Prior to being executed by firing squad in 1989, Nicolae Ceausescu, former Communist dictator of Romania, and his wife, Elena had started to build a grand-scale guesthouse in Bucharest, as part of his grandiose public building scheme. Today, Marriott International, the U.S.-based hotel chain, has opened a new 402-room, five-star hotel known as the Bucharest Marriott Grand Hotel in what was once a skeleton of a building.
The new Marriott Grand is the largest hotel in Romania, which also has the largest conference facilities and the biggest fitness center (operated by World Class Health Academy). Marriott has a 30-year contract to manage the hotel for a pan-european consortium of investors, according to a report on Reuters. About $150 million has been invested in the business hotel project. Area companies include AT&T, IBM, Citibank, General Motors, Siemens, and Bayer.
A third of old Bucharest was leveled to create Ceausescu's Palace of Parliament, the world's third largest manmade structure, surpassed by the Pentagon in the United States and the Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. Ceausescu was in power from 1965 to 1989. Shortages in fuel and power in the early 1980s led to strict rationing and public discontent grew. Thousands of people marched to protest against the decline in living standards and working conditions before his execution.
Rick Zeolla, a 38-year-old Pittsburgh native, is the new general manager of the Marriott hotel, according to a profile in Bucharest Business Week. Zeolla went to the Bucharest hotel from a position with Marriott in Poland, which he helped earn the "Best in Central Europe" hotel award by Business Traveler magazine for two years in a row.
According to Zeolla, the Marriott Grand houses a shopping arcade, casino and a health center with swimming pool and squash courts. Zeolla is not new to gentrification as he recalled watching Pittsburgh go through a transformation in his youth. His father moved the family from Pennsylvania to the greener pastures of Texas by accepting a job with Bayer Corporation.
Zeolla's career with Marriott started 'accidentally' he noted when he decided he didn't like the life the recruiters from the accounting firms were describing to him when he was in his senior year of college, majoring in accounting. He took a trainee position with Marriott in Austin, Texas and five years later, he got the call that changed his life: "At five pm on Valentine's Day 1990, my life changed," recalls Zeolla. He was told about an opportunity in Munich and asked if he would he like to go to Europe.
"I didn't even have a passport," he said. He and his wife spent a frantic weekend calling friends and relatives for advice and information about Germany, then they sold their house and their cars and he started his new job on the third of March.
He remembered being terrified: "Americans typically are not very worldly and I learned a lot about perceptions outside the U.S. I made a lot of mistakes in the first year, trying to bend others to fit my own needs."
Pat Rioux
