Hotel Impossible Host Shares Travel Secrets

Steve Adubato talks with Travel Channel’s "Hotel Impossible" host, Anthony Melchiorri, about the insider secrets you need to know the next time you travel.

2/6/17 #2014

Excerpt:

"Hi, I'm Steve Adubato. Welcome to the Tisch WNET studio, here in the heart of Lincoln Center. It is our honor and pleasure, for the first time, it won't be the last, to welcome Anthony Melchiorri, who is creator and host of Hotel Impossible, Travel Channel when? 10 o'clock, Monday nights. How did you get that gig? [laughter] Well thanks for having me, first of all. It's a pleasure to meet you. It's our honor and pleasure. I was in the hotel business for 25 years. I helped manage The Plaza, turned around the Algonquin, ran the Lucerne Hotel right up here, it was my first general manager job on 79th and Amsterdam, and one day I'm sitting in my basement with my wife, and put my hands over my head, and she goes, "Oh my God! Now what?" [laughter] Well why did she say that, by the way? You're an idea guy? I'm an idea guy. Go ahead. And she goes, "Now what? What thing are we doing... are we gonna be doing?" And I take my hands away from my face, and I look at her, and I go, "I want to do a hotel show called 'Hotel Impossible' where I teach everyone in the world about hotels." And she said, only like a wife of over 20 years could say, "Who the Hell wants to see you on television?" She didn't say that! And I go, "I don't know." I Swear to God, she said that. And I go, "I don't know. We're gonna find out." So I created the show with friends of mine, Leo and Lynn Rossi, out in California, and we start pitching it around New York City, we were fortunate enough that three people wanted the show, we went to Atlas Media, Atlas Media picked it up, we sold to Travel Channel, and eight seasons later, and three television shows later, here I am. How great is that? It is... you know what it is? I have three daughters. I have teenage children. And the greatest thing that came from this show, is that I'm able to say I didn't know anyone on television. I had no idea... anything about television. I didn't know about producers and cameramen and sound guys, I knew nothing about it. I didn't know about post, I didn't know about anything. A new business? It's a whole different business, and it's the hardest thing I've ever done. But you know business? I know business. And you know people? Right. And there you go. And so I was able to sort of... to survive it, and to be able to show my children, one day I just woke up and I said, "I've done a lot of things in my career." But this was something that was a little uncomfortable..."