São Paulo – As of the Maksoud Plaza hotel’s inauguration, in December 1979, São Paulo only had one five-star hotel: the Hilton, in the centre. The building that originally housed the Hilton, now located in the Brooklin neighbourhood, is now the Court of Justice of São Paulo. The Maksoud, in turn, remains in the corner of Alameda Campinas and Rua São Carlos do Pinhal, near the city’s main postcard, Paulista Avenue. Until this day, all decisions regarding the future hotel is its creator and owner, the Lebanese descendent Henry Maksoud. These days, making decisions is what the 82-year-old businessman does the most. The Maksoud Plaza is undergoing a series of overhauls that should bring it up-to-date with its competitors.
Henry says the Maksoud is always undergoing some work and claims not to worry about the competition, nor to mirror it in order to run his hotel. “They are the ones who keep an eye on everything I do,” he says. Before the first half of the year is over, the Maksoud will boast a new heliport, capable of receiving helicopters weighing up to five tonnes. Below it, roughly 90 metres above the ground, there will be the Belvedere bar and restaurant. “We will have a view of the entire city, like that of the Itália Building,” says Henry’s grandson and the hotel’s director of operations, Henry Maksoud Neto. “From there you can see [mountain ranges] Serra do Mar and Serra da Cantareira,” he says.
The 416 apartments are being equipped with thin-screen TV sets and laminate flooring to replace the old carpets. The polycarbonate coating that lightens the open span from the floor to the ceiling has been replaced by a glass coating that filters UVA and UVB rays. In late 2009, the building façade was adorned with colourful designs and LED lamp lighting. Henry claims that none of it is to do with loss of guests to other hotels (the average occupancy rate ranges from 50% to 55%). The gym room also received new equipment. These are the most recent updates to one of the city’s most traditional hotels.
“The Lebanese are pioneers. It’s in our blood,” quips Maksoud, a son and grandson of Lebanese. His father, Nagib Maksoud, came to Brazil in 1923. He made a stop in Rio de Janeiro before moving to Aquidauana, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. In the small city, he met Adélia Damus, also an Arab descendent. They married and had four children. Henry Maksoud, the eldest, was born in March 8th, 1929 in Aquidauana. He grew up watching his father work at store Casa União.
He also lived in Campo Grande before his parents sent him to São Paulo to study. He graduated in Engineering from the Mackenzie university and completed his postgraduate studies in the United States. In Brazil, he established Hidroservice, the company that built the Tom Jobim international Airport, in Rio de Janeiro. “It was the world’s largest in engineering consulting,” he says. The company is not the same size as it used to be. In 2007, due to a labour justice-related debt on the part of Hidroservice, the Maksoud was auctioned, but no bids were made.
The businessman did not restrict himself to engineering work alone. In the 1980s, Henry Maksoud was the director of a publishing company responsible for eight magazines (the main one, Visão had a print run of 200,000 copies). In the early 1990s, he hosted the TV show “Henry Maksoud e você” (Henry Maksoud and you) on channel TV Bandeirantes.
Henry decided to build Maksoud Plaza because he believed there was space in São Paulo for a new luxury hotel. “The city’s five-star was the Hilton. I thought São Paulo didn’t offer many options,” he recollects. After its inauguration, the Maksoud attracted famous and prominent guests, such as singer Frank Sinatra and the British prime-minister, Margaret Thatcher. At present, Brazilian singers and songwriters Paulinho da Viola, João Gilberto, Djavan and Maria Bethânia are among the regulars.
Matters related to the hotel take up most of Henry’s time and should continue to do so, because he guarantees that he does not consider letting go Maksoud Plaza. Proposals are plenty. “I get calls almost every day, but these people don’t invest, they don’t want to spend their money. I will not sell,” he says.
Aside from not letting go of the hotel he owns, the businessman wants to expand the network. As he updates the facilities, he is working to complete his new enterprise, Maksoud Plaza Manaus Hotel & Resort, by the banks of Rio Negro, in the capital of Amazonas. Works began 12 years ago, but he guarantees that the hotel will be ready by the 2014 World Cup. “We had to do a study on the river’s floods and prepare ourselves so the water will not flood the hotel.” For such, engineers have used sand and earth to raise the height of the portion of the island where the hotel will be. Once completed, the resort will have 300 rooms (and may be expanded to include another 300).
All of that without forgetting to take care of the hotel in São Paulo. Henry Maksoud Neto estimates that investment should reach 3 million reals (US$ 1.8 million). The overhaul, however, does not alter some of the features of the Maksoud: the careful attention towards guests, the pool decorated with small gold-plated tiles and the open span from the ground level to the top floor. No competitor offers that. “I have made the Maksoud to be always ahead. And it is,” says the owner.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
