Bernd Chorengel

Introduction

Bernd Chorengel (born February 23, 1944, in Itzehoe, Holstein, Germany) is the second of three sons born to Henny Widderich Chorengel and Herbert Chorengel. Born at the end of World War II, Bernd's early life experience was formed during the Wiederaufbau, or reconstruction, postwar years. German families, like families in all parts of Europe that had been ravaged by the war, faced a daily struggle for life's basics such as food. This time of deprivation left a mark on young Bernd, and the challenges of those early years were, in part, to chart the course of his career.[1]

It was partially the experience of hunger and his love for good food that eventually led Bernd from Germany to the United States some twenty years later. He started his career as a sixteen-year-old apprentice chef and rose to become, in 1984, the youngest person ever appointed to the presidency of a major international hotel chain, Hyatt International Corporation.[2] At the beginning of his tenure, Hyatt owned and managed twenty-two hotel properties earning a revenue of $200 million. Chorengel grew the chain to more than one hundred hotels in over forty countries.[3] He introduced numerous iconic hotels like the Park Hyatt Paris, the Park Hyatt Buenos Aires, and the Park Hyatt Shanghai, assuring Hyatt's place as a leader in the high-end international hotel market.

Family Background

Bernd's father Herbert Chorengel, a conscript in the German Navy, was captured during the war by the British and interned as a prisoner of war in Egypt. He was released and sent home late in 1948. At first he worked as a laborer but then, through his own efforts at self-education, became a manager in a wholesale plumbing and sanitary equipment company. Henny, Bernd’s mother, was a housewife and occasional sales associate in a variety of haberdashery stores. Bernd has two siblings; an older brother Rolf, a retired lawyer; and a younger brother Lutz, who works in the hotel industry as a director of engineering. The Chorengel family were non-practicing Protestants.[4]

Bernd began his education in 1950 and dropped out of school in eighth grade, which greatly displeased his parents. “I was not a very good student and did not matriculate,” he says. While he and his parents considered his next options, his father suggested Bernd might become a plumber—a proposal which Bernd rejected wholeheartedly. The effects of growing up in the food-deprived Germany of the late 1940s and early 1950s and his love of and interest in food led him to look into an apprentice chef program. The importance of food in shaping his career cannot be overstated. Between 1945 and 1947, Germany received no food aid from international relief organizations (although the Allies provided support with basic food shipments). The goal was for each citizen to receive 1,550 calories a day in official rations, though people in some regions of the nation obtained only around 700 calories per day.[5]

It was against this backdrop of having experienced the postwar food shortages that Bernd, at age sixteen, and his mother were able to convince his father to allow him to begin an apprentice chef course at two small restaurants near his hometown in Bergedorf, a borough of Hamburg. He completed the first, practical part of the apprenticeship at the Bahnhofsgaststätten (railway station restaurant) in Bergedorf and the second half at the Klosterkrug restaurant in Neukloster, also near Hamburg. Completing the theoretical part of the course at the Hotel und Gaststätten-Berufsfachschulen (vocational school for the hotel and restaurant trade) in Zeven with top honors, Bernd was voted best apprentice in northern Germany in 1963.[6]

Wanting to learn more about the restaurant industry, and armed with a degree, Bernd became a waiter in the Klosterkrug restaurant where he had been an apprentice and began working double shifts so he could afford going to the hotel management school Dr. Speiser in Bad Wiessee, Bavaria. Because of his chef's degree he was able to forego enrollment in the practical training program and take only the theoretical part of the course in Bad Wiessee.[7]

On weekends, Bernd worked in small village hotels as a chef to earn a little spending money and decided he liked the working environment, setting his career path. Once he completed the hotel program, he headed north to West Berlin, where he spent a year working as an assistant manager in a concert coffee house. At the time, such coffee houses were very popular with the older, particularly female, German population, who loved the classical music, Hungarian bands, coffee, and cakes with plenty of whipped cream that they offered, Chorengel remembers.[8]

