This year, Rosen Hotels & Resorts is celebrating its 50th anniversary. The Orlando-based hospitality leader is best known for its three popular convention hotels.
Rosen Shingle Creek, the company’s AAA Four Diamond flagship hotel, features 1,501 guest rooms, 524,000 square feet of dedicated event space, a championship golf course and an elevated commitment to farm-to-table freshness through its onsite garden. The 24-story Rosen Centre soars over the heart of the city’s convention and entertainment district with its 1,334 guest rooms and 164,000 square feet of meeting and event space and is connected by covered skywalk to Orange County Convention Center. Rosen Plaza, also directly connected to the convention center covered skybridge, offers a boutique-like feel throughout its 800 guest rooms and offers 60,000 square feet of high-tech meeting space.
Todd Frappier, chief sales and marketing officer for Rosen Hotels & Resorts, has been with the company for more than 30 years and has firsthand knowledge about much of the growth and community-boosting initiatives spearheaded by the company’s founder, President and COO Harris Rosen. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary, Frappier spoke with us about celebrating this important milestone, how the company and Orlando have flourished and the entrepreneurial spirit of Harris Rosen—which manifested in a hands-on approach, industry education and giving back to the community.
How is Rosen Hotels & Resorts celebrating the 50th anniversary?
We kicked it off in January with the Rosen Reveal magazine, a publication offered in all our guest rooms and properties, with some stories about Mr. Rosen, what the company is all about and how being an independent company allows us to be more creative and flexible when competing in the extremely competitive convention market. We also highlight Mr. Rosen’s philanthropic spirit and his passion for education and healthcare.
We just celebrated our associates at the annual anniversary luncheon; we do this every year, but it had special meaning this year, of course, as we celebrated some of the company’s most-tenured associates, all the way up to Mr. Rosen’s 50 years. We also had a 50th anniversary celebration at Rosen Shingle Creek with local dignitaries, clients and community leaders. Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings even proclaimed June 24 as Harris Rosen Day. That special evening showcased “a taste of Rosen” with the amazing food our executive chefs and culinary teams provide our guests daily.
We’re celebrating the 50th anniversary at our properties through June 2025 with new, unique anniversary desserts, special events and promotions for our clients including customized incentives.
It’s always great to look back on how we got here and celebrate all the accomplishments of Mr. Rosen and the company, and everyone at the company is very excited about the next 50 years and where we’re going. We’re committed to the Orlando community, our associates and the endeavors Mr. Rosen has started.
How have the company and Orlando grown over the past 50 years?
When Mr. Rosen started the company and purchased his first property in 1974, this country was still feeling the impact of a foreign oil embargo. Of course, Orlando was also a lot smaller than it is today. Mr. Rosen had just been let go from Walt Disney World and decided that he needed to be his own boss. At the time, he wasn’t sure if buying a motel was the best decision, since getting gas was difficult and few people were traveling.
Orlando has certainly evolved as a destination over the past 50 years, with Disney putting the area on the map from the tourism side and that growth continuing with SeaWorld and Universal. The Orange County Convention Center has dramatically impacted Orlando as a meetings and conventions destination—first opening with 150,000 square feet and now at 2.1 million square feet and growing. So, Orlando has the best of both worlds: It’s the No. 1 U.S. tourist destination and either No. 1 or No. 2 in the convention market.
As far as Rosen Hotels & Resorts, we grew in 50 years from one small motel to now seven properties with over 6,300 guest rooms and 4,000+ associates. But I think the core of Mr. Rosen is still the same—it's all about taking care of our associates and offering them a great place to work with great benefits. And we have so many associates with long tenures on our team who have provided great service to our guests throughout 50 years.
How has Harris Rosen’s entrepreneurial spirit helped drive innovation and growth?
The entrepreneurial spirit of the company starts with Mr. Rosen. As we’ve grown the company, Mr. Rosen has been and remains very visible. He created the company with a very hands-on, no-red-tape philosophy—working hard and exceeding customer expectations.
It was important for Mr. Rosen to remain focused on Central Florida, even with opportunities to grow the company outside of the area. By staying hyperlocal, this allowed him to really keep his finger on the pulse of his properties. This way, he could hear what customers were saying or welcome a client for a site inspection. He even shakes guests hands when groups arrive and thanks them for their continued support. Those are the moments clients remember and bring up when they return year after year.
