Harris Rosen: Orlando’s Hotel Magnate
The year was 1974. The Middle East oil embargo hiked up the price of oil to (gasp) $12 per barrel. The price of one gallon of gas for U.S. drivers was (gasp again) 57 cents, which curtailed many Americans’ summer travel plans, so much so, that many of the hotels in the Orlando area closed their doors.
So what did Harris Rosen do? Buy a hotel, of course. The Quality Inn on Orlando’s International Drive, to be exact. Smack in the middle of the city’s tourism recession. Using most of the money he had in the bank as a down payment, Rosen closed on the hotel June 24, 1974.
That’s how bad Rosen wanted to work for himself. Armed with a degree from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, Rosen had spent 13 years working as a convention salesman for New York’s fabled Waldorf-Astoria, in various management positions with Hilton hotels, and finally as Director of Hotel Planning for the Walt Disney Co.