Feeling restless after a year in West Berlin, Bernd considered following the suggestion of a friend who recommended he join the German merchant marine and see the world. While he did not join that particular service, he did hire on to the crew of a freighter/passenger ship called the “Frankfurt” operated by Hapag-Lloyd out of Hamburg. “This experience changed my life completely,” Chorengel says today.[9]

The ship's course took Bernd from Hamburg to Rotterdam, Antwerp, Marseille, Genoa, Port Said, down the Suez Canal, to Djibouti, then across the Indian Ocean to Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Manila, Taiwan, and back. While on board, his duties were to help the purser complete the landing documentation required by each port of call. Additionally, he worked as a sommelier in the ship's restaurant. He learned how to use a typewriter, improved his English, and most importantly, absorbed the experience of new countries and cultures. On his way back to Germany Bernd told himself: “Chorengel, to work and see the world is going to be your life.”[10] He was twenty-one years old.

The Making of a Hotelier

Before Bernd sailed on the “Frankfurt,” he placed an ad in a German hotel publication, explaining his qualifications and offering his services to hotels in Germany or abroad who might be interested. He received a reply from the German general manager of the Manohra Hotel on Suriwong Road, the business district in Bangkok, offering him a job as assistant manager. Bernd accepted, and two months after he returned to Germany, flew to Bangkok to take up the position. Upon his arrival, he discovered that the manager who had employed him had left and a new, American manager had taken over. At the time, Bernd had no management experience, had never stayed in a hotel, and had no understanding of three, four, and five-star ratings. He was not even sure what an assistant manager's responsibilities were, but figured it would not be difficult to learn on the job. Less than a year later, Bernd moved from the three-star Manohra to the best hotel in the city, the five-star Bangkok Hilton. For three years he filled various management positions with Hilton in Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Manila.

In 1969, he was hired away from Hilton by the then Hyatt International Corporation, and became food and beverage manager of the Hyatt Regency Hong Kong. After eighteen months in this position, he became resident manager of the hotel.[11] When Bernd joined Hyatt, the business was comprised of thirteen hotels. Up until 1968, Hyatt had done business as Hyatt Hotels Corporation in the U.S., but, wanting to begin overseas expansion, formed a separate company, Hyatt International Corporation. Their first international operation, the Hyatt Regency Hong Kong, was also Bernd's first appointment with the company.[12]

Chorengel’s rise up the management ladder at the privately held Hyatt continued at a rapid pace. In 1973, he became vice president of Hyatt International Corporation (Southeast Asia and Australia) in Singapore and concurrently served as general manager of the Hyatt Regency Singapore.

It was a tumultuous time in Southeast Asia as the Vietnam War was raging and affected the whole region. Bernd experienced the war secondhand through the hotel's guests. They included members of the U.S. Navy, like the U.S. Seventh Fleet, who would come to Singapore on leave from their airfields in nearby Thailand and the Philippines. A number of important peace conferences took place at the city's hotels, including the Hyatt, and Chorengel quickly learned to deal with the diplomatic corps of multiple nations, among them the United States, Russia, Britain, and Germany. Immersed as he was in this world of political functionaries and military personnel, he received an education in diplomacy and discretion no university could have provided.[13]

The Rise of International Travel

The international hotel business, as we now think of it, began in the 1950s and 1960s. Prior to that time, international travelers (excluding immigrants) were generally wealthy and on a “grand tour.” In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Europe and Asia were focused on rebuilding damaged and destroyed infrastructure and not concentrating on the tourist industry. It wasn’t until a few years later, when businesspeople—many of them Americans—began to travel the world in part to advise and work on reconstruction projects, that international travel began in its modern form.

