Be careful with the answers and the faces they make if the tourist gets very annoying. FTI, owner of Labranda or Meeting Point, hopes to return to profits from the sand in the south of Gran Canaria in 2023 after the rescue made by both Germany and the government of Spain. None other than the CEO of FTI, Ralph Schiller, 59, is in charge of this plumbing. With a very friendly manner, this industry connoisseur is one of those who appears accompanied in a hotel and pretends to be a hidden client. In Egypt he acted as a hotel entertainer.
Ralph Schiller usually deals with the expansion of tourism in places like Gran Canaria, connecting flights or signing sales agreements on board cruise ships. Schiller, who was promoted from a simple managing director to CEO of the FTI Group at the end of 2020, even achieved moderate fame on television as an "undercover boss." Disguised with a beard and glasses, he deceived himself as a supposed entertainer in the Egyptian resort of El Gouna among the hotel staff.
Ralph Schiller leads the strategic approach and corporate development of the entire group of companies. In addition, the transformation, communication and sustainability divisions report directly to him. Before joining FTI, he was most recently responsible for the marketing and sales divisions of REWE and previously held the position of CEO of Reiseland GmbH & Co.
Since March 2020, Schiller's schedule has been filled mostly with appointments that are a far cry from the fun of previous years. Domestic bank Unicredit, for example, applied for its loan for Europe's largest family-owned travel provider just a few days after the travel ban imposed worldwide, which aimed to limit the spread of Corona in the spring of 2020.
What followed were harrowing rounds of negotiations with credit departments, state development banks, auditors and, ultimately, the German Financial Agency, a working group of the Federal Minister of Finance. Schiller's metamorphosis from vacation expert to financial juggler appears to be paying off these days. In operational terms, he has set a goal of returning to profit this year. That will be at the expense, among other factors, of margins and the inflation that shakes the business.