Pioneering Central Florida hotelier, hospitality school founder and prolific philanthropist Harris Rosen, founder of Rosen Hotels & Resorts, passed away November 25 at the age of 85 following complications from surgery.
A plucky entrepreneur who challenged major hotel chains wanting to dominate the Orlando market, Rosen made a significant impact on the Orlando hospitality scene, purchasing his first hotel in 1974. Always one to take the bull by the horns, new owner Rosen performed duties that included front desk manager, chef, landscaper and security.
Rosen went on to make an even more significant impact on the Orlando meetings and conventions scene with the opening of the 1,334-room Rosen Centre Hotel, next to the Orange County Convention Center, in an opaque bidding strategy to counter much bigger global hotel companies that coveted the prime location.
Rosen grew to be the state’s largest independent hotelier.
[Related: Profile: Harris Rosen, President & CEO, Rosen Hotels & Resorts]
I’ve had the honor of interviewing Rosen on numerous occasions, including in his homey, modest office in the first hotel he opened, a Quality Inn on International Drive (now a Rosen Inn) that he purchased with his last $20,000. Aside from being an extremely successful business person who launched a hotel brand that now has an estimated value of $500 million, Rosen was a proud military veteran who supported veterans causes, contributed vast sums to impoverished Orlando neighborhoods and other causes, and helped fund the creation of the UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management.
Today, UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management is the largest such hospitality program in the U.S., according to Rosen Hotels & Resorts.
A Zeal for Philanthropy
Rosen’s philanthropic efforts are legion, beginning in 1993 with Tangelo Park, which is a predominantly African-American community in Orlando with few services and many living below the poverty line. Rosen’s contributions resulted in every child in the neighborhood from age 2 to 4 receiving free access to preschool and their parents having access to parenting classes, vocational courses and technical training.
According to Rosen Hotels & Resorts, every high school graduate in the neighborhood who is accepted to a Florida public university, community or state, or vocational school receives a full Harris Rosen Foundation scholarship that covers tuition and living and educational expenses through graduation. The company says the neighborhood now boasts a 100% high school graduation rate.
In 2016, Rosen launched a similar program to benefit the Parramore District, located near downtown Orlando.
In 2002, Rosen donated $18 million to found the Rosen College of Hospitality Management at the University of Central Florida. He also funded sending medical supplies, water filtration devices and personal hygiene items to Haiti, among many other philanthropic donations to a variety of causes, including a foundation to fund brain tumor research at the University of Florida, set up in the name of his youngest son, Adam, who died from a brain tumor.
[Related: Hotelier Harris Rosen Donates $12M to Fight Brain Tumors]
Healthcare Disruptor
Never happy with the state of health care in the U.S., in 1991 Rosen offered employees of his company RosenCare, a low-cost self-insurance alternative to traditional employee healthcare plans. The program was a response to the high cost of government medical care in the U.S.
Today, RosenCare’s onsite medical facility employs its own doctors, nurse practitioners, physicians’ assistants and other medical staff and covers nearly 6,000 Rosen employees and their families.
Rosen also offers employees higher-learning scholarships after five years of service, with their children eligible after the employee completes three years of service.
Not a ‘Company Man’
Before launching his own hotel company, which has grown to seven properties in the Orlando market, Rosen worked for the Waldorf Astoria in New York City as a convention salesman. Other hospitality industry work included positions at Hilton Hotels and the New Yorker Hotel.
Rosen loved to recount the story of how he was let go from the Walt Disney Company, which he joined in 1968 in the leadup to the opening of Walt Disney World, as its director of hotel planning because of his independent streak and entrepreneurial drive, recounting that his supervisors told him he wasn’t a “company man.”
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