Airlines like Pan Am and TWA began diversifying into the hotel business. Pan Am's founder, Juan Terry Trippe, foresaw a need for fresh hotel stock and began the InterContinental Hotels Group in the late 1940s.[14] TWA purchased Hilton International in 1964.[15] At the same time Hyatt, along with hotel chains like Marriott and Sheraton, also began developing hotels with a distinct American style worldwide.[16]

The American influence on worldwide hotel chains meant that international hotels had coffee shops as their all-day dining facility. American travelers wanted their experience to be familiar, and requested hamburgers, hot dogs, and that all-important mug of coffee. Because of American travelers’ demands, hotel rooms had a small en suite bathroom, while most locally owned and operated hotels had perhaps a washbasin in the room, with a shared toilet and bathing facility down the hall.[17]

From the 1960s onward, people began traveling en masse, increasingly seeking out international destinations. Many of these international travelers, who were unfamiliar with the idea of “local” cuisine, wanted to eat what they knew: sushi and rice for the Japanese, croissants and strong coffee for the French, a Sunday roast with potatoes for the British. Traveling with a focus on culinary sophistication and an embrace of local cuisine was still to come.[18]

But, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, the international traveler was increasingly worldly. Better and more education, TV news, movies, changes in fashion and the opening of economic markets meant that he/she knew more about different cultures and wanted to experience them. As Communist regimes began to fall and the Cold War ended, the world wanted to see the world. At the time, no one could have predicted that, by 2014, nearly one in ten international tourists would come from one of those Communist countries, China.[19]

Developing an International Luxury Hotel Brand

In the eight years he spent as vice president of Hyatt International Corporation, South East Asia and Australia, Chorengel developed ten new hotels, with management oversight of twenty-eight hotels in the region.[20] In the volatile economic and political climate of the time, such growth was exceptional. Hotel development during these years was at a near standstill, but Hyatt, with a signature design to its hotels and an energetic staff, stood out from the pack.

The signature Hyatt design was initially used in the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, opened in 1967. This was the first hotel of its kind: instead of a long corridor with rows of hotel room doors, the Atlanta building featured an atrium tower lobby, designed by architect John Portman. Each room in the hotel was entered via the open space, with green trailing vines growing from each floor's balcony. It was a new feeling in hotel design: a sense of warmth combined with a sense of spaciousness. The concept of public space in hotels and office buildings sprang from this design and put Hyatt on the map, making the hotel chain a trendsetter. In 1981, Chorengel was appointed senior vice president of Hyatt International for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. A massive building boom across the hotel sector began at the same time.[21]

For the Hyatt corporation as a whole, the year 1980 ushered in three significant firsts: the openings of the first Park Hyatt, the first Grand Hyatt, and the first Hyatt Resort. The Park Hyatt properties were designed to be like small luxury hotels with a European feel; the first such hotel opened in Chicago. Grand Hyatts were for the high-end traveler staying in “culturally rich destinations” and included leisure, banquet, and up-to-date conference facilities—the first one opened in New York. Hyatt Resorts were designed to reflect the locale in which they were built; the first resort opened was the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa in Hawaii.[22]

Chorengel's new position as senior vice president Europe/Africa/Middle East meant a move to London in early 1982, where, over a one-year time span, he developed five management agreements for new hotel properties in the region. Another promotion, in late 1982, to executive vice president and chief operating officer of Hyatt International Corporation, quickly followed, and with it a move to corporate headquarters in Chicago.

At the time, Hyatt was still a fairly small company, privately held by the Pritzker family. Jay Pritzker was the company's chairman and became Bernd's mentor. Thomas Pritzker, Jay's oldest son, joined the company around the same time in the early 1980s, as did eventually Nicholas Pritzker, a cousin of Jay's, and Penny Pritzker, one of Jay's nieces. Interaction between Bernd and the family was casual, and the family's approach to business operations was “hands off.” They did have one unwritten rule: “Do a good job and we will not bother you; make sure you are legally correct in whatever you are doing; make sure the business makes money; and, whenever you believe you would like to make an investment, don't do it without asking.” Bernd remembers that integrity was very important to the family.[23]

