Aug. 13, 2000 - Don�t talk to Atef Mankarios about brand power. The soft-spoken hotelier who used to run The Mansion on Turtle Creek and Hotel Crescent Court might just go ballistic. 

The 51-year-old Egyptian-born chairman of Foresthills Hotels & Resorts believes that the predictability proffered by brand names is a polite euphemism for mediocrity. He gives a blood oath that you�ll never see the name of his Dallas-based company on any of the worldwide properties it manages. 

�Branding may have its place at McDonald�s,� he sniffs. �But at the high end of the market, an educated, sophisticated consumer who is paying hundreds of dollars a night for a hotel room deserves more respect than a repetitive branded product that suffers from bland consistency spread across the world.� 

Tell us how you really feel, Atef. 

Mr. Mankarios picks up a small white box of matches inscribed with �Rosewood Hotels & Resorts� and flips it across his office table. �That came from The Mansion,� he says with a note of disgust. �That would have never happened had I been there.� 

Conflicting philosophy with new ownership from California led him to abandon the helm of Rosewood Hotels 18 months ago. He wanted to control his own destiny and score big. The entire executive team at Rosewood followed its boss to Foresthills for pretty much the same reasons. 

If you doubt Mr. Mankarios� devotion to distinction, consider the two Egyptian dinner ships that he�s renovating to cruise the Nile. Scores of dining ships already ply the fabled river under flags of Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton, Royal Sonesta and so on. 

�We�re trying to design a product that separates us from everybody else,� Mr. Mankarios says. �I didn�t want just two more boats on the Nile.� 

So the Texas Star and the Yellow Rose�as he renamed the former Opal and Topaz�will serve Tex-Mex to a mostly Middle Eastern clientele as they view the splendor of the river. 

�We prefer to call it Texas cuisine,� he says, �but in reality, it�s Tex-Mex.� 
OK, so it�s Tex-Mex à la James Rowland, formerly executive chef at the Hotel Crescent Court, with menu dishes such as garlic lamb tostadas and smoked turkey pumpkin enchiladas. 

�Egyptians love colorful, flavorful, tasteful food in abundance,� says Mr. Mankarios, who grew up in a middle-class neighborhood just miles from where the boats will moor in Cairo. �Isn�t that what Tex-Mex is?� 

Then there�s the matter of the portholes. �All the other boats neutralize the view by having portholes covered with curtains. All that�s left is the bouncy boat and the ordinary food,� he says.  �It took no genius: Let�s have bigger windows so we can look at the beautiful scenery and magnificent river.� 

Managing Upscale

But his new company isn�t really about boats. 

In less than two years, Foresthills has assembled an impressive list of national and international hotels and resorts to manage, including the newly restored Warwick Hotel & Towers in downtown Philadelphia. 

The company also has contracts with the Palazzo Arzaga, a restored 15th-century palace near Verona, Italy; Le Port Palace Monte Carlo being built along on the edge of Monaco�s famed Yacht Harbor; and seven other unusual destinations from California to the Turkish stretch of the Aegean Sea. 

�The way the market has embraced us is unprecedented for a start-up,� says Mr. Mankarios.

�Getting the project is one thing. Delivering on what you promise is much more important.� 

Denny Alberts, former president of Rosewood Property Co. and now president of Fort Worth-based Crescent Real Estate Equities Co., wasn�t the least bit surprised that seven members of Rosewood�s hotel executive team and three administrative staffers left with their boss. 

�People work for Atef,� says Mr. Alberts, who promoted Mr. Mankarios to Rosewood�s top hotel spot in 1989. �They don�t work for the company.�

Robin Leach, legendary chronicler of the rich and famous, once dubbed his buddy �The Prince of Perfection.� 

Mr. Mankarios blanches at the moniker, saying, �I am far from perfect. Perfection is a quest that you constantly seek but can never attain. It�s not an event; it�s a lifelong process.�

Actually, Mr. Mankarios� career began more as a prince in darkness�serving as a night porter in a small 40-room hotel in Paris where his one duty was to stay awake. 

He migrated to France after graduating from college in Cairo�ostensibly to get his advanced degree in international business law at the Sorbonne�but somehow he never really tended to those studies. 

�It was a dream of my father�s, not mine,� he says simply. 

In the fall of 1985, after various stints with Hilton and The Four Seasons in Amsterdam, Toronto, Edmonton and Calgary, Mr. Mankarios came to Dallas to interview for the job of resident manager at The Mansion. He was smitten with the hotel�s elegance and grace and charmed by Rosewood owner Caroline Rose Hunt. 

�I liked the fact that it was a new, budding company with immense potential,� he says. 

His claim to hotelier fame began after his promotion to managing director in 1987. For its first six years, The Mansion earned four stars from the Mobil Travel Guide. Good but no cigar, by Mr.  Mankarios� lofty standards. 

�The mood was, �We�ll never be five-star because they want us to make impossible changes,�� he recalls. �I said, �Baloney! If we accept that, we�ll always be four-star.�� 

Mr. Mankarios rallied the troops and implemented a department-by-department offensive. Every minute element of the five-star designation was assigned to some staff member. 

