They often say about businesses that it is usually the first generation of founders that creates value, the second that adds or simply maintains it, and the third is the one that destroys it. Even if this is true, Dinos Tornivoukas is the most striking exception to the rule. He took over a major hotel group with three hotels to which he added two more emblematic hotels in Thessaloniki and is now preparing to open his first in Athens.
“We became hoteliers because my grandfather had nowhere to put the German tobacco merchants,” he tells Kathimerini, recounting the beginnings of the TOR Hotel Group, when his grandfather, Konstantinos Tornivoukas – or Kotsos as he is remembered in the family – created the Mediterranean Palace Hotel, famously known as the Mediterranée, in Thessaloniki – the first luxury hotel in the city. It was a hotel that, from the very first day it opened, in 1925, set new standards of quality and hospitality, charting the path that the family followed for the next hundred years.
‘We must like our hotels, love them, and offer our customers exactly what we also expect from top-level hotels’
Indeed, the Mediterranée was built when Konstantinos Tornivoukas, who had extensive commercial dealings with German tobacco merchants in Dresden, realized that when they came to Greece for business, there was no appropriate accommodation for them. When he built it, there was no better hotel in all of Greece except the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens, recalls his grandson, listing leading figures, businessmen, politicians and artists who frequented its lobbies.
The Tornivoukas family is perhaps the only one in Greece and one of the few in Europe to have started and remained hoteliers over four generations. This year marks 100 years since the opening of the Mediterranée, which unfortunately suffered serious damage during the 6.5-magnitude earthquake of 1978 in Thessaloniki. “It was a big blow for my father, but also for me personally, because I was born, raised and took my first steps in it,” he says. He even remembers his father, the second generation of hoteliers, changing the route they took to get to work because he didn’t feel like passing in front of the square that was once dominated by the hotel.
Of course, in 1972 Dinos Tornivoukas’ parents, George and Ismini, had already expanded the business by opening City Hotel, a famous four-star unit in the city, while in 1973 they wrote the next chapter, with the creation of the Eagles Palace in Ouranoupoli, Halkidiki. One of the first luxury resorts in the country, the Eagles Palace became synonymous with authentic Greek hospitality, attracting visitors from all over the world. A happy man and by nature kind and optimistic, Dinos Tornivoukas remembers with nostalgia how he started the venture in Ouranoupoli: “We had gone on vacation with my parents on a Lambro boat belonging to the late Aristotelis Zeis, and upon arriving in the area we were enchanted by the beauty and tranquility of the landscape.”
Tornivoukas, now 64, received his high school diploma from the American College of Anatolia and as soon as he completed his studies in business administration began working in the business in which he had grown up – hotels. In 1999 his father died and he took over as head of the group. “A great responsibility that marked me and pushed me to continue with even greater dedication,” he says. So the time had come for the third generation. After modernizing the operation of the business and launching the necessary renovations and upgrades, such as at the Eagles Palace in 2002, he proceeded in 2009 to create the Excelsior Hotel in the port city. Thessaloniki’s unique new architectural landmark quickly became popular and was added to the group’s profitable hotels.
“All renovations and expansions, as well as the new hotels, have been done with either no or minimal borrowing,” Tornivoukas says, adding that they now all enjoy occupancy rates of over 80% year-round, while the summer resort in Ouranoupoli achieves occupancy rates of over 85%. A few years later, in 2017, Dinos and his wife Lena added the Eagles Villas to the Ouranoupoli hotel, creating the complete Eagles Resort. “It is an internationally awarded gastronomic and luxury vacation destination, which combines unparalleled aesthetics, a unique location, and superior hospitality experiences, establishing Halkidiki as one of the top destinations in the Mediterranean,” he says.
Of course, the “persistent entrepreneur” did not stop there. In 2022, in collaboration with Grivalia, the family presented ON Residence, bringing a historic building in Thessaloniki back to life and reviving the legendary restaurant Olympos Naoussa, an emblematic name in the history of the gastronomy in Greece’s second largest city. The boutique hotel, which, like the Excelsior, is considered a landmark due to its architectural characteristics, is famed for its exemplary operation and the luxury and quality of the infrastructure and services it provides, as well as the history it carries. Located on the seafront, it is one of the two or three first-choice destinations for VIPs and other visitors to Thessaloniki.
This year, the time came for the next step of the man who set out to dispel the myth of the “prodigal” third generation. Together with his two daughters, who, like him, grew up in hotels, loved them, and now play a leading role in their management and operation, Tornivoukas is expanding to Athens. Having emerged as the highest bidder in a public tender for the lease of a listed building at 4 Kolokotroni Street, where the engineers’ social security fund (TSMEDE) was housed, he is preparing to transform it into a hotel and make it a leading player in the capital’s quality hospitality market.
When asked if he always wants to operate in buildings of a special character, he says, “We must like our hotels, love them, and offer our customers exactly what we also expect from top-level hotels.” The building on Kolokotroni Street clearly appealed to the family, which has now created the fifth generation – the children of Tornivoukas’ daughters.
This model of hotel development and management seems to be successful, judging by the practically zero borrowing, the vigorous increase in the group’s turnover and the robust profitability it shows, according to Tornivoukas, who, in addition to being the CEO of the group, is also the vice president of the Thessaloniki Hoteliers’ Association.
So what is it that worries the experienced businessman, we ask? “I see a de-hellenization developing both in the Greek land in general and in entrepreneurship in northern Greece in particular,” he says, adding that Greek businessmen can develop the economy of the region and the entire country, possibly better than foreigners.
And what helps him relax? “The sea,” he replies instantly. “I have the sea in me and I wouldn’t want to live far from it.” In the few days he can steal for vacation, he prefers to go “to authentic places that serve Greek cuisine and have remained as unscathed as possible by passing fashions and the crowds of summer visitors.”
Tornivoukas is a man proud of his family, his wife – of whom he says, “We built the hotels together” – and his daughters, who work with their husbands in the business. He is one of those rare types of people who can successfully operate at a sustainable pace but also dedicate time to enjoying life and being good company for his friends.
So, what is a hotel, for him? “For us, they are a way of life.”
Vellidis and the Ferrari
Growing up in the lobbies and corridors of the hotels built by his grandfather and father, Tornivoukas has many stories to tell. He remembers publisher Ioannis Vellidis, one of the richest, most powerful and important Thessalonikians of the 20th century, coming down to the reception areas of the Mediterranée every day with Derire, his beloved Yorkshire terrier, which he would lift into an armchair and from there allow it to jump onto his shoulder so that they could head together to his Rolls-Royce.
Vellidis, you see, was a permanent resident of the Mediterranée.
He also remembers the Swarovski family arriving at the Eagles Palace in Ouranoupoli through the dirt roads of the time in a sparkling red Ferrari in 1975. The guest book of the resort in Ouranoupoli was signed, among others, by Maria Callas in 1976, a year before she passed away.
The great Greek painter Giorgos Gounaropoulos painted the portraits of the founders of the family, Constantine and his wife, Erta, which today adorn the walls of the Excelsior.