It’s also important for him to meet and talk to his front-of-the-house associates and those behind the scenes to find out what’s critical to provide the best guest service experience.
He also grew the company without debt. He’s always paid cash whether it was for a renovation, a new ballroom or a new property. As a child, Mr. Rosen learned very early in life not to have any debt. So, all of his growth, while it could have been faster at times, came with paying cash and therefore put us in a great position, especially during difficult times, and allows us to continue to prosper.
After graduating from Cornell in 1961, Mr. Rosen joined the U.S. Army and served as an officer overseas in Korea and Germany. After leaving the Army, he worked for Hilton at the Waldorf-Astoria, and moved onto other jobs before signing on as part of the design team for Disney, working on the original properties. He also worked at the Contemporary Resort overseeing the reservations department. He’s always been somebody who can make things happen. He can get from point A to point B as fast as anybody, whether that’s helping underprivileged communities, taking care of associates or making good on his commitments to clients before they arrive. He opened all three of these convention hotels ahead of schedule, which is unheard of in this industry. He has that entrepreneurial, roll-up-your-sleeves work ethic and he enjoys seeing that same spirit in the associates he surrounded himself with over the years.
Harris Rosen’s philanthropic efforts are well known. Tell us why these efforts have been important to him?
Mr. Rosen was championing corporate social responsibility before it was a buzz word. His giving back to the local community has been unbelievable. While you do have to have outstanding hotels, ballrooms and top-notch culinary to compete, giving back is every bit as important. Mr. Rosen’s philanthropic endeavors in the community also help separate us from the competition. He and his foundations provide free preschool and college or trade school scholarships to children in two of Orlando’s underserved communities. Those college scholarships cover tuition, room & board and books, with the goal that students can graduate debt-free. One of those communities, Tangelo Park, had a high crime rate and an extremely low high school graduation rate. Fast forward 30 years, and now crime is down to next-to-nothing and the graduation rate is almost 100%.
Mr. Rosen feels that it doesn’t matter if you’re in a gated community or an underserved community, everyone should have the same educational opportunities. When you create those opportunities, it levels the playing field.
How did the Rosen College of Hospitality Management come to fruition?
Dr. Abraham Pizam was the dean of the hospitality program at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and had a vision for creating something bigger and better. Mr. Rosen shared that vision and generously donated time, money and resources to UCF to build a new school in Orlando’s hospitality corridor. They included dorms so students could live on campus.
The story goes that Cornell has always been the No. 1 school, and Mr. Rosen graduated from Cornell, so he knows what a great hospitality school is. Now Rosen College has surpassed Cornell as the No. 1 hospitality school. Mr. Rosen set the bar high from the very beginning, providing a beautiful campus, top-notch professors and the tools any student would need to succeed. Not to mention, it is located in the heart of Orlando’s convention and entertainment district, surrounded by a world-class convention center, world famous theme parks, premier hotels and restaurants and all of the businesses that support this thriving hospitality community.
Tell us about the RosenCare healthcare program.
Many years ago, Mr. Rosen noticed the cost of his insurance policy increased from the previous year. He didn’t understand why, so he called his provider and they said, “Well, you might have had a good year, but others in your group didn’t, so your policy went up.” So, he looked into it and decided, “I can do this on my own.” He opened a healthcare facility with a primary doctor and became self-insured, and that grew into RosenCare, a health plan with a dedicated medical center where our associates and their dependents can go for primary healthcare and then get referred out for other services, if needed.
The plan is rich in benefits, but low in costs to the associate. For example, approximately 90% of medications are at zero cost to the associate. We have found an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The goal of RosenCare is to take care of people before problems arise. It’s about wellness. It's about providing programs for our associates to keep them healthy, providing access to various clinics onsite so associates can get a skin cancer exam or a mammogram, for example, while on the clock without the barriers that might prevent or delay someone from getting an exam. Access is everything. Anything we can do to keep our associates healthy is a good thing. And that goes above and beyond just having a spectacular healthcare facility. Healthy associates are happy associates and we found that by providing outstanding benefits, employee retention is a lot higher than industry averages. Now, with RosenCare, we’re branching out into other areas and offering similar templates to other organizations looking to keep their associates well and cut down on costs.
