Hotelie Hall of Fame Inductees
Game Changers – 2023
Harris Rosen at the Rosen Shingle Creek for Rosen Reveal, Photo by Roberto Gonzalez
From GrowingBolder
Harris Rosen: A Man on a Mission
“From humble beginnings, Harris Rosen has built one of the largest independently owned hotel groups in the country. But a hotelier is not what Rosen is; it’s simply what he does. Rosen is family man, an educator, a healthcare provider, a swimmer, a legendary philanthropist and a passionate advocate for civil rights and racial equality. And he’s issuing a challenge to other business leaders around the country — why aren’t you investing in your communities and in your people, too?”
https://growingbolder.com/stories/harris-rosen-a-man-on-a-mission/
Harris Rosen is President and COO of Rosen Hotels & Resorts, a hospitality company of nearly 50 years featuring an award-winning collection of seven Orlando-area hotels (three convention and four leisure) comprising close to 6,500 guestrooms and suites and 700,000 square feet of meeting and event space. With an unyielding, people-first focus, Rosen is a visionary leader in the hospitality, philanthropy and healthcare industries.
Growing up in New York’s Lower East Side in the 1940’s, nothing came easy for Harris Rosen. His family’s modest apartment still stands at 18 Monroe Street between the East River, the Bowery, Little Italy and Chinatown. After attending Music & Art High School in the Bronx, Harris Rosen applied to mostly fine arts colleges, but also Cornell University. He still marvels at the fact that he was accepted to Cornell and graduated four years later with a degree in hospitality management.
After graduating, Rosen then served in the Army for more than three years as an officer in Germany and South Korea.
Rosen began his career in hospitality as a convention salesman at the Waldorf=Astoria in New York City and continued his rise with the Hilton Hotels Corporation holding various management roles in Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cape Kennedy (FL) and Dallas.
Eventually, he landed in Orlando after taking a job with Disney, working on hotel designs and even creating its central reservation system. It was around that time when Rosen realized if he was going to be happy and fulfilled, he had to consider being in business for himself.
The early 1970’s was a tough time in the United States with a stock market in decline and an Arab oil embargo making gasoline scarce and costly. Hotels in Orlando struggled, mightily. That opened the door for Rosen as he took all his savings, some $20,000 dollars, and agreed to purchase a small, 256-room Quality Inn with a two-million-dollar mortgage on the property which he assumed during the purchase. There was no going back.
He did everything from cooking and cleaning to gardening and front desk. Rosen lived on property and even converted two rooms into an office and a tiny apartment with a small stove up against the wall.
Today, Rosen remains in that same office in what is now the Rosen Inn International. His success allowed him to purchase two other hotels which are now the Rosen Inn closest to Universal and Rosen Inn Lake Buena Vista and build the Rosen Inn Pointe Orlando, Rosen Plaza, Rosen Centre and the crown jewel of the collection, Rosen Shingle Creek. His success in the hospitality field is legendary, only matched by his success as a philanthropist and humanitarian.
Harris Rosen, Shingle Creek; Rosen Centre; Rosen Plaza, photo by Roberto Gonzalez
Rosen is a pioneering philanthropist for education. In 1993, Rosen created the Tangelo Park Program which has provided free preschools for all 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds who live in the underserved Tangelo Park neighborhood in Central Florida.
All the neighborhood children who graduate from high school and are accepted to a trade school, community college or four-year public college or university in Florida are provided with scholarships that include tuition, books and room-and-board—paid for by Rosen’s foundations. To date, more than 200 Tangelo Park youths have received full college scholarships.
In 2016, Rosen’s passion for providing hope through education led him to embark on a second similar program in the Parramore neighborhood, an urban community located near downtown Orlando that is five times the size of Tangelo Park. Rosen provides the same post-high school education opportunities as he does for Tangelo Park children. In addition, he funds the Rosen Preschool at the Orange County Public Schools Academic Center for Excellence. His hope through both initiatives is to change America one community at a time.
He has also been a major supporter of the University of Central Florida and made a major financial donation in 2002 to develop the Rosen College of Hospitality Management, which is currently the top-rated hospitality college in the nation and ranked second in the world.
Rosen and The Harris Rosen Foundation also made a $12 million gift to advance innovative brain tumor immunotherapy research and care at UF Health and to launch an unprecedented partnership for the development of novel brain tumor treatments. The Rosen gift is the cornerstone of a $100 million fundraising commitment led by the University of Florida to support the ReMission Alliance Against Brain Tumors, a groundbreaking, collaborative initiative that will unite world-leading neuro-oncology physicians and scientists in dynamic research and clinical trials.
The gift was announced Friday, Feb. 22, 2019, before the inaugural ReMission Summit for Brain Tumors at the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel in Orlando. The UF-organized Summit brought together more than 100 experts in neuro-oncology, tumor immunology, genetics, artificial intelligence, neuroimaging and bioinformatics to form an elite research community focused on achieving transformative outcomes for patients with brain tumors over the next decade. The ReMission Summit also served as the public forum for the debut of the ReMission Alliance.
This collaborative strategy for brain tumor research resonates deeply with Rosen. His son, Adam, died in November of 2018 at the age of 26 after a two-and-a-half-year fight with brain cancer. Throughout his own struggle with the disease, Adam remained committed to helping others and raising money for Orlando-area families of children fighting cancer.
Rosen’s support of UF’s work with the ReMission Alliance builds on his longtime commitment to healthcare.
In 1993, he established an in-house healthcare program that included a medical center to provide access to personalized care for his associates. His revolutionary view of the healthcare system provided the foundation for RosenCare, which keeps comprehensive care costs down, while providing insurance coverage rich in benefits for his associates. To date, his organization has saved close to $500 million in costs.
He also established the 12,000-square-foot Rosen Medical Center, A Place for Healing and Wellness, in 2012, which includes a full offering of comprehensive primary and occupational care services. In recognition of his achievements, Rosen was honored in 2018 by the World Health Care Congress with two Lifetime Achievement Diamond Awards in Health Benefits Innovation and Public Leadership.
Rosen has received numerous awards and recognitions during his lifetime of service and philanthropy. In 2022, Rosen received Leadership Florida’s highest honor, the LeRoy Collins Lifetime Achievement Award for his efforts to improve the lives of all Floridians. He also received the United Negro College Fund’s Community Champion of Education Award for his efforts in Tangelo Park and Parramore.
