Dirk Burghartz – General Manager
other four seasons stories
Every hotel professional has a reason for getting into the business. For Dirk Burghartz, it was getting back to the United States. “When I was in high school, I spent a year as an exchange student in a farming community in Indiana, and I always wanted to return.” To Indiana? “Actually, I really enjoyed myself,” he says of his time as a Hoosier. “I’d hoped to spend the year in New York, but who knows what might’ve happened to me there?”
Upon deciding hotel work might be his ticket to travel, Burghartz took the advice of a friend who suggested he try the kitchen for a taste of what the business is like. He did, and was bowled over.
Never one for a desk job, Burghartz has found plenty to keep him engaged over a 20-year career that has taken him from his native Düsseldorf to South Florida, Bermuda and the Big Apple. It was in New York that a career-defining experience cemented Burghartz to Four Seasons.
He was hotel manager of The Pierre when Four Seasons announced the property was changing hands. “I remember the fear in the eyes of the employees, some of whom had been there for decades,” he recalls. Yet, rather than leave its employees hanging, Four Seasons found new assignments within its global portfolio for everyone who wanted one. “That was just the perfect example of how Four Seasons goes out of its way to put people at ease.” Indeed, 40 of 60 managers under Burghartz stayed on at another address, and more returned within a year.
Now settled as general manager of Four Seasons Hotel Houston, Burghartz has put the freneticism of New York behind him. “New York is my second home, but it was time for a change and I’m loving Houston these days.” And if Four Seasons ever opens in Indiana, he’s sure to love that, too.
