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Back inSeptember 2007,
about a year before “the world fell apart,” Starwood Hotels & ResortsWorldwide named Frits vanPaasschento the position of CEO.VanPaasschencame to the hospitality industry fresh, after two years as CEO of Coors Brewing Company and after seven years at Nike, where he fin- ished his term in charge of European, MIddle Eastern, and African business.
Which is all to say that van Paasschen was hired not for any
hard-won hotelier’s savvy, but rather for his successful experi- ence with what Starwood felt were, as the company said in a press release, comparable “consumer-focused, global lifestyle brands.” At the time of his hiring, van Paasschen said: “This is an exciting period of transformation for Starwood as it estab- lishes itself as a leading global hotel operator and lifestyle com- pany with many outstanding brands.” It turned out to be all that, and muchmore. Convene caught
up with van Paasschen this past spring in Harlem, at a corpo- rate social responsibility event that Starwood co-sponsored with PepsiCo. (See “A Tree Grows in East Harlem,” below.) At the time, van Paasschen, an avid runner, was on crutches, recover- ing from recent knee surgery—but that didn’t stop him from visiting all of theCSRevent’s various sites, as well as expressing his “strong personal belief” to the gathered volunteers “that business has not only a great responsibility, but an opportu- nity, to do good by doing well.” Afterward, van Paasschen spoke to Convene about CSR, branding and design, what “downstairs people” want in a hotel, and how the Great Recession has and hasn’t changed the lodging business forever.
ATree Grows in East Harlem
One morning in late May, I headed to East Harlem to cover the kick-off corporate social responsibility event for Starwood Hotels & Resorts’ new“Get More forYour Meeting, Give More toYour Community” promotion.As Starwood CEO Frits van Paasschen told the more than 100 Starwood asso- ciates who were gathered at a well-manicured,Target-spon- sored community garden on East 117th Street, the rallying point for the event: “We are proud to bring the spirit of our new meetings offering to life today by taking time to give back to the community in a meaningful way—and hopefully, we’ll encourage others to do the same.” After a few brief remarks, van Paasschen and Margery
Schelling—chief marketing officer for PepsiCo Foodservice, Starwoods’ event partner—presented theNewYork Restora- tion Project with a (big) check for $50,000. Workers for the New York Restoration Project, a nonprofit “dedicated to
110 pcma convene December 2010
reclaiming and restoring NewYork City parks, community gar- dens, and open space,” were on hand to guide the Starwood associates in their clean-up efforts.“Color Captains” led teams of associates to five different sites in EastHarlemtoweed gar- dens, plant trees, pick up trash, and more. One pair of Starwood team members, Trina Mapa, in rev-
enue management, and Cecilia Rueber, a sales analyst, planted a new dogwood tree in front of Mount Pleasant Sen- ior Housing on East 116th Street. Remarked Mapa,who lives on Manhattan’s East Side: “It’s fantastic to get out [of the office], help the community, and clean up New York.”
Excerpted from a post on Convene’s blog by Hunter R. Slaton (http://pcmaconvene.blogspot.com/ 2010/05/tree-grows-in-east-harlem.html)
What attracted you about the hotel business? First of all, about Starwood specifically—the focus on global growth, the lifestyle hospitality brands, and the history of inno- vation. But broadly, what I thought was so interesting about the hotel business is the combination of branding and design with finance, deal-making, operations, and getting alignment in a large organization—and then doing that across 100 countries. The variety of challenges and opportunities in a leadership role across those different things is extraordinarily seductive.
How well is Starwood positioned for the next 10 to 20 years, when most meeting professionals and business travelers will be members of Generation X or Generation Y? First of all, I think that there will be a fundamental shift in the way this newgeneration behaves as a culture generally, and then as travelers more specifically.Myownview is the changes in dig- ital communication fundamentally will alter the way people relate to each other; that the entry into the global marketplace of people around the world means we’re talking about a much more culturally diverse generation. And, finally, I think concern