Gabriel Oliveri It is disruptive, passionate and multifaceted. He loves challenges and doesn’t care what people say. He is also a warm, talkative and funny man. Director of Marketing and Communication of the Four Seasons Hotel Buenos Aires, he is also an actor, host, panelist, speaker and writer.
He was born in Concordia and came to Buenos Aires to be an actor. Along the way he studied Psychology and Law, but did not graduate. He entered the hotel business by chance and made a successful career.
“I am a walker. I go through life living, looking, without denying myself pain, happiness, knowing that everything is very superfluous, that everything is catching winds, that the worms are going to end up eating us, that we all end up in the same place, that we are all the same and I’m just passing through. That’s why I don’t like to be just one thing,” he tells NEWS.
This year he was an Honorary Jury of the Martín Fierro de la Moda Awards, he participated in TV shows, such as Pasaplatos, and he podcasted royalty for Film & Arts and the Hotel VIP for Televisa México and for Univisión in the United States.
“I am a great worker, a fighter, a worker of life. I learned it from my dad and my mom,” she confesses. In his autobiography “A Five Star Life” he tells the details of an unusual story.
News: What are its strongest aspects?
Gabriel Oliveri: The force. I am a buffalo, pure fire, I go forward. I fall and stand up. I feel unbeatable. Everything has happened to me, but I don’t let myself be defeated by anything..
News: It has no weak points then
Oliveri: Yes, there are moments of weakness, but I don’t allow myself to fall. In general, I am a very strong, unstoppable person, despite the pain and everything.
News: Does being multifaceted have to do with curiosity, passion, desire?
Oliveri: I don’t know what I have in my blood. It’s something very strange, because I never get tired. People ask me on social media how I do it. I have an agenda, I’m very organized, very neat, and I can do four or five things in a day. I also manage energy, I distribute it throughout the day to reach the night well. Sometimes before I go to bed I say what a shame I don’t have something else, but it’s time to sleep.
News: What were your dreams as a teenager?
Oliveri: My mom and my sister showed me a world that was somewhere else and was wonderful. Royalty, fashion, Hollywood actresses, Jackie Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor. And I wanted to be part of that beautiful world, I wanted to get there, but I didn’t know where the door was or how to do it. I made an effort to leave the place I was in, I had everything to stay there, but I knew I wasn’t going to be happy. A person with my sexuality was not accepted and I wanted to be able to tell it.. Besides, I knew that for something to happen to me I had to leave. And I left with my heart in my hand and crying.
News: What was your biggest challenge?
Oliveri: Fight against everything that came with it. Get rid of my fears, my shyness, what was pulling me down, and transform myself into another person. That was the biggest challenge.
News: And was it the greatest achievement too?
Oliveri: Yes, I was very focused and I achieved many things that I wanted. I live in the place I want, I love my job at the hotel, I found a place to be happy, and everything I am incorporating, like television, is to be happy. One has to try to make oneself happy no matter what others say.
News: How did you manage to build a five-star life?
Oliveri: Getting rid of everything I didn’t like about myself, working on it. I have my notebooks where I write and every Saturday I analyze what went well in the week and what didn’t, and how I have to change to make things happen.
News: What would you like to change about yourself today?
Oliveri: I would like to add, because what I already am is quite good, with the good and bad things. Yes I would add the acting. I want to try that challenge and then another one will come.
News: Always taking risks
Oliveri: Of course. In fact, now I am training with Lili Popovich, the theater coach of Vicuña, Sbaraglia and Chávez. I had to stand in front of 25 people and do a ten-minute scene and not be afraid of ridicule or what people will say. On December 20 with my colleagues we do “After the rehearsal”, by Bergman, at the Border theater.
News: Are you preparing anything else?
Oliveri: I’m writing a small one-man show. I love starting from the bottom. I started as a trunk and here I start with a small work. And I would also love to work on a series. By saying: “The table is set”, I would be happy. What matters is being able to fulfill the dream.
News: When he came to live in Buenos Aires he already wanted to be an actor
Oliveri: Yes, in fact I studied with Gandolfo, Chávez, Agustoni and Alejandro Catalán at different times. The rest happened wonderfully by chance. I had no idea about hospitality, I had never stayed in a hotel. I didn’t know what it was to be a porter. I did it to make a living and ended up in a wonderful career. The other day a student told me that I am the Messi of the hotel industry. It was very funny to me. I have been a hotelier for thirty years, working in great chains and with incredible results.
News: How is high-end hospitality currently?
Oliveri: At the Four Seasons Buenos Aires we have been first for twenty-two years, according to the RevPar rating. The Elena and Nuestro Secreto restaurants and the Pony Line bar are always full. More than 700 people pass between the three places per night. High-end hospitality is better than pre-pandemic levels. We have a record in occupancy, it is an explosive moment.
News: Who was this year’s top guest?
Oliveri: The most important celebrity of 2023 was Taylor Swift, chosen person of the year by Time magazine. It was an honor that she chose us. She came with her boyfriend and introduced him to her father, and that this human part of the artist happened in our hotel is wonderful.
News: How do you manage to make your two worlds compatible?
Oliveri: I am both things. I had proposals for me to dedicate myself to working full time on programs and I said no, because I love the hotel industry. And, at the same time, I love television. With the cameras on I feel in a world more real than the real world. Something wonderful happens to me, when I look at the camera I see people, it is of enormous naturalness that seems from other lives.
News: Which program that you did impacted you the most?
Oliveri: I have been working in television for ten years. I was in “Doctor Amor”, “Pampita Online”, “Santo Sabbath”, “Intrusos”, and others, but the one that really unbalanced me was “Hotel de los Famous”, a double-digit program. It was three months where people greeted me, took photos, honked at me, but there was also a lot of aggression on the networks. It’s not easy to have great success on television. I was able to handle it, but I had trouble sleeping and I had difficult situations.
News: What is success and failure?
Oliveri: Success is doing what I want and having good results. Failure is not trying what you want to do in life.. Do not try to discover the potential that we all have.
News: What does it mean to be happy?
Oliveri: Have health, a place to live, a nice job, someone who loves you, friends who support you, delicious food, a good book, a good movie.
News: What is your inner circle like?
Oliveri: I am a very friendly person, I can go out with everyone, but real friends that I can trust are very few.
News: Are you still in a relationship?
Oliveri: Yes, twenty something years ago. He doesn’t have social networks, he doesn’t like taking photos and he loves anonymity. I love that people know me, greet them. We are so different, the yin and the yang, and that seems to me to be what unites us.
News: You like to travel. What places would you return to?
Oliveri: To Egypt, take a cruise along the Nile, visit a 5000-year-old culture, it has wonderful magic. Istanbul also fascinated me. And I would love to discover the Nordic countries. I love going to different cultures because they open your mind and make you understand other things.
News: What phrases identify it?
Oliveri: “Life must be a challenging adventure or nothing,” by Helen Keller. And another one that Mom said: “From the day we are born to death we walk, there is no truth more certain and that we have forgotten.”
News: How would you like to be remembered?
Oliveri: With a smile. Having lived to be a good memory in people.
News: A phrase for the tombstone?
Oliveri: “He finally stopped working, he finally rested” or “Don’t move anymore, calm down a little.”
