Live Like The Hotel Boss
Growing up in the small wine country town of Lodi, California, Faisal Sublaban learned that hard work, determination, and risk are what it takes to be a BOSS.
“We were a middle-class family in a small town, Mom, Dad, myself, and my three siblings. My father’s a serial entrepreneur. He had multiple businesses that spanned car audio to car lots, all of which I worked within, as a kid” said Sublaban.
After graduating High School Sublaban, attended UC San Diego, where he got his Bachelor of Science in Management Science. “When I graduated, I went right into a job working for Wells Fargo financial. I did extremely well and within 12 months I became a manager” he said.
After two years Sublaban started his own company, working this time in the world of real estate. But after a few years, he got out of the financial industry and went back to school receiving his master’s degree from Harvard in Business Finance. Looking to get back in the financial industry he moved to New York City.
“I was approached by a gentleman who I had known for about 10 years who had founded the company Bonotel Exclusive Travel. I worked side by side with him and the family for 18 months or so growing and helping to manage the company, taking on a direct leadership role. The company was eventually sold to the Carlyle Group, a large Private Equity firm and at that point, I became the CEO,” he said.
Management, investment, and focusing on the structure of the companies’ executive teams to bring new life, talent, and technology into the company have been his focus over the last few years. Traveling about 200 days out of the year around the world to various properties the company works with, Sublaban decided to start a new adventure.
“Because of my job I have unique insight and access into destinations and hotels that others may not. So, I figured I might as well start documenting it” he said.
“The Hotel Boss” was created.
“What I thought would be cool is to provide an authentic lens into hotels and destinations and start to document some of the access that I have been given thanks to the role that I’m in, and it’s just kind of grown and expanded from there. I take an inside look into the hospitality industry. Managing your company, daily struggles around leadership, and being a thoughtful leader within the industry. And now, given the pandemic, really kind of providing that uplifting voice of things, the positive things within life, and navigating the day-to-day challenges of the pandemic especially in an industry such as the hospitality that has been completely decimated from it,” says Sublaban.
“We continue to try and figure out how to disrupt the industry, approach the market differently, and working with Deluxe Version Magazine provides us a unique and strategic marketing and distribution partner to hotels around the globe,” he says.
When he is not working Sublaban, loves spending time outdoors mountain biking, hiking, snowboarding, surfing, skiing, and of course traveling.
“I mean, I love Beirut, in Lebanon. It is one of my favorite places to go visit. I love Ibiza. Not ironically for going out to nightclubs because they have all those DJs here in Vegas, so we are quite spoiled, but it’s just the European vibe, it’s all about living life and enjoying life and taking a two-hour lunch and maybe even a little nap in between but still being productive. They don’t let work and everything else dictate their ability to just soak in all that life has to offer.”
