Patrizio Cipollini, General Manager of Four Seasons Hotel Firenze, Awarded 2018 Hotelier of the Year in Virtuoso Best of the Best Awards

   
August 16, 2018,
Florence, Italy

Patrizio Cipollini, General Manager of Four Seasons Hotel Firenze has been awarded Virtuoso’s Best of the Best Hotelier of the Year 2018. The Best of the Best award by Virtuoso, the world's leading network of luxury travel agencies, recognises every year the industry’s top properties and hoteliers.

In the hotel industry for 45 years, Patrizio Cipollini has been leading the team at Four Seasons Hotel Firenze since its preopening in 2007 and he received this prestigious award with great pride.

“This award means a lot to me and to us all at Four Seasons Hotel Firenze. I would like to share it with my wonderful team, whom I wish to thank for their constant passion and dedication in making our guests’ stay every day more memorable”  comments Patrizio Cipollini. “It has always been a dream for me to be the opening General Manager of a Four Seasons hotel in Italy, but I never imagined I would have come back to my home region to open such a landmark property, 11 years ago. This is why, as we just celebrated our 10th anniversary in June, I could not be prouder to receive this award from Virtuoso, which for me embodies the ultimate quality in the tourism field and luxury hotel industry.”

Virtuoso’s 1,000-plus travel agency members and their 17,500 professional travel advisors voted to select the winners in each category, from best family program to sustainable tourism leadership. Editors of VIRTUOSO LIFE, the network’s multi-award-winning magazine, contributed their expert insights to name the initial nominees on which the advisors voted. As a winner, Patrizio Cipollini will be featured in the publication’s September/October issue, circulated to 200,000 upscale world travellers.

About Patrizio Cipollini

Tuscan-born Patrizio Cipollini took the helm of the preopening team at Four Seasons Hotel Firenze in 2007, having been at the company’s landmark property in Milan – its first in Europe – since it opened in 1993. Cipollini attended hotel school from the age of 15 and vividly recalls the long train journey he had to take via Verona and Monaco to reach the school’s remote village in Hamburg, 150 kilometres (90 miles) from the Danish border, called Sankt Peter-Ording. Having been in the industry for nearly 45 years, with a long history in food and beverage operations, he had no choice but to work his way up from pot washer – an apprenticeship that he believes has stood him in great stead for his latest challenges. He supported his studies through summer placements until graduating, when he began a long and illustrious career that took him from Sardinia to London and Switzerland to Australia. His Four Seasons career began in 1993 with the opening of Four Seasons Hotel Milano.



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