Who inspired you to pursue your chosen career path? We all know someone who decided on a career because of a passionate parent, grandparent or teacher. Perhaps that someone was even yourself.

Jerry Inzerillo can pinpoint the exact source of inspiration for his 50-year career in the travel and leisure industry. Rather than a case of who inspired him, however, it was a case of what inspired him.

“It was poverty,” Inzerillo tells The CEO Magazine. “What got me into the business is that we were poor.”

It was the chance to earn money that spurred him at age 13 to get a job as a banquet busboy for a catering firm in hotels across New York City. The only problem was that he was three years shy of the minimum age to work past 8pm; however, his father found a compassionate judge who fudged the year of birth on the all-important work permit.

“In our neighborhood, we had a lot of poverty and a lot of problems,” he continues. “So, to meet a kid that actually wanted to work was something, and the judge made my 1954 birth year look like 1950.”

That was, he says, the way benevolence worked in those days. “You looked after your community, and this was a good judge,” Inzerillo explains.

It may have been decades ago, but Inzerillo remembers the day like it was yesterday. “May 2, 1967 – that’s the date I started working in hotels,” he says.

It was, he says, love at first sight. “Instead of a home with no heat or hot water, I found myself in a beautiful banquet hall where everybody was dressed up, the band was playing, all sorts of great food and beverages were being served up, and everybody was laughing and dancing,” he says. “I thought, ‘Man, you get paid for this? I’ll take that job.’”

That job would accompany him throughout high school and formalize into a career when he decided to pursue his studies in hospitality and tourism at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. At the same time, he continued to work as a night auditor at Flamingo Las Vegas, a vast hotel and casino complex in the heart of The Strip.

Joy, festivity, jubilation and razzmatazz

If the early years in New York taught him that hospitality was an industry of joy, festivity and jubilation, his time in Las Vegas was a schooling in showmanship and razzmatazz.

“Las Vegas was good, college was great, I was top of my class and worked very hard,” he says.

By the time of his graduation in 1975, Inzerillo headed back to New York to start a meaty role as Executive Assistant Manager at the 1,800-plus room New York Statler Hilton, which was demolished in 2023 but at one point considered the world’s largest hotel.

One of his first projects was coordinating the 1976 Democratic National Convention that nominated President Jimmy Carter – who became a close friend of Inzerillos’.

His work didn’t go unnoticed and offers started rolling in. Before he celebrated his 25th birthday, he left New York again, this time for Miami and the Executive Assistant Manager post at Fontainebleau Miami Beach, then a Hilton property.

“That was a big assignment, because it’s a very famous hotel in America,” he says.

It might have enjoyed national fame, but it also needed a lot of work. Fortunately, Inzerillo liked the challenge and what Hilton stood for. “The hotel was in terrible shape, but the quality and employee culture at Hilton meant a lot to me,” he says.

This success led to a pivotal moment in his career – the chance to build and launch the US$85 million Four Seasons Houston Center as General Manager in 1982.

After eight years with Four Seasons – including two as General Manager of Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas – Inzerillo had more than enough expertise and experience to spot a vacuum in the industry.

“There weren’t any hip hotels for young people; places that could be what I called ‘lobby socializing spots’ or nightclub alternatives,” he says.

So, at the height of Inzerillo’s success with Four Seasons, he quit to start Morgans Hotel Group with Studio 54 Co-Founders Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell. Taking everything he’d learned in his career to date, across hotel administration, departmental profit, operating standards and employee culture, the trio, he describes, “essentially moved the hotel business into the nightclub business – and the nightclub business into the hotel business”.

The trio’s first hotel, Morgans Hotel, opened at 237 Madison Avenue in New York and is considered to have been the world’s first boutique hotel.

“It was a very seminal move, and a lot of people have since reproduced the model,” he says. “We brought pop culture into the hotel business – and I’m very proud of it.”

New horizons

If there’s one hallmark across Inzerillo’s legendary career, it’s to expect the unexpected. And perhaps none more startling to his now 97-year-old mother was the news in 1991 that he was packing up for South Africa, just as it emerged from apartheid, to build the master plan of The Lost City at Sun City Resort – South African business magnate Sol Kerzner’s sprawling luxury resort and casino complex northwest of Johannesburg.

He served as COO of Sun City from 1991 to 1996, and in 1994 also orchestrated much of President Nelson Mandela’s Presidential Inauguration.

“I shocked everybody when I left Morgan Hotel Group to move to South Africa; everyone thought I was out of my mind,” he says.

But he reflects that the years he was there were amazing, especially on a personal note, for introducing him to Prudence, his South African wife.

