By Jeff Weinstein, Editor In Chief – Hotels, 11/1/2007

You may be wondering why I have decided to run a second article on Raymond Bickson so soon after the first. It’s not a complicated answer. If the first introduced us to this unique hotel manager’s gifts in “Building a Mark Hotel Church,” this piece points out his continuous use of his talents and energy to serve his company, his guests, and his family in the hotel business when long-term integrity is in short supply in any endeavor today. Enjoy.
R. B.

Inside Raymond Bickson is the soul of a surfer who, now at age 51. has learned to go with the flow and ride whatever waves come his way. The man who grew up in the surf of Hawaii with honest “aloha” spirit, trained in Europe, worked around the world with renown luxury hotel keepers and now heads a 100-plus-year-old historic hotel chain has had quite a ride in the hotel business. And all along the way, the genteel Bickson has remained true to what he learned in the surf and from his mentors: be patient, be genuine and just “be there” for your team and your guests.

One of the most well-liked figures in the hotel industry has “been there” for more than 30 years now, first earning his stripes in the kitchen at the Berlin Hilton then as general manager first in 1987 at the Regent Shanghai and, perhaps most-memorably at The Mark in New York City and now as manager director of Taj Hotels and Resorts and Palaces, Mumbai. For his incredible people skills, a career full of global luxury hotel successes and most certainly for his aloha spirit, the readers of HOTELS magazine have voted Raymond Bickson 2007 Corporate Hotelier of the World.

“Working for entrepreneurs helped direct me to where I am today,” says Bickson, who sat down for this interview in a suite at The Pierre in New York City, a hotel he acquired in 2006 as part of Taj’s plan to expand globally into key gateway cities. “I have always worked with that attitude – first at Regent Hotels and then with the Rafael Group. Hoteliers then were trained to look at service and luxury as if they were true proprietors and that point-of-view– helped me adapt and gave me the backbone for running a business larger than one hotel.”

While Bickson believes he still has so much to accomplish and says there is certainly a whole page that needs to be turned, he is not quite sure where he will be in 10 years–if not on a beach where he can go surfing. “ I always wanted to own my own hotel as some hoteliers in the past have done, like Hernando Courtright with the Beverly Wilshire and Jim Nassikas at The Stanford Court – they built those as individual brands. Maybe one day that would be a good way to retire – but I guess those are the famous last words of many hoteliers,” Bickson says with a laugh and his usual broad smile.

You will notice, Friends, that Raymond Bickson is once again depicted as the ever-present, attentive inn-keeper at the Mark Hotel, whom some of us would like to see as an example for the leaders of theChurch, welcoming and serving all in loving friendship.

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