Waking ambition
When you start any new job you don't expect to get as much sleep as you would like. I will only get four hours for the next two nights because I am visiting hotels. Tomorrow I'll arrive at Manchester airport at 8am, look at our hotel there, move on for more site visits to Huddersfield, Newcastle and Keswick and finish in Blackpool around midnight. The day after I'll finish Blackpool, move on to St Helen's then back to the airport in Manchester.
At home I get up at 5.30am and let our Rottweiler and West Highland Terrier out for a run. I'm not a big breakfast person - a banana or one of those cereal bars is about it. I do not drink during the week; it makes it too hard to get up this early. This was much commented on when I worked at Whitbread.
If it's an office day, I'm at the Watford head office by 7am. As I'm not in much, there's a lot to get through when I am there. I have had the same assistant for eight years, we've been through three companies together and she knows what I need to see.
I have a low boredom threshold and I don't like reading or talking on the phone. I did get into e-mail when I was working with Travel Inn, but at Hilton I prefer to talk in person. I have a dozen people who report to me and I have a lot of one-to-one meetings.
If I get lunch, it is a sandwich, but usually I eat all the wrong things in the car or late at night. I prefer sushi from Prêt à Manger or one of those wraps. If I'm out, I often get so excited about work I forget to eat, even when the people I am with are starving.
When I was younger, I thought I'd be a director at Forte, like my father. [Dennis Hearn was deputy chief executive at Forte in the early 1990s.] I admired my father, and my ambition has always been to be a director on the board of a FTSE 100 company.
I'll leave the office at about 8pm and, if it's summer or school holidays, the children will be up to eat with. It's important that I am hip as far as my three children are concerned. I'm taking my two girls, who are aged 10 and 11, to see Steps in December, I'm up on Pokémon and WWF. Last weekend I took my 14-year old son to see the film X-Men, but thankfully he's going to see Marillion, a progressive rock band, with his friends.
My wife does most of the cooking, although I am a whizz at the barbecue. I'm a real news fanatic, so I flick through Ceefax and Web sites and watch news programmes. Last thing, I'll check stock prices, first Hilton's then my own personal portfolio.
FACTS:
Hilton Group
Hilton Group chief executive: David Michels
Chief executive officer of Hilton International: Anthony Harris
Operating areas: UK and Ireland; Europe, Middle East and Africa; Asia Pacific; and the Americas
Hotels: 220, in more than 50 countries
Employees: 62,000
Turnover 1999: £1.9b
Hotels in UK and Ireland: 82
Turnover (UK) 1999: £516.2m
JUST A MINUTE…
What would your last supper be?
One with food poisoning, presumably.
Who would you invite to your dinner party and why?
Margaret Thatcher, Salvador Dali, Richard Nixon and Gianluca Vialli. I remember what this country was like before Thatcher, with its three-day weeks - we were the laughing stock of Europe. The recovery she led was a bloodless revolution. I love Dali's stuff - he was a bit off-the-wall, and I have a quirky side, too. Nixon was brilliant, but will always be remembered for what happened at Watergate. And Vialli is a nice guy and I like Italians.
What is your message to Tony Blair?
Get serious about tourism and stop changing ministers every year. The industry is still not taken seriously enough in terms of what it brings in in tourists and employment.
interview by Sara Guild
Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 12-18 October 2000
