Managing a Mafia Hotel in the Heart of Sicily

By Ed Scarpo
I don't usually stray outside the U.S., but I found this to be an interesting story some of you may wish to read...

From FT.com:


If running a large hotel in the middle of a financial crisis and a shrinking market sounds difficult, try pulling it off when the 14-story building has been confiscated from the Mafia.

“Call it fearlessness or perhaps stupidity, I’m not sure which it was, but I took this on as I would any other job,” says Luigi Turchio, the soft-spoken court-appointed administrator of the San Paolo Palace hotel and conference centre in Sicily.

Intimidation from the local crime boss and finding that the crime boss’s mistress was on the staff are just a few of the challenges Mr Turchio has faced in the 19 years since a court appointed him to manage the 283-room hotel on the edge of the Mafia-infested Brancaccio neighbourhood of Palermo, the Sicilian capital.

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