So sorry to hear about the passing of Mr. Harris Rosen. An Orlando tourism giant every bit as important as Mr. Disney, Mr. Rosen created a hotel empire, enjoying an extraordinary level of success while setting a standard for quality employee relations and philanthropy.
He will be missed.
Funny you mention the UAE, the investigative journalists at the Sentinel once discovered that the CEO of Visit Orlando spent $10k on a first class flight to Dubai (Visit Orlando gets its funding from TDT, which is tax dollars).
They also discovered that Harris Rosen was on the same flight sitting in coach with a ticket he bought with his credit card lol.
EDIT: I don't know why this post appears above Roberts, it was posted after.
We were in the middle of a server switch, and the time setting was off there for a bit, which scrambled the timestamp on comments for a bit. (It thought I was in London?) I am judging it a "no biggie" as all seems to be good now. My Rosen comments follows, below.
When I visited the UAE, leaders there were almost giddy when telling me that they were proudly sending their very best hospitality students to "Rosen" - the school at UCF. The man's work truly was internationally famous.
Dude is [was] a legend.
For those unfamiliar with his story, he grew up in a NYC ghetto and got his foot in the door in the hotel industry there, then made his way to Florida as a hotel exec at Disney for a brief stint. He thought he was doing well but was randomly fired for not being enough of a company man.
Then he walked into some random Quality Inn on I-Drive and asked the owner if he could buy the hotel. It was the 70s oil crisis and tourism was way down so the guy was probably upside down on his loan, so he was happy to sell. He hooked Rosen up with the bank, the bank asked him how much money he had, Rosen said $20k, and the bank said "that's exactly how much you need for your down payment." So he took over a million dollar loan with a $20k down payment on some random hotel in Orlando in the middle of the oil embargo when tourism was way down.
Then in order to drum up business, since he had no car or money, he basically hitch-hiked up to the Northeast to meet with charter/tour bus companies to secure contracts (according to him, not sure if there's any way to completely verify this). He made deals with some bus companies and started business partnerships that went on for decades. Meanwhile he was working front line jobs, managing, and owning the hotels as they expanded and slowly he was acquiring more on I-Drive.
Eventually he ended up with 7 hotels, mostly all clustered on International Drive near the Convention Center and Universal, as well as one he just bought like 5 years ago in Lake Buena Vista. He was a pioneer with "Rosen Care" where all of his employees pay a max of $1,000 per year ($2,000 per family) and everything is covered. His "Rosen Care" complex is right at Sand Lake and I-4. Also for the past several decades Rosen Hotels has been a completely debt free company.
Not only that, he also pays for EVERY KIDS pre-school AND college/trade school in the whole Tangelo Park neighborhood, he (obviously) donated the land/money for the UCF Rosen School of Hospitality Management, and he was known for calling every single employee on their birthday.
He did have some disagreements with local journalists because he was one of the main drivers of the TDT constantly being used to expand the convention center (which obviously he was a big benefactor of), but they always treated each other with respect and even Scott Maxwell would always write well of Mr. Rosen and wrote a very nice article right after his death was announced.