On its next inspection in 1989, the swank Turtle Creek establishment became the first Texas hotel in years to earn Mobil�s highest rating. 

�I�ve always lived with the premise that nothing is impossible. It may have a bigger price, but it�s not impossible,� Mr. Mankarios says. �I�ve always been a bit of a maverick. You pay a price for that, too. I�ve gotten my tail kicked in a few times in my career.� 

Earlier that year, Mr. Mankarios had been named president of Rosewood Hotel Group, which also owned the Crescent Court, the Bel-Air in Los Angeles and the Hana-Maui in Hawaii. His ascension came just in time for Texas� deep economic descent, with both The Mansion and Crescent Court losing money in 1989.

Rosewood sold the Bel-Air and Hana-Maui that year to overly eager Japanese investors for about $210 million and a hefty profit. Mr. Mankarios expected the hotel group to get at least a portion of the booty, but the money was veered into other Hunt interests. 

�I figured, �This company�s going to collapse pretty soon, because nobody can sustain these two hotels with all the infrastructure and losses,�� Mr. Mankarios recalls. ��Not only am I going to be out of a job. I�m going to go down in hotel history as the one who took Rosewood down.� I thought, �Damn it. I�m not going to let that happen.��

Branching Out

He persuaded the Hunt family to go after third-party management contracts and pulled off one of the biggest hotel coups of the decade by winning the contract for a posh London hotel being built across from Buckingham Palace. 

While other behemoths in hotel management espoused past triumphs as their pitches, Mr.  Mankarios created a complete imaginary hotel in its boardroom. It was named The Lanesborough on Hyde Park, with personal-butler service and an indigenous British Isles cuisine. 

�We created an English manor, not a hotel,� Mr. Mankarios says. �I don�t know what inspired me to do that. But that�s what we did. We gave a complete look at what to expect from us.� 

The owners adopted the whole plan, and The Lanesborough was an instant success. �The hotel today has the highest occupancy and highest average rate -- $600 a night�in London,� Mr.  Mankarios says of the property that Rosewood continues to manage. �It�s been doing that since 1992.� 

Rosewood�s move into managing hotel properties was a good strategy, he says. It created a strong, financially sound company that was operating ten luxury hotels when Mr. Mankarios left. 

The Lanesborough, The Mansion, The Crescent and Ms. Hunt will always hold a special place in his heart, he says. But when Rosewood sold a half-interest in its hotel business to Maritz, Wolff & Co. of Los Angeles in 1997, it was time to say adios. 

Mr. Mankarios wanted his company to reach critical mass quickly, so he hooked up with a strategic investment partner who was in sync with his philosophy. New York-based Apollo Real Estate Advisors has put up  $25 million in start-up and working capital and has an additional $50 million fund earmarked for hotel and resort real estate investment. 

Baron Ulf von dem Bussche-Ippenburg chose the little management company in Dallas, Texas, to handle his Hotel Relais de L�Abbaye over several global branded giants. He wanted special treatment for his project, which is converting a 16th-century French abbey into a 120-room hotel, spa and golf course on 25 acres in the hills above Nice. 

Baron Bussche says his London home is �30 yards away� from The Lanesborough, so he was well-acquainted with that hotel�s �extraordinary success.� 

�You have to have somebody who knows how to market [a project] properly, run it professionally and has similar artistic interests as you,� he says. He wants The Lanesborough level of attention but customized to suit his unusual property. �We won�t have butler service. We�ll have French valets.� 

Mr. Mankarios has walked away from deals when the karma wasn�t right. 
�I turned down a project in California that I don�t think any other company would have turned down.  It was probably $2 million in fees,� he says. �But hopefully I�m old enough and smart enough to realize that taking something short term for the wrong reasons can cause you a lot of long-term problems.� 

Following a Vision

Foresthills should have fee income of $3.6 million this year, he says. That will balloon quickly after the seven properties under construction and those two cruise ships become operational. Mr. Mankarios expects to have 20 to 22 properties under contract by 2004, with management and marketing fee revenue approaching $20 million and an enviable profit margin of about 60 percent. 

Earning a piece of that action was one reason that George Fong, the 50-year-old partner in charge of engineering and construction at Foresthills, followed his boss of 13 years. 

While he didn�t envision renovating dinner cruise ships, Mr. Fong says, it somehow fits their strategy. 

�Atef has a strong, unfailing vision of where he wants to go, what luxury and service mean and how to maximize the potential of a property.� 

Mr. Alberts echoes the praise when he learns about his friend�s plans for the Nile. �You know what? It�ll work,� Mr. Alberts declares. �It�ll work, and his guests will have a fabulous experience that is uniquely Atef.� 

When Mr. Mankarios pitches his company, he doesn�t focus on his past successes but on how to make the hotels or resorts world-class destinations. 
�When I�m in Budapest, do I really want New York?� he asks rhetorically. �What happens inside each building we manage has to be a unique, elegant, beautiful experience. Otherwise it�s just a stay, and it�s boring.� 

© 2000, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.