Ralph Hitz

Ralph Hitz (1891-1940) was a pioneer in the hotel industry, whose ideas for marketing and customer service became the industry standard for luxury lodging. Born in Vienna, Austria, on March 1, 1891, Hitz ran away from home three days after his family arrived in New York in 1906. After beginning as a busboy, he spent the next nine years working in restaurants and hotels around the nation, then got into hotel management. In 1927, Hitz was made the manager of Cincinnati's Hotel Gibson, and within two years, he had more than tripled the hotel's net income.

When the 2,500 room New Yorker Hotel prepared to open, Hitz was hired to manage the new venture, which opened on January 2, 1930, weeks after the stock market crash. Hitz's ability to turn a profit during the depression led the hotel's mortgage holder, Manufacturers Trust, to hiring him to control all of its hotels. In 1932, the National Hotel Management Company was created, with Hitz as the NHM president. By the time of Hitz's death at 48, the NHM managed the New Yorker, the Lexington and the Belmont Plaza hotels (New York); the Congress (Chicago); the Netherland Plaza (Cincinnati); the Adolphus (Dallas); the Van Cleve (Dayton); the Book-Cadillac (Detroit); and the Nicollet (Minneapolis).

Hitz tracked information about annual conventions for 3,000 organizations, and sent weekly bulletins to each of his hotels, and lobbied to have conventions booked in the seven cities where the NHM hotels were located. Hitz recognized the importance of keeping his employees happy, and paid competitive wages, sent gifts on special occasions, and protected the jobs of any employee with at least five years of service. However, Hitz's greatest strength was in the services provided to his guests. His motto was "Give the customer value and you will get volume sales in return." Hitz was the first manager to create a customer database. In the days before computers, Hitz maintained file cabinets with information on the preferences of thousands of guests. Among the uses of the data were to order the newspapers from a guest's hometown, to be delivered to their rooms.

Another Hitz idea was a closed circuit radio system, similar to the in-house television channels in modern hotels, to advertise services in each of his hotels. A guest would need only to switch on the radio to learn about the evening's scheduled entertainment and the day's menus. At the hotel dining rooms, Hitz hired a special chef (called a "Tony") to make café diablo and Crêpes Suzette, and to sell the treat an affordable 50 cents. Hitz died of a heart attack on January 12, 1940, a little more than a decade after taking control of the Hotel New Yorker.

Sources

• Current Biography 1940, pp389–90
• Philip Kotler, John Bowen and James Makens, Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 3d.Ed.', Prentice Hall 2006
• "Bitter Boniface", TIME, Dec. 13, 1937
• "You Can't Sell Peanuts at the End of the Parade" by Jerome Beatty, The American Magazine, November issue, 1932 at page 22.