Armel Santens: home is where the Brown Palace is.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn
• Position: Executive Edge - Biography

ARMEL SANTENS HAS DONE EVERYTHING from peeling potatoes and serving fine wines to running room service and the dining room in a small hotel in France, with no days off and little sleep between shifts.

As general manager of a Dallas hotel, he once purchased a red BMW convertible for a Saudi prince who charged it to his room and closed the day with 12 bottles of Dom Perignon for a nightcap.

"He wanted a red BMW convertible just to go shopping; drove it less than 50 miles and then left it in our parking lot," recalls Santens, a 20-year veteran of Quorum Hotels & Resorts who was named managing director of Denver's historic Brown Palace Hotel in 2001.

"This business is not for everyone. You have to be committed to work on weekends, nights, seven days a week. You have to be passionate or you don't succeed; it takes all your energy."

And energy he has, living in an apartment with his wife, Elisabeth, in the Brown Palace--just a staircase away from his executive office off the second-floor balcony. It's not uncommon for the native of France who oversees 425 employees and one of the 500 best hotels in the world to not see the outdoors for days or even weeks at a time.

"I have to force myself to get out," said Santens. "But it's a great benefit to live here because I know what's going on--like if the cable or the phone doesn't work, I know about it right away."

Santens became intrigued with the hospitality industry in 1968 when jobs dried up in France and he joined the French Army, landing as a cook for the head of the French military school in downtown Paris.

He went on to the Hotel School of Paris before beginning his North American career with Hilton International at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal...