Speaker profile

Willem Both
Kerzner International

Willem Both is Executive Vice President of IT for Kerzner International, based in their Global headquarters in Dubai. Willem is responsible for all IT aspects for the company.

Willem Both is a life-long hospitality professional who started off washing dishes in a Dutch pancake restaurant at the age of 13 to get a feel for the industry, and then never left it. After graduating with a Bachelors degree in Hotel Administration from Hotelschool, The Hague, the Netherlands, Willem settled living in the USA in 1995 moving from Marriott to Dusit to Hilton and then Sheraton ITT/Starwood. He slowly switched from running Front Office operations to Information Technology, then evolving from hotel IT to corporate IT project management, moving to Singapore in 2008 where he was promoted several times to eventually take on the position as Vice President of IT for Starwood Asia Pacific, covering hotels from China to Australia, India to Samoa. Following the Marriott merger in 2016, Willem left Starwood after 19 years and he and his family moved to Dubai to take on his current position as EVP and Global head of IT for Kerzner International.

When not absorbed by work, Willem stays somewhat in shape by running but much prefers playing quarter-field football with his friends, building treehouses and pizza ovens or cooking messy but tasty breakfasts with his two young kids for his Argentinean wife.