Hotel Industry Pioneer Jack DeBoer
Interview by Jeff Burger - April 1, 2010
A sign in Jack DeBoer's office reads, “Success is seldom permanent. Neither is failure.” DeBoer has seen plenty of both in his long career but his spectacular wins have been sufficient to eclipse his losses. Business-minded since childhood, he began selling real estate while still in high school in Kalamazoo, Mich., and has been an entrepreneur ever since. “I’ve never worked for anybody except for when I was in the Army,” he told us when we met recently at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
Early on, DeBoer teamed with his father to construct single-family homes in southern Michigan. Then he entered the apartment business and built more than 16,000 units in 25 states, becoming the country’s second-largest multifamily developer.
But DeBoer really hit his stride when he moved into the hospitality industry and helped to pioneer the all-suite hotel concept. He built the first Residence Inn in 1975, expanded the business into a 100-hotel chain and sold it to Marriott in 1987. A year later, he co-founded the Summerfield Hotel Corporation, which Hyatt subsequently bought. And in 1995, he launched Candlewood Hotel Corporation, which he sold to InterContinental after amassing 130 properties.
DeBoer is now 79, but the idea of slowing down apparently hasn’t occurred to him. He founded the extended-stay hotel chain ValuePlace in 2003 and still runs the fast-growing operation, which now has more than 160 locations (about 45 company owned and the rest franchised). “We are equal in operating results to a year ago in an industry that’s down 20 to 25 percent,” said DeBoer, who uses a fleet of six business aircraft (see box on page 26) to help him oversee the coast-to-coast, 29-state chain.
You’ve had some huge successes but I’ve read that most of the 30 or so companies you’ve started have failed.
I’ve never had a bankruptcy, never been foreclosed on in a loan, but I’ve lost lots of money trying to do things that I didn’t know how to do. If you get successful in your own business, it’s easy to think you can do it in somebody else’s and generally you can’t.
And at some point you decided to stick with what you know?
That’s exactly right. I do have a manufacturing company that I’ve owned for 20 years, but I have a great partner. If I were running it, it would be another failure, but it’s successful because he knows what he’s doing.
Speaking of failures, you turned down $100 million for your apartment-building company and a year later the business fell apart. What happened?
I built 16,000 apartments, so I thought I could walk on water and I got overextended. It took me seven years to unwind it. I lost all the business money and started over.
I read that somebody threatened to kill you during this period if you didn’t pay a debt. Did that really happen?
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