Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts has announced the appointment of Mehdi Eftekari as General Manager of Four Seasons Hotel New York. Eftekari arrives at the IM Pei landmark and Four Seasons flagship at an opportune moment, amid a hotel-wide renovation including the opening of the new TY Bar and the recent the launch of the Hotel’s new event space FIFTY7.
A 27-year veteran of Four Seasons, Eftekari originally joined the company as Food & Beverage Manager of Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills shortly after the property opened in 1988. In 1992 he relocated an hour south to become Hotel Manager of the former Four Seasons Hotel Newport Beach, and four years later was named General Manager. In 2004, Eftekari rejoined the Los Angeles hotel as General Manager, and from there headed cross-country to take the helm at East 57th Street on the edge of Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
“I always told myself if I ever left California it would be for New York City,” says Eftakari. “When the opportunity presented itself, I raised my hand.”
Eftekari’s appointed to New York came just a few days short of this 30th year in the hotel industry in Southern California. A native of Tehran, Iran, he arrived in the United States to study first English at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, then business management and marketing at Louisville University, Kentucky, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree. Unable to break into management in the corporate sector, he followed his lifelong passion for food and beverage to become assistant manager of a hotel restaurant at the Louisville address of an international hotel group in 1980. Soon enough, he was relocated to the Pacific Coast – and there he stayed.
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