5 Minutes With Don Peebles

-- Hotels, 6/1/2007

5Minutes With Don Peebles: Being Minority Was Never Enough

As a youngster growing up in Washington, D.C., Don Peebles used to spend his free time hanging around the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, where his grandfather worked as a doorman for 41 years. He loved the vibrancy and humanity of the hospitality industry, and so when he found his way into the world of property development in adulthood, he made sure hotels were a major part of his portfolio. Today, Peebles, 47, is one of the most prominent African-American real estate developers. His Peebles Corp. holds US$4 billion in hotels, residential developments and office buildings in several U.S. cities. Among his hotels are The Royal Palm Hotel and The Lincoln in Miami Beach, Florida, and Washington's Courtyard by Marriott Convention Center.

HOTELS: You have said you enjoy developing hotel businesses more than residential development or other commercial development. Why?

PEEBLES: It is an economically rewarding business. It is riskier than a regular development project, but it is more fun and is more conducive to long-term ownership than offi ces and condos, and I like that challenge of long-term involvement and the ability to build a brand over a long period of time.

HOTELS: Compared to other industries with which you are involved, how does the hotel industry rank in terms of race relations?

PEEBLES: The hospitality industry is, in many regards, very progressive in terms of creating broad opportunities for minorities and women. It has very low educational barriers to entry, where you can start off as a bellman or a dishwasher and end up running or owning a hotel. Where you have more of a challenge is on the hotel ownership side because it is a capitalintensive business. Women and minorities have less opportunity in the heavy capital-intensive businesses. That is changing now because the hotel industry has kind of gone out of its way to set the tone for diversity.

HOTELS: What can be done to get more minorities into ownership positions?

PEEBLES: That has been a challenge with affi rmative action-what is the best way to create diversity? Probably the best way to create diversity is to not discriminate against people now. There is the idea that minorities need special treatment to compete, and that is just not the case. What we want now is a level playing fi eld where everyone has the same opportunity. Marriott has done a great job at pursuing women and minorities to own hotel properties, and InterContinental has followed suit. You need to create a management culture that respects diversity, and they need to give minorities and women the same benefi t of the doubt that white males get: that assumption of competence.

HOTELS: Given that there are so relatively few minority hotel owners out there, do you tend to look out for one another?

PEEBLES: There is an unwritten rule among minorities and women in that industry that we do not try to cut each other's legs off. We are trying to compete with the market as a whole, instead of trying to compete with each other. The major players know each other, and we share ideas and opportunities. There are so few successful minority businesspeople out here that there is no room to disparage and try to hurt one another. There is enough business out here that I can do it without trying to hurt them. We are all competing and trying to win, but we are doing it on a respectful and professional level.

HOTELS: What are the biggest challenges you had to overcome to get where you are today?

PEEBLES: That I am a successful entrepreneur is a signifi cant accomplishment, but it is not a unique accomplishment. As a minority, I am proud that I never let it defi ne me; I never let it be an excuse for not succeeding. If I failed it was because I did not get it done-not because I was a minority.

HOTELS: What have you learned over the course of your career that you wish you knew when you got started?

PEEBLES: I wish I realized that every battle does not have to be fought. It is not necessarily about winning every battle. I also wish I had sooner overcome the desire to be liked by everybody. As an only child and as an entrepreneur, I had a little bit of that political aspect to my personality where I wanted to be liked by everybody. As a businessperson, as an entrepreneur and as a manager, getting beyond the desire to be liked by everybody and just focus on being respected by everyone is the important thing.

HOTELS: You have spoken to lots of aspiring entrepreneurs over the years-what is the thing you hope they take away from your speeches?

PEEBLES: Each setback is an opportunity in disguise. We as a society are much more into being victims, no matter what we are doing. Walking 10 blocks and coming back, there is going to be some obstacle that we do not like. When you go into the business world, every day something is going to go wrong, and it is how you react to that setback or that problem that defi nes you. You can take the most common approach and react to it, 'Oh, how am I going to overcome this,' or you can take the other approach and say, 'OK, where is the opportunity here.' Look beyond that storm and see deep into the forest at what opportunities present themselves.