Reflections: Dr. Natale Rusconi

By Staff -- HOTELS Magazine, 8/1/2006

Dr. Natale Rusconi, managing director, Hotel Cipriani, Venice

After nearly 30 years in the beautiful and unique Cipriani Hotel in Venice, I can look back and consider not only what my hotel life has been but also to what the European hotel industry has undergone during this vital and dramatic period of the world’s history.

When I started in 1963 at the Gritti Palace as an assistant manager, the hotel was overburdened with staff, and you could see a page boy attached to every column of the building. A door could not be approached without remarking a white-gloved hand opening it for you. The menus in the restaurant were all in French and English: “no Italian please, it is not elegant….!” were the official rules.

The food presented was inspired by the grand cuisine of Escoffier, while ignoring the delicious specialties of regional Italy. Pasta and risotto were“not allowed” for dinner. A banquet menu had to follow a rigid rule by which a white sauce would always be followed by a red sauce, and no sauce was allowed on the same menu twice. For hors d’oeuvres, the only dishes allowed were prosciutto, scampi and, of course, caviar or foie gras. On the whole, the clients were going out for dinner most of the time, and it was in the small restaurants where one could taste the real Italian cuisine. All this has changed now, and we see that more and more there is a new fashion in grand hotels not only to import Michelin-star chefs, cooking Italian remakes of old recipes, but also to cook Italian regional specialties.

In 1965, when I was in London to open the Ciga representative office, I discovered that there was a new form of communication—the telex—which is now obsolete. From the telex we went on to the fax and, more recently, toward computers, which started in Italy in the ’80s. With the computer we have achieved great things, but there is now the danger of depersonalizing contacts with our clients. Management has to become more and more alert because the machine is menacing the human factor. Also, there is no style anymore in writing or printing a letter, and we now assist in the destruction of our lovely language with all the abbreviations used in e-mails.

What will be the future of the deluxe hotelier? I believe that more and more, apart from the menacing threat of the computer, which is indeed a help but also a burden, we have to try not to fall into the drama called the lack of style, the lack of elegance, the lack of familiarity, the lack of affection and, ultimately, the lack of love, all of which are qualities that are gradually disappearing.

The only weapon we now have to react with lies in the personalization of our work and the motivation of our staff. When these important elements are failing, a client finds himself in a cold surrounding, even if around him there is a high-tech structure offering ultra-modern hospitality.

More problems arise from the cultural changes in our society. The dress code for clients is gradually changing, and so are the habits of drinking and eating—not to mention the times of arrival and departure, which cause so many headaches for the poor hotelier, especially when clients descend with small, noisy children (something which never happened in deluxe hotels in former times).

Mark Twain’s famous statement is becoming more and more of a reality. He said, “All saints can perform miracles, but only a few can manage a hotel.”