Q&A with Rocco Forte

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(CNN) -- CNN listens in on a question and answer session Rocco Forte has with staff at the new Hotel de Rome in Berlin two days before the hotel opened to its first guests.

Q. Do you get a lot of mail from different types of people, for example customers who have stayed in your hotels?

Forte: I get a lot of e-mails and letters and things. I also get a lot of letters from people who are promoting buildings and hotels, who thinking we will be interested in them. Most are of no interest.

I get a lot of communication though from customers, good and bad. I must say the good communication is much more than the bad. I don't mind the bad communication because it tells me that something is bad somewhere. And if therefore someone is bothered to write it means he cares, that he cares about it.

It gives us an opportunity to put it right, to allow us to make him a friend of the company if we treat the complaint in the right way. Any complaint that comes to me, I get personally involved. I answer every complaint that I get, and then I get in touch directly with the hotel to find out what went wrong. And sometimes mistakes happen -- in any organization. Sometimes it's the fault of the system, it's something we haven't set up in the right way and that then enables us to put it right. So I welcome guest comments of all kinds all the time. And I put a lot of time and effort in dealing with that kind of correspondence.

Q. What is it like working with your sister, Olga? Is there any sibling rivalry?

Forte: I used to put pillows around her and use her for boxing practice, and she didn't complain too much. One of the wonderful things about my new business is working closely with my sister because in the old business that we had before, it was very big, we employed 100,000 people.

I was a long way away from the action, the details of the hotels and she was working on the same side as she works now, so I never interacted with her, but now we interact all the time. I basically leave all the design side to her. She's very good at it, very competent at it, and I don't think you can design things by committee.

Q. Why did you choose Edinburgh as the location for your company's first hotel, The Balmoral?

Forte: That was the first opportunity that came along. I decided to start a new business about July 1996. So from then, until about February 1997, which is when I bought The Balmoral, I discussed a number of deals and a number of potential acquisitions, and they all fell through.

I began to get very depressed. I thought I was never going to find a hotel to start with. I had a little bit of money, and it was all going out of my pocket very fast and I did not like that.

Then The Balmoral came along, which was a hotel I knew because it was in my old company. We ran it for the Bank of Scotland. I managed to negotiate a purchase of it, and that's how we started off. Once you have a hotel and an income you can start signing checks and it's a very nice feeling.

Q. Where do you get the energy to run a company and run marathons?

Forte: I'm not sure. I think doing sport gives you more energy. Keeping fit is important, especially when you get older. I'm getting older. I think keeping fit keeps you younger, and mentally much more alert.

When my father was in business, he started the original Forte company, which in 1970 merged with Trust House, which was a big, English hotel group, and the company sort of doubled in size. And that was the main expansion of the Trust House Forte group, was from that moment on. And in 1970, when the two companies merged, he was 64. He was already at the age when most people start thinking about retiring, particularly in those days. But he went on working until he was 80. A bit too long actually, but into his early 80s. He's still alive now and he'll be 98 next month. So maybe I've got good genes as well.

Q. Why are marathons your chosen sport?

Forte: I don't do marathons alone. I only do marathons when it's part of an Iron Man It's too easy just to do a marathon.

Q. What's your favorite hotel outside the Rocco Forte Group?

Forte: It's difficult to say. I quite like the Plaza Athenee in Paris. It has a nice Parisian feel to it, and the staff there treat me very well so I like going back there. I like going back to places where I feel welcome. I think it's a very elegant hotel. I think it's now becoming a little bit old-fashioned, compared to the sort of thing I'm doing, but it's still nice.

I've always liked The Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, in Beverly Hills, because that had the atmosphere of everything that was Hollywood and the Beverly Hills area. And even when it was very run down, I still liked going there because it had the right flavor to it, even then.

On one occasion, I went there on a Saturday morning, and I'd been traveling the States all week. And I had a lot of suits on me that needed pressing, particularly one suit because I was going out to dinner. And I remember ringing down and asking if I could have a suit pressed and the person on the other end just said no. And I said, "I beg your pardon," and they said, "No." I said, "I need to have my suit pressed," and they said you can't have a suit pressed, the valet's gone home. I made a big fuss and said I'm staying in an expensive suite, this is supposed to be a five-star hotel. Eventually, I had a knock on the door, and the chambermaid came in, with an ironing board and an iron. And I thought she was going to press my suit. Not at all. She just left the iron and the ironing board there and I had to press my own suit. Luckily, I knew how to press a suit. I haven't been there since it's been completely redone, so I don't know if it's lost any of its atmosphere.

Ville D'Este in Lake Como is a hotel I like, it's a special place in a wonderful setting. It's a nice old building. I suppose there are hundreds of hotels that I like particular aspects of, but I like my hotels the most.

Q. Do you have a preferred hotel within your company?

Forte: The one I'm in at the moment, at the moment, whichever one it is. They're all nice, the hotels. I'm always surprised when I go to a hotel because normally I sit in the office and look at the problems. When you go to the hotel and you see the people working hard and the people taking care of the customer in the right way, there's a buzz about the place. I always get a lift out of going to any of my hotels. I think each hotel has different features that are attractive. I think, in terms of the buildings themselves, the Berlin hotel is probably the nicest building of any of the hotels we probably have -- it's sort of the grandest, most elegant building.

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