haitham mattar

When Haitham Mattar started washing dishes in an Atlanta hotel, he had no idea it would be the start of an illustrious, multi decade career career in hospitality that took him from the kitchen to the front desk to the top of the corporate hierarchy, from the Deep South to Dubai.

Pots, Pans and Five-Year Plans is more than a striver’s story of incredible success against the odds. It’e an inside look Into the globally important, yet little understood hotel business. Mattar has worked in almost every functor in hotel operations, corporate hospitality management and tourism, and has the stories to shoe for it, from dining with Monarchs to building the longest zip line in the world’s longest zip line on top of s desert mountain. He recounts dazzling tales of travel around the US, Middle East, Europe, Africa and Asia, and chronicles the dangerous side of ambition, like how to keep going when others want you to fail. And how to survive when the stress of overwork leaves you fighting for your life.

In this memoir, Mattar deftly interweaves a personal tale of grit, perseverance, and resourcefulness with the bigger, behind the scenes story of the hotel business itself- an industry that reveals so much about how we live, work and play when we venture far from home.