Name: Javier Rosenberg
Title: Chief operating officer, Americas, and executive vice president, managed hotels
Company, city: Carlson Rezidor; Minnetonka, Minn.
Number of employees: 80,000 globally
Recent project: Opening the Radisson Blu in downtown Minneapolis
First job: I was a butler at Claridge Hotel Buenos Aires.
Little-known fact about you: I’ve lived in 11 cities in eight countries, and all three of my kids were born in different locations.

Your Business

Essential business philosophy: Do your job with passion, and work hard. Attention to detail is essential.

Best way to keep a competitive edge: You must be four things: customer-focused, humble, nimble and accessible.

Yardstick of success: In my industry, it’s customer satisfaction and business growth.

Javier Rosenberg as a Traveler

What is the most important item you take when traveling?
All of those items to keep me connected, such as my phone, and noise-canceling headphones

How do you spend your time on board?
Working

What is your favorite restaurant in the world?
Ard Bia at Nimmos in Galway, Ireland; it’s a small, typical Irish house serving great food.

What is your favorite destination in the world?
The south of Argentina in the summertime

About Carlson Rezidor

Carlson Rezidor recently introduced the Radisson Red brand in the Americas. Tell our readers about the new brand.
Radisson Red is adapted to the millennial customer — a connected hotel guest who appreciates design, social spaces and art. The brand focuses on food and beverage, offering great bars and dining outlets for the guests, while also being tech- and customer-centric. Everything is available at the guests’ fingertips. We find these customers enjoy time spent mingling with other guests in the social spaces, chatting and getting to know fellow travelers; there’s an emphasis on designing these areas to be welcoming and open. It’s an upscale select brand, defined as an upscale product designed to adapt to select services. Our goal is to operate 60 by 2020, and there are more coming to Europe and the Americas in the next year.

The Radisson Blu brand is rapidly expanding. Where can our readers expect to see new properties?
Currently, there are 285 Radisson Blu hotels, with a concentration in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Expansion is focused in the Americas; in Latin America, we recently opened a new hotel and announced another. Radisson Blu is also an upscale brand, and we are looking to open another 25 or 50 hotels in the near future.

How has the Radisson brand been reimagined in North America? Tell us about the improvements across the U.S. portfolio.

For the past five years, we’ve focused on cleaning up the brand, eliminating some properties and renovating others, with about 79 percent complete. Radisson reimagined includes more tech elements, improved products and softer components. We describe them as traditional hotels with contemporary flair, and there’s been record growth. There are more than 150 properties across North and South America, with properties in Rio de Janeiro; Cartagena; New York at JFK International; Hartford, Conn.; Toledo, Ohio; Fresno, Calif.; and Calgary being reimagined.