The Count's Jolly Hotels

Hawk-nosed Gaetano Marzotto, Count of Valdagno and Castelvecchio, scion of a long line of Italian textile men, hopped into his Lancia one day in 1949 and headed south through the boot of Italy for a vacation. When night fell, the count stopped at one bug-ridden hotel after another, looking for a place to sleep, but found them all booked solid. Marzotto finally slept in his car, woke up rumpled and resolved. He dashed back to Rome, called on President Einaudi and Premier de Gasperi, and asked: "Do you realize how much good tourist money Italy is losing by not having developed southern tourist trade? Why not build hotels and hotels and hotels?" Since no one in the government seemed interested in the idea, Marzotto decided to do the job himself.

In Avellino last week, the 35th and latest in Marzotto's chain of "Jolly Hotels" opened its doors. Like the others, Avellino's three-story, 41-room hotel is designed for "the masses of small tourists with small means but a natural desire for comfort, cleanliness and amusement. There are few carpets, but plenty of bathrooms, few chandeliers but ice water in every room." Rates on tourist floors average $2 a night, and for $6 a tourist can get board and lodging, including use of a swimming pool. To 58-year-old Tourist Marzotto, one of Italy's richest men, the opening of Avellino's hotel was not a big event; he has 35 more Jolly Hotels abuilding, and they will be completed this year.

Kisses for Cash. When Marzotto started his hotels, he already had some experience as a professional host in two unique restaurants near Verona. One is in the castle of the Montagues, the other is the castle of the Capulets, where Romeo called Juliet's love a dream "too flattering-sweet to be substantial." Marzotto turned such dreams into substance by renovating the ancient castles and charging couples 100 lire to kiss on Juliet's balcony.

Marzotto's hotel chain is only a small part of the industrial empire he has built. Starting in 1926 with two family woolen plants and a few hundred workers, he added five factories, built employment to 13,200, working 1,800 looms and 80,000 spindles. His factories last year spun out 23 million lbs. of yarn and about 14 million yards of woven cloth. Among Marzotto's other enterprises: a marble-producing plant, a sugar factory, a 6,177-acre model estate on the Adriatic in northern Italy at Portogruaro, equipped with 75 tractors and a small tanker which chugs up irrigation canals firing broadsides of fertilizer on to the growing crops of sugar beets and wheat.

"The White Fly." Among rich Italians, who generally make a practice of not reporting their full incomes, Marzotto is an exception. He is known as "the white fly" because he is one of Italy's few wealthy men who file a correct tax return. In 1951, on a business trip to the U.S. Marzotto got a phone call from his home office: How much of his income should be declared? Answered Marzotto: "Tell the government whatever it is. Not a penny less." The total: 462 million lire ($704,000), of which the government took 60%.

Marzotto's eye for an honest lira is matched by his paternalism. At Valdagno (pop. 27,000) in the green foothills of the Alps, where one of his textile mills is located, he built 1,000 three-bedroom apartments, each equipped with a radio, for his employees. Rents vary from 1,000 lire ($1.60) a month to a nominal rent of $1 a year. There is also a company hospital, nursery, kindergarten, a football field (with one of Italy's best teams), a swimming pool and villages on the sea and in the mountains, where workers can vacation for about 75-c- a day.

Proud Paternalism. The father of seven, Marzotto has five sons who are just as active as he. One is standing for Italy's Parliament on the Liberal ticket; another, Gianni, has twice won Italy's famed Mille Miglia auto race and is the Ferrari auto company's biggest customer.

"They call us paternalistic," says Gaetano Marzotto. "It is an ugly word. But we are proud of our paternalism . . . It's good business, for one thing. But then, too, when I die I want it said of me that I did some good on this earth. Besides, I want to show those numskulls down in Rome--and the skeptics abroad--that some Italians are efficient. I want to make democracy work. That's the only real way to beat the Communists."

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