The infinity pool on the roof of the
Marina Bay Sands
hotel in Singapore is one of the best hotel addresses in the world.
Boss Rob Goldstein is the top earner in the industry.
Photo: Vivek Prakash/ REUTERS
Hotels closed, travel slowed down – 2021 was a challenging year for tourism companies around the world.
The corona pandemic led to a drastic decline in travel, with hotels, travel and cruise companies leading the way, but airlines also suffered from a sometimes dramatic drop in sales.
Nevertheless, the CEOs of hotel chains are not automatically among the losers of the pandemic.
For example, Robert Goldstein
(66), CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp, earned $31 million in 2021, according to the US industry service Skift.
The US company posted an after-tax loss of $961 million in 2021.
Sales were $4.234 billion.
Las Vegas Sands has long been one of the top-selling casino operators in Las Vegas, but has now focused on the Asian market.
In March 2021, the group sold the Venetian Resort Las Vegas, the Sands Expo and the Convention Center to investor Apollo and its partners for $6.25 billion.
Goldstein, who only took over the CEO post in January 2021, confirmed that he wanted to use the money to drive business in Asia, especially in Macau and Singapore.
The group's hotel chains include the flagship Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, famous for its rooftop infinity pool, and The Londoner Macao in the SAR of China.
"Skift" has identified
Mark Hoplamazian
(58) of Hyatt Hotels & Resorts as the second-highest-paid hotel CEO at $24 million.
Followed by
Christoph Nassetta
(58)
the Hilton Hotel & Resorts chain for $23.3 million.
In addition to basic salaries, bonuses, stock options and other extras were also taken into account for the list.
Enlarge image
CEO Mark Hoplamazian has wrapped up one of Hyatt's biggest acquisitions
Photo: Brendan McDermid
Hyatt also made a loss in 2021.
Sales were $3.028 billion, minus $222 million after minus $703 million in 2020. Despite the tense situation caused by the corona pandemic, Hyatt dared one of the largest acquisitions in its company history.
The hotel group paid $2.7 billion to take over the Apple Leisure Group (ALG).
The US company offers management, travel and hotel services in the luxury sector.
Sellers were KKR and KSL Capital Partners.
With the purchase, Hyatt significantly expanded its range of hotels, as ALG owns more than 100 AMR hotels worldwide, according to a statement in early 2021.
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The high salaries may be seen as an incentive to run businesses successfully in difficult times.
In any case, the distance to the employees in the corporations has increased in some cases.
As "Skift" also determined, the salaries of top managers were up to 866 times higher than the median salary of employees.
The average pay gap is 670 to one, according to a study by the US Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), up from 604 to one a year ago.
In comparison: Lufthansa boss
Carsten Spohr
(55) earned 2.547 million euros last year, according to the airline's remuneration report.
On the other hand, the earnings of ex-Zalando boss
Rubin Ritter
(40), who received 42.5 million euros last year, were many times higher.
Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte (57), on the other hand, received 6.91 million euros.
Incidentally, IPS identified one of the largest pay gaps at Amazon: CEO
Andy Jassy
(54)
was paid a total of $212.7 million in 2021, 6,474 times the average Amazon worker's salary of $32,855 a year.