operation into an international hotel player with Le Méridien chain and a collection of luxury hotels that included the George V in Paris and the Plaza Athenee in New York City.
It was during this time that Sir Rocco truly learned the ins and outs of the hotel business. “The most important thing is to know the hotel business thoroughly,” says Forte, reflecting on earlier lessons learned. “So many people want to run before they walk and jump into a business before they really understand it well and make mistakes… You have to know your capabilities and the business you are in… You must have the courage of your convictions and ability to manage risk. Not everyone has it within them to do it.”
After the hostile takeover of Trusthouse Forte in 1996, Forte was not about to slink into retirement with his family’s reported £325 million share of the £3.9 billion payout to shareholders from Granada. He went to work with his sister, Director of Design Olga Polizzi, to develop a collection of more highly designed hotels, which launched in 1997 with the acquisition of The Balmoral in Edinburgh. The mantra at Rocco Forte hotels was quite different than that of Trusthouse Forte.
“We were too busy talking about the bottom line [at Trusthouse Forte],” Forte says. “When we started the new business, I decided we would not talk about costs at all and just talk about service delivery. That is what we did for a long time. Obviously, I kept an eye on costs, but the result was establishing a reputation for delivering high levels of service and that became the hallmark for the brand.”
Forte also liked the idea of having a smaller business, putting him closer to the staff and more directly in touch with customers. From the beginning, he set out to remove the traditional stuffiness of luxury hotelkeeping, while at the same time making sure the staff did not act grander than the clientele. His goal was to infuse his hotels with a more relaxed, warm and interactive service style, while still offering the utmost in professional service delivery.
“He has a strong personality, a clear vision and is very particular about standards. His mantra in all the hotels is service, service, service,” Polizzi says of her older brother. “He is used to 5-star hotels, has been to the best and wants his own hotels to be up there with the best.”
Personally, Forte hates walking into a hotel and not having anyone pay attention to him or have a reception staring at a computer screen and not acknowledging his presence. “I hate sloppy service, and the thing that irritates me the most is indifference,” he says. “We are in the service industry, and that is what we are here to give. I am relatively relaxed in my approach to things and want to give my people the authority to get on with the job within the parameters we set.”
Conquering Europe
Over the course of the last 13 years, Forte has slowly built up a collection across Europe, most recently adding The Augustine in Prague in May and the Verdura Golf & Spa Resort on the southern coast of Sicily in August. The new resort represents Forte’s riskiest venture to date—a e160 million investment (including a e40 million grant) that he must make work during a very difficult economic period. He also has hotels under development in Jeddah, Abu Dhabi and Marrakech expected to come online next year. “He is extremely driven. Even when times are hard, as they are now, he holds his nerve and leads from the front,” Polizzi says.
Going forward, Forte wants to establish hotels in major gateways and capital cities across Europe. “No one has big luxury coverage across Europe, and it is my ambition to get there,” he says. “Once you have gone beyond two or three hotels you have to get yourself to scale to compete effectively. It is achievable.”
At the same time, Forte, who says he is a bit surprised at how far his company has come in 10 years, adds, “We created a brand name and reputation. Now we have to be careful not to take on properties that are not in keeping with what we have set out to do… I have to be picky so I don’t dilute and destroy the brand values.”
The Competitor
When Sir Rocco is not wearing a bespoke Savile Row suit looking for his next hotel deal, he can often be found in workout gear on his bicycle, training for his next Ironman event. He is a keen sportsman, and from 2001 to 2003 he represented Britain within his age group at the World Triathlon Championships. In July 2005, Forte took part in his first Ironman event in Austria, placing second in his age group. Prior to his competitive achievements, he ran marathons to raise money for charity and still enjoys shooting and golf. He is also a trustee of the London Symphony Orchestra along with his wife of 23 years, Lady (Aliai) Forte.
In fact, while Forte says his natural passion is his business, if not for his destined hotel career, he says he would have become a professional triathlete in search of the world championship. “At the end of the day, sport is about competing. If you don’t train hard and apply yourself, you won’t be successful—the same applies to business,” he says. “I can’t say the fact that I do triathlons makes me a better businessperson, but the determination applies to both.”
While Forte has not competed in triathlons this year, he wants to return to competition in 2010. He trains about 90 minutes each weekday, traveling with his bicycle whenever possible. He works out another six hours over the weekend. “It keeps you young and it is so easy to eat and drink too much during the course of business,” he says. “Exercise offers great discipline, and I see so many friends my age who are old men. I don’t feel that way.”
Running his own business also seems to keep Forte hungry and with no immediate plans for retirement. “A lot depends on what the children want to do,” he says of his two daughters, currently enrolled at Oxford, and 17-year-old son in prep school. All three children have spent holiday time working in the business and the oldest daughter just completed a six-week stint at the Woolsey restaurant in London.
“I don’t see myself as having arrived at all,” Forte concludes. “I want to be in a number of cities and systemize my business to a much greater degree. Then I want to see my kids on their own feet and capable of making their own living.”
It appears two generations of Fortes have managed quite well and now the third is on its way—no doubt inspired by those who came before them.
Direct comments to: jweinstein@reedbusiness.com
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