Gilford native’s visit to Aruba leads to life’s work promoting island

By ADAM DRAPCHO, LACONIA DAILY SUN

