Leadership Biography: Douglas Artusio

Dellisart Lodging Hospitality Management

Thirty-year industry veteran Douglas Artusio is the founder of Dellisart Lodging Hospitality Management, a Alpharetta, Georgia-based developer of hotels in the United States and overseas. His experience ranges from operations to development to finance. The company currently operates four hotels, with plans to open more domestically and abroad in the next few years.

Douglas began his career in the lodging industry after graduating from the College of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Niagara University. His various job titles in his career have included director of marketing of a 1,000-room hotel, director of service development, vice president of operations, and vice president franchise sales for one of the world’s largest hotel franchising companies. This unique background and experience aids him to view each and every project from a variety of different perspectives.

Douglas spent the early years of his professional career employed within Marriott Corporation. Having started as a desk clerk, he spent the better part of his 19-year career with Marriott heading up various sales and/or marketing activities.

Based on his reputation for success, Douglas was recruited by Mike Leven, the then president of Holiday Inn Worldwide, to serve as vice president sales & marketing for the 135 North American company owned hotels. Later he accepted the added responsibility of vice president of operations for all Canadian based hotels in the company owned portfolio. In all, he spent eight years working within the Holiday Inn Worldwide Organization. His last position was of vice president of franchise sales of the Western Region. In this role, he was directly involved in negotiating over 500 license agreements.

Douglas, in March of 2001, provided his employers at Six Continents Hotels with a full 12-month notice of his intent to take his career to the next logical level. With the blessing of Tom Oliver, then chairman, he left the employment at Six Continents in March of 2002. He then formed Dellisart Lodging Hospitality Management.

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