Mark Zipperer, president and CEO of Germantown, Tenn.-based Pride Hospitality, has spent more than four decades in hospitality, founding his business to manage hotels owned by his family and friends before partnering with other owners. The company—which develops, owns and operates hotels through management agreements—currently manages hotels representing Hilton, IHG, Choice and other brands.
Zipperer grew up on a farm and got a job as a caddy at the local private golf club when he was 12. In high school, he became assistant general manager of the club, and learned about hospitality from the general manager. While he had originally planned on going to the University of Wisconsin to be a pharmacist or veterinarian, he instead graduated with a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Administration.
While in college, he interned at the Holiday Inn Milwaukee South - Airport and the Holiday Inn Lake Shore Drive-Chicago as a management trainee. His mentors there were Tony Deangelis at the Holiday Inn Milwaukee South - Airport and George Glover, the regional director. “Both gave me the opportunity to work as manager on duty and taught me a lot about decision making and leadership styles that work in hospitality,” Zipperer said.
After college, Zipperer took a management trainee position with Granada Royale Hometels, eventually working at properties in Bloomington, Minn.; St. Paul, Minn.; and Austin, Texas. When Holiday Corp., which owned the Holiday Inn brand at the time, bought the company, his Austin hotel became an Embassy Suites. “Some of my former bosses in the Chicago regional office became my new Embassy Suites corporate bosses,” he recalled.
Over the years, he transitioned from operations to corporate GM training and recruiting, moving to Holiday Corp.’s world headquarters in Memphis, Tenn., and finally IHG’s Atlanta headquarters as director of hotel openings. (He also spent a year in the late 1980s as regional human resources manager for Marriott International.) The opportunity to “move up in the company and serve in corporate positions close to operations” kept him with IHG for 15 years, eventually becoming director of franchise services for the central U.S. and Latin America.
Creating Something New
In 1991, as the director of new hotel openings, Zipperer was on the team that launched the Holiday Inn Express Brand. “My father's goal was always to help set me up in my own business,” he noted. The senior Zipperer was building Interstate 43 from Milwaukee to Green Bay, Wis., and each new clover-leaf exit was a new hotel development opportunity for the younger. “We bought land at one of those exits and opened our first Holiday Inn Express in Sheboygan, Wis., in 1995,” he recalled. While still working at IHG, his family bought an independent hotel and also began building their second Holiday Inn Express in Brown Deer—North Milwaukee. With a portfolio of three hotels, he decided to step away from IHG and focus on his family’s portfolio instead.
Zipperer launched Pride Hospitality in 1998 to buy out the family’s initial partner and manage the three hotels. “It was a risky move to leave IHG, a company I loved, and go from managing 17 direct reports and a region of [more than] 400 hotels, to a new company that had two hotels and one under construction that I was financially responsible for,” he said. Initially, the company intended to develop and manage its own hotels, but after Zipperer left IHG, owners he had worked with asked him to manage their properties as a management company.
Today, Pride has a managed portfolio of 12 hotels and invests in new hotel assets and partners with other owners who Zipperer has done business with. “We currently have a few projects under development and new management agreements in the pipeline,” he said. “Given the current costs of hotel development, we are also seeking more strategic alliances and partnerships to help us grow the company.”
After more than 40 years in hospitality, Zipperer still takes pride in his work and his accomplishments. He has been a member of the IHG Owner’s Association since 1997 and in January of this year became the Association’s global board of directors’ chairman. And there is another accomplishment that he can be proud of: For Zipperer’s 50th birthday, the Pride team sponsored a scholarship at the University of Wisconsin. “I maintain that scholarship for future students,” he said.
This article was originally published in the November/December edition of Hotel Management magazine. Subscribe here.