Shortly after Bernd arrived in Chicago, he, the Pritzker family, and a family lawyer formed an informal board of directors. This group created a new corporate structure, with the head office of Hyatt International remaining in Chicago and regional centers in Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa, Japan, and the Middle East. The management team met formally at least once a year and informally more often when there was a need. Its members developed strategies for development, branding, human resources, finance, etc., and presented those strategies to the board, which would discuss, change, and approve decisions.[24]

In his two years in this role, Chorengel initiated a major review of the financial performance of the hotel's properties and of the brand's worldwide perception. The results of this review included downsizing the company from forty-five international hotels to twenty-two by eliminating underperforming and poor-quality hotels and upgrading others. Competitors were identified by market share, i.e. number of rooms divided by occupancy, and differed according to the respective markets (at the time, the Plaza, Exelsior, Hongkong, or Sheraton in Hong Kong, for example, and the Shangri La and Intercontinental in Singapore).[25] Chorengel also moved operational responsibility for the international business from the Chicago headquarters to regional offices for Europe/Africa/Middle East (in London), Asia Pacific (in Hong Kong), and Mexico/Latin America (in Mexico City), which lowered corporate overhead and allowed for faster decision-making processes for international staff.[26]

Chorengel became president of Hyatt International Corporation in January 1984, at the age of thirty-nine. He was, at that time, the youngest person ever appointed president of a major international hotel chain.[27] Under his leadership, Hyatt became a truly international hotel chain. By 2001, Hyatt was one of the world's largest privately owned hotel chains.

At the time of his retirement in 2007, Bernd claimed responsibility for growing the chain from a business with twenty-two hotels outside of the U.S. and Canada to a chain with 116 hotels in forty-four countries and an estimated annual revenue of $3 billion.[28] That year, Bernd discussed the hotel's development strategy—or lack thereof. By remaining a private company (Hyatt went public in 2009, two years after Bernd's retirement), Hyatt hadn't been buffeted about by the uncertainties of acquisitions and mergers, nor did they need to go public to raise money for expansion, all of which offered guests, and employees, job and brand stability. “We're constantly after new markets,” he said, “But our strategy is not to have a strategy.” He added, “Being a private company we don't have to have that corporate strategy that says in five years I want to be here and in 10 years I want to be there. By not having a corporate strategy we believe we are much more flexible and dynamic and can go with political change and economic growth.”[29]

Of Bernd's corporate style, architect John Arzarian, Jr., of the firm Lohan Anderson, said in 2006,

There are some people in your life that you meet and never forget. Bernd Chorengel . . . is a person I love being around because he is so invigorating and so interested in the whole industry. He wants everything to be new and fresh. Every project is unique and he challenges us to think ten years in advance to position Hyatt on the forefront of design, accommodations and amenities. I don't use the word genius loosely, but when you meet a person as creative as Bernd Chorengel who has been responsible for the growth of Hyatt International over the past 25 years, you make every effort to express his vision.[30]

In 2007, Hyatt unveiled a new chain of luxury hotels under the Andaz brand, which was created as a unique design-led brand for the “young at heart.”[31] “Andaz,” a Hindustani word meaning “unique style” offers a different experience for travelers, allowing them to check in via hand-held devices with staff acting as personal hosts.[32] Designed with an environmentally conscious ethic using water-saving toilets; organic, locally produced restaurant food; eco-friendly printers; and energy-efficient boilers, the Andaz brand is designed as a modern hotel that is still culturally appropriate for its location. In New York City, for example, at the 5th Avenue Andaz property, which sits across the street from the New York Public Library, the interior space reflects the neighborhood's literary history as well as the many pre-war apartment buildings of the area.[33] The lobby of the5th Avenue Andaz features a library of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a cozy den for reading and socializing, while the large guest rooms feature the floor-to-ceiling windows of the pre-war era, light fittings that mimic subway lanterns, and a loft apartment feel.[34]

Interestingly, many of these characteristics were already laid out by Chorengel when he became president of Hyatt International Corporation in 1984. Asked about trends in hotel operations, he foresaw a greater need to incorporate the natural environment into hotel rooms, provide more space and a “living room atmosphere,” let the international traveler experience the local culture and history, and make easy communication within the hotel a priority.[35]

