Kurt Ritter (Hotelier)

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Kurt Ritter (born February 10, 1947 in Interlaken ) is a Swiss hotelier and CEO of the Belgian hospitality company Rezidor Hotel Group .

Life

Kurt Ritter was born as the third son of the hotelier family Ritter, who ran the “Beau-Site” in Unterseen near Interlaken . After the death of his father in 1955, he had to take on responsibility for his own hotel early on. After graduating from commercial high school, he attended the École Supérieure de Commerce du Canton de Vaud and later the renowned hotel management school in Lausanne , which he graduated in 1970. Kurt Ritter has three children and is married to a third marriage. He speaks German, English, French, Norwegian, Swedish and Flemish.

Career

He began his career in 1970 as Assistant Manager at the Hotel Bellevue Palace in Bern. In the following years Ritter held many different positions for Ramada International Hotels in Belgium, France, Germany and Sweden. In 1976 he moved to the SAS Luleaa Hotel in Sweden, where he worked for the first time in the position of General Manager. After moving to the Middle East as General Manager of the SAS Kuwait Hotel in 1979, he became Area Vice in 1984 Appointed President for this area.

In the spring of 1988 he became the new Vice President and COO of SAS International Hotels and returned to Europe to take up his new role at the company's headquarters in Oslo. Just one year later, he became President and CEO of SAS International Hotels, which at the time was in debt with $ 400 million. In the next few years he set on a rather aggressive austerity course, from which even the sugar that was served with coffee was not spared in order to shrink the company healthily.

He also relocated the company headquarters from remote Oslo to strategically located Brussels . In 1994 he also managed to win a very strong franchise partner, Carlson Hotels Worldwide, which allowed him to keep the name SAS. After successfully shrinking the formerly heavily indebted SAS International Hotels, he began to develop and expand the hotel group, now known as Radisson SAS Hotels, which made it the fastest growing hospitality company, at least in Europe.

In 2002, he expanded the franchise agreement and signed a hitherto unique agreement with Carlson Worldwide that allowed his company to use Carlson's own company names, such as B. Radisson, Park Inn, Country Inn in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to use and operate under its own management, in this context he implemented a name change, for strategic reasons the Rezidor SAS Hospitality was founded. Under his leadership, the company grew from 29 hotels in 1994 to 263 in 2005.

Awards

  • 2002 Corporate Hotelier of the World 2002
  • 2005 International Hotel Investment Forum Lifetime Achievement Award
  • 2005 Brillat Savarin plaque from the Brillat Savarin Foundation (awarded by the Brillat Savarin Board of Trustees of the FBMA Foundation since 2007).

Kurt Ritter is also a member of the ten-member supervisory board of the IBLF Tourism Partnership , which is run under the patronage of the Prince of Wales , and is also an appointed member of the École hôtelière de Lausanne and the Cornell-Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management , Singapore.

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personal data
SURNAME Knight, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss hotelier and CEO
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Interlaken