As an executive of Kerzner International, he was soon back on the road, taking the Lost City concept to the Bahamas with the launch of Atlantis Paradise Island. “We took a bankrupt operation in the Bahamas and within one year made it very profitable,” he says.

Five years later, another Atlantis debuted in Dubai on the Palm – the first luxury hotel resort to be built on the man-made island.

In all, he spent two decades as President of Kerzner International, much of it based in New York. In 2011, faced with a choice of moving to Dubai, where Kerzner International is headquartered, or staying at home to spend time with his dying father, he chose the latter. And he soon found himself immersed in the world of artist and celebrity management as President and CEO of IMG Artists, a role he held for two years.

The gold standard

For someone of Inzerillo’s stature in the world of business, opportunity is always knocking, and, in 2014, one in particular piqued his interest.

“I was approached by Jeff Arnold, the inventor of WebMD,” he explains. “He also owned the Forbes Travel Guide, and they were losing a lot of money. He was thinking of selling.”

Inzerillo could see potential in the challenge and came on board as CEO.

“My idea was to take this meritocracy in hotel administration and globalize it like an Olympics,” he says. “We did, and it’s now considered the Olympic gold medal of hospitality.”

He loved his time at Forbes Travel Guide – so much so that he’s still Vice Chairman of the company – but in 2018, another opportunity came knocking in the form of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“They came and told me about Vision 2030, about what was going to happen in the Kingdom,” he says. “So I went to my wonderful wife and told her it was a game changer, that it would reposition Saudi Arabia and empower all these young Saudi men and women, particularly the women.”

It was one of those chances that come by that you can’t say no to. “I wanted in on that,” he says.

Only one Diriyah

Of all the aspects of the Crown Prince’s ambitious blueprint, there was one that spoke to Inzerillo above all others: Diriyah, a 300-year-old mud brick settlement in the middle of a historic oasis, the Wadi Hanifah, on the outskirts of Riyadh.

“I love the Red Sea project, I love Neom, I love all the other projects, but, as we say now, there’s only one Diriyah,” he says.

The site, which comprises palaces such as the 10,000-square meter Salwa Palace, is considered the birthplace of the Kingdom and the ancestral home of the House of Al Saud, the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia. At its height, Diriyah was a center of art and culture and home to 30,000 people. It was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status in 2010.

As the Crown Prince started to sketch out his Vision 2030, Diriyah held a pivotal position as the birthplace of the Kingdom. “As the Crown Prince says, we will be great in our future if we celebrate our rich past,” Inzerillo says.

As Group CEO of Diriyah Gate Development Authority, Inzerillo is charged with carefully bringing this historic site into the present while still maintaining a sense of tradition and authenticity.

“Diriyah is a source of Saudi identity and a source of pride for all Saudis, and it is our duty to uphold and respect its heritage and significance,” he says.

It’s a significance that makes the task at hand for Inzerillo and his team at the DGDA all the more challenging. Along with a meticulous restoration of the UNESCO site, over 14 million square meters of concentric circles are being newly built around it to house the amenities needed, including nine museums, 40 hotels, dining and retail experiences, golf and equestrian clubs.

“We will be able to accommodate 100,000 people to live and learn and recreate in this walkable, pedestrian-friendly cultural jewel in the middle of the metropolis of Riyadh,” he says.

As the Kingdom targets 150 million tourists by 2030, Diriyah is being positioned to capture the luxury traveler, with high-end hotel brands such as Rosewood, Anantara, Four Seasons, Raffles and Capella along the names set to open their doors within the site in the next few years.

A blessed career

From the United States to Africa, the Caribbean and now the Middle East, Inzerillo’s career has been a wonderful journey around the world.

“Careers are episodal; they are sometimes defined in chapters. Mine has been very blessed,” he says.

At the core is his belief that service is nobility.

“If you do good work, it may not go as smoothly as you always planned, but the end result will be great. I feel blessed to be able to do very influential work with a historical asset during a very important time in the Kingdom,” he says.

Inzerillo’s transformative work in the hospitality industry makes him a deserving winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award at The CEO Magazine’s 2024 Executive of the Year Awards.

“The award is the ultimate recognition of my devotion to serve and joy in serving and making people happy,” Inzerillo explains.

“It’s a great personal honor for me because there’s nothing more fulfilling than being recognized by your peers.”

He also knows that there’s still plenty of work to be done as 2030 inches closer.

“When you hold up a picture of the Eiffel Tower, you don’t have to tell anybody that it’s in Paris. You hold up the pyramids, the Colosseum, the Acropolis. You don’t have to tell people what country it’s in,” he says.

“My end game, or the first lap of the relay race, is that by 2030, when you hold up the silhouette of Salwa Palace, everyone will know that it’s Saudi Arabia. That’s my emblematic goal.”