Becoming a “Global Citizen”: The Influence of Culture

Under Chorengel's direction, the company chose to enter foreign markets by becoming part of the culture, not remaining an outside entity. Take, for example, their expansion into Beijing, China, where the word “Hyatt” does not translate. Bernd and his Mandarin-speaking colleague Tchou Ming Kong came up with the word “Yue,” which means “imperial.” Subsequently, any Hyatt built in China had some variation on the imperial name. Hotel design elements followed Bernd's philosophy of incorporating the local with the high tech: low-set, Chinese-style furniture, bamboo, Chinese art, paired with the finest restaurant in Beijing.[36]

Bernd commented on this aspect of cultural sensitivity, saying, “If you can develop your hotel as a good neighbor and not as an outside developer, you accomplish two things. First, the community accepts you, and second, the traveler, through his experience at the hotel, gains a better appreciation of the environment he's visiting. When in Rome, he can now be slightly more Roman without being afraid of it.”[37] In a nod to localization, Hyatt used a professional Feng Shui practitioner at the Grand Hyatt in Hong Kong to dictate where to place doors and fountains. In Singapore, arrows on the ceiling point the way to Mecca, and in Bali local religious leaders approved the artwork and local artifacts to be hung on the walls, and had hotel staff reposition some of the artwork they deemed too holy to be in close proximity to the hotel's restaurant.[38] In Hamburg, Hyatt moved into the historic Levantehaus, an office building from 1912. Traditional wood features (wall panels, floors) were restored and old trunks in the style that wealthy Hansa merchants used to have complete the picture.[39]

It was Chorengel’s experiences in Asia that most influenced his career and management style. The cultural values of respect for one another, in particular one’s elders, and the non-confrontational religions deeply impressed him:

While I was President of Hyatt International, these cultural influences formed my business and personal intellect and demeanor when dealing with the many facets of international businesses and societies. In the end we are all people, it does not matter what race, religion or upbringing, rich or poor. If we show the appropriate respect to each other and our different cultures, we should be able to live well with each other. It may sound a little poetic, but for me it worked and I believe these influences helped me, together with my team of international executives, to form Hyatt International, an American company, into a truly global corporation.[40]

Chorengel laid out this view in an online article published in 2007:

World travelers, and those who support them in the world of luxury hotels, have a responsibility to make a difference. In 2003, the World Tourism Organization estimated that there were 694 million international travelers, across national borders and between cultures. This represents a wealth of opportunities to make a difference, especially if we consider every interaction as an opportunity to connect, communicate and celebrate our cultural differences.[41]

In his view, these factors are important when preparing to build a hotel. Bernd wrote, in 2004,

First of all, you have to study the local religion, because as a rule the local lifestyle is based on it. That's why we work early on with local people in the planning stage of a new hotel, if at all possible. If that's difficult to do, as it is in China, for example, I have long discussions with the designers and ask them questions such as: What's your attitude toward Buddhism? What do you know about Confucianism? If the designers lack the sensitivity to local conditions that is needed, the hotel isn't going to work.[42]

It is with this in mind that Bernd calls himself a “global citizen.” After spending the first twenty years of his life as a German European, then moving to and living in various parts of Asia for eighteen years, in London for one year, then in the United States for twenty-five, he feels he has earned this title.[43] His family also embodies this idea by being a true global family: Bernd's four children are scattered throughout Asia, the United States, and Europe. The U.S. residents, son and daughter, have a German passport, plus green cards, the Hong Kong daughter has a German passport and permanent residence in Hong Kong, while his daughter in Germany has an Australian and German passport. His grandchildren have French, German, Philippine, Hungarian, and Spanish heritage; speak a mix of languages, and claim a variety of citizenships. Bernd's first wife Marla is a Philippine national and his second wife Sharon an Australian citizen.

