Meet Marisa Aranha (IMHI 84), who is the Head of Commercial Overseas Hotels at Fosun Tourism Group. We recently had the opportunity to chat with her about her experience and her life after IMHI.

AAIMHI: What do you remember from your time at IMHI?

Marisa:  It was a wonderful experience! And probably the best from my student academic life. Being able to stay, as an overseas student with French students, coming from India, in an American program, in a French university for two years was extraordinary. I could hold on to my native language English but had the opportunity to start learning French. 

These were probably the best two years of my academic life as a young 20-year-old. I was studying in a program with students from over 16 nationalities, I was able to share a flat with four French girlfriends and improve my French and knowledge of French culture. The level of English of the French people at that time was low and therefore I picked up French faster than possibly nowadays. 

IMHI was a great start to my career! Professionally it pointed me to where I wanted a career in hospitality namely sales & marketing and gave me the theoretical base as one of the few MBA hospitality programs to make a difference as I started my career in Europe. It helped me form close and long-lasting friendships and you build relationships that stay. Just recently I met again with some of my former batchmates who remained friends, as I continue to stay in touch with some of them after staying connected over the years.  

As you move to professional life, you realize the importance of those shared moments and you learn to cherish them. 

AAIMHI: What did you do after IMHI?

Marisa: As I did not have any papers to work in France and I preferred to enhance my career with work experience in Europe, there were not many different opportunities for me after IMHI. But there is no wrong or right path in your life. I believe that you need to have a clear understanding of which companies you want to work with, and which companies can give you opportunities to grow and to move on in your career. 

Therefore, I chose to work for Hilton, at that time and I wanted to work with bigger brands with the priority of gaining experience. I had no problem starting at a supervisory/management trainee levels or assistant management levels as it was for me a real operational learning experience. 

At that time, brands like Hilton and Hyatt had a different approach than nowadays as they did not yet understand the caliber of graduates from Master programs such as IMHI. Today this might be different. 

It was a good perfect possibility to stand out from others, as you learned the theory through IMHI, which complemented the possibility of getting the operational experience in the hotel. I believe it helped me to get the right fundamentals and the foundation for sales and marketing and to move faster in my career. 

After my experience with Hilton, I changed to Hyatt Hotels where I worked in Global Sales. It was a great professional personal experience for me, overseeing global sales and being tasked with the opening of the global sales offices in France, Spain and Italy at a very young age. I was able to travel and build relationships and learn about all the challenges in driving revenue in a multi property environment. My on property experience at Hilton helped me to turnaround difficult hotels and open a few at Hyatt ..

After that I moved to Millennium Hotels as the Area Director of Sales and Marketing for Continental Europe. This might have not been my most positive experience, but in any situation, you must pull out the best and to gain experiences for your next roles. 

Here I was able to learn about opening properties, rebranding and repositioning hotels and I gained experience in the US market, while creating promotional campaigns and partnerships with luxury brands which was something restricted to head offices of Hilton and Hyatt at that time. I learned a lot about navigating interpersonal skills on a local, regional, and global level.  

Following that, I moved to Le Meridien hotels in what became a financially difficult period for us all. Indeed, the hotel group went through a transitional period as it was taken over by Starwood Hotels & Resorts. During this period of approximately 18 months, I learned how to deal with the uncertainty of the future. 

Meridien was a medium sized company, team oriented in management and leadership style, with a very supportive environment. It is interesting to note that Starwood retained me and the entire team as the only global team regionally, so we did something right as we say!!

It was an intense experience, moving from 100 hotels to 1200 hotels, learning about new systems and technologies, dealing with new General Managers, and helping them perform. I learned a lot about owner relationships in a global company and how to navigate in a very corporate environment. 

Then, I decided to move to another continent, after 20 years in Europe. I started in Bangkok at a much larger role in a smaller group with the Minor Hotel Group. A choice you make either you continue as a small fish in a big pond, or you become a big fish in a small pond. I chose the latter as I moved to working at the global head office of a growing company with multi-industry interests, building the infrastructure with smaller brands and a very different level of brand luxury. The group had several owned hotel assets and various franchises, and I somewhat became the owner representative dealing with the franchised Hotels and aligning them with our corporate goals. 

I then moved to reposition the Soneva Resorts which transitioned out of Six Senses Resorts and Spas, a very high-end brand. This meant re-positioning a luxury brand with a new sales and marketing infrastructure. This then enabled me to move to a new challenge to launch a new brand and reposition existing hotels to the new brand with the Shangri-la Group. You do not get a chance everyday to launch a new brand in marketing in hospitality and my brand experience at Starwood helped me to make this happen successfully with benchmark revenue results for big hotels that opened under the brand.

After 10 years in Asia, I moved back to London. A move at the right time and presented a life in Europe I enjoy again but at a different time in my professional and personal life. 

In my present role at Fosun Tourism Group I look after two lifestyle hotel brands Casa Cook and Cooks Club hotels for the new generation of holidaymakers. Overseeing creating the entire commercial development in a startup environment has been my biggest challenge in a long time. Indeed, dealing with a hospitality startup in our current covid and post-covid environment, building up a team, the acquisition of Talent is a big task. Building up a team from scratch with no resources or infrastructure, doing everything yourself, can be quite rewarding but as well exhausting. Currently I am handling all aspects of Marketing, Distribution and team leadership, while reporting to a non-hotelier, which is challenging in many ways. But you do see the needle move with promising results in the upcoming season. It has also helped me to strategically have a vision …keep the big picture in mind but roll my sleeves when needed to ensure this needle moves.

But in my very early years I studied psychology and I remember a conversation I had with late Robert Beck, Dean of Cornell, asking me why I would join IMHI after psychology.  I answered that the hospitality industry is the business of people, and I learned a lot about people through psychology. Indeed, you can observe behavior, respond to their background and it helps you understand why people react in a certain way. 

AAIMHI: What are the lessons you learned over your career that you would like to share with the younger generation of IMHI?

Marisa: Some of the lessons I learned throughout my career is that you need to be an empathetic leader and a good communicator with your peers, managers, and employees. 

You need to take risks and not fear failure when you're making decisions. 

Always remain consistent in your leadership, recognize talent, and try to bring out the best in the team while you develop them. For this trust is critical. As we all work in a hybrid environment today, we need to be very clear on the brief and then trust that our team will deliver. 

Stay focused in your life and don't get too much into politics. I am personally a very vocal person that shares her opinions, but I had a chance to work with fantastic bosses that gave me the needed autonomy to deliver and achieve as long as they were always updated and informed. 

Choose which battles you want to fight. As a woman, you sometimes must be more assertive than men. Hopefully this is beginning to change, but we often feel in business leadership the need to prove more than men. 

Be proactive. You learn overtime that you can easily avoid situations and avoid crisis management on the team if you think ahead and get better results. 

But all in all, the most important thing is to have fun and enjoy it. Be passionate and always stay humble, as it allows you to learn, listen and grow. Don't push it too much and don't neglect that you have a personal life as as the work-life balance remains an important priority in one’s professional life.

AAIMHI: Thank you Marisa for sharing your story and your wise words with us! Looking forward to seeing you on our 40^th Anniversary celebration.