Anthony Melchiorri

Background

Melchiorri was born into an Italian family and raised in Brooklyn, New New York

Career

He is the creator, co-executive producer, and host of the Travel Channel"s hotel turnaround show Upon finishing high school in 1983, he joined the United States Air Force and served until 1990 at Whiteman Air Force Base in Knob Noster, Missouri as a protocol officer During that time, he took night courses to complete an undergraduate degree in business at Park University in Parkville, Missouri, while working weekends as a night auditor at the Embassy Suites hotel in Overland Park, Kansas. Melchiorri"s first job out of the military was at the Embassy Suites in Times Square, which was later converted to the DoubleTree hotel chain.

Over the next four years, he worked his way up to the position of Director of Front Office Operations.

When an eleven-year-old girl came into the Plaza and asked him "Mister, where"s Eloise?," he got the idea for the hotel"s Eloise tour. He was then appointed general manager of the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side of New York City.

Under his direction, the Lucerne was selected as the New York Times Travel Guide"s Best Service Hotel. In 2005 he left the Lucerne to assume the position of general manager of New York"s historic Algonquin Hotel.

After convincing the owners to close the Algonquin for 29 days, he oversaw a $15 million roof-to-basement renovation of the building and its image, restoring it to the glory days of the famous Algonquin Round Table.

He updated the rooms, repositioned the restaurants, and earned the hotel a high rating as a Michelin Guide Hotel. When the hotel owner sold the Algonquin for a significant return, Melchiorri was asked to become senior vice president of the first Nickelodeon Hotel and Resort, overseeing a 25 acres (10 ha), 800 room property. His next position was into asset management as first vice president of Tishman Hotels, then as senior vice president of New York Hotel Management Company.

In that capacity, Melchiorri helped to develop a 310 all-suite hotel in Times Square.

He then founded his own hotel management and consultancy, Argeo Hospitality. After twenty years in the hotel business, with his reputation having been built on his repositioning of the "Plaza" and the Algonquin, Melchiorri decided to bring his skills as a "business fixer" to television and sold the idea of to the Travel Channel.

Each episode features a hotel with serious, sometimes near-fatal problems, that Melchiorri must deal with in less than a week. Described by the New York Times as a "capeless crusader", Melchiorri leads a team to design solutions to save the business.

The pilot debuted in April 2012.

The show has been renewed for its sixth season.

Achievements

• At the time, he said that his goal was to work at the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York City, which he achieved ten months later, taking a job there as a night manager. He orchestrated publicity campaigns such as the Algonquin"s "$10,000 Martini", won a Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International "Best of Show Award", and generally promoted the renovated hotel.