The Second Act

Bernd retired from Hyatt International Corporation in late 2007, after twenty-five years at the top, making him the longest-serving head of a luxury hotel chain.[44] He received numerous awards and accolades from the hotel industry. The Japanese hotel magazine Hoteres named him one of the most influential hoteliers of the twentieth century[45], along with Conrad Hilton, and he received the2004 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences, along with the Corporate Hotelier of the World Award fourteen years earlier in 1990, shared jointly with Hyatt Corporation President Darryl Hartley-Leonard.[46]

With all of his successes in the industry, Bernd chose not to rest on his laurels in retirement. Instead, he began a boutique hotel consulting and management company, BC Fine Living. Now dividing his time between his native Germany and Asia, he offers advice and expertise to others entering the boutique hotel market while creating a unique brand of his own. According to the company's website, BC Fine Living aims to capture “a culture of commitment and value for each individual guest, inspired by the hospitality of the home.” This, along with their commitment to “timeless, sensible design blended with a thoughtful service style which honors and respects the distinctive customs and cultures of each locale” reflects Chorengel's personal philosophy on the hotel experience.[47]

This is the way forward for the hotel industry, Bernd believes, in part because the current customer base has become more savvy and educated and appreciates differences in lifestyle throughout the world. “The present industry is too homogeneous,” he says, “but I do not think that this is the future.” Most existing hotel chains are maintaining the status quo, rather than innovating. They need to change, he thinks, in order to become true global enterprises, more focused on the needs of the traveling public. Chorengel predicts that, in the near future, new companies will develop with more cultural diversity in every aspect of the industry: architecture, interior design, restaurant, and bar concepts.[48]

Most of the current major hotel chains date back to the 1950s and 1960s and have a very specific style. Bernd feels that the modern traveler wants to experience the country and city in which he is traveling. This is his aim with BC Fine Living: create a small hotel with local staff, with local and indigenous artwork on the walls, using local flora and fauna in the surroundings, and source local food for the restaurant.

No one wants to wake up in a hotel room in China and not know where they are because the room looks just like the hotel room they left in New York, he feels. By giving tourists the local flavor along with all the modern conveniences, the industry can be innovative in a timeless way.

Why do we build an American or French hotel in Beijing? Why don't we build a Chinese or Japanese hotel in New York? Or, should we build a Chinese hotel in Beijing, an American hotel in New York, a Russian hotel in Moscow? If we would do it, it would be culturally correct. Would this fit into the brand image of a specific company? If we are able to do it, we would show the traveling public the hospitality of the host country and pay tribute to local traditions.[49]

Bernd believes the hotel industry needs to learn from other industries, like fashion, which changes twice a year, and car brands, which offer new models every three years, among others. You can't change the interior or infrastructure of a hotel every year; it must last for twenty or thirty years, so don't build a trendy or fashionable hotel, he says, build a hotel that is timeless. Along with this, build true global corporate management teams (much as he did while at Hyatt) with a mix of nationalities representative of the cultures and countries in which the company does business. Chorengel criticizes that many corporate management teams do not understand the local culture and will send out an executive with a corporate mindset who tells staff what “head office” wants and then leaves without taking into account local needs or environment. Managing in such a way, says Bernd, is missing the point of respecting cultures and communities.[50]

Conclusion

Living the immigrant experience in more than one country is unusual, but so is Bernd Chorengel's path from grade school dropout, whose father hoped he would become a plumber, to president of a multimillion-dollar international corporation. It is, in keeping with his own view, a global success story, a matching of nations and nationalities, languages and customs, which forged a working—and life—philosophy of inclusion and understanding. His second career reflects many of the values of the twenty-first century (learning from others' world views, working with local citizens, artists, and farmers) and in some ways recreates the hotel philosophy of yesteryear (small hotels with local staff, local food, and local feel). Learning from the cultures, customs, and traditions of each country where he lived and worked, alongside local staff, meeting diplomats and dignitaries, taught Bernd the most important lesson in his world view: we are all the same people, with similar needs and desires. He has created a truly global working family not just for the present, but also for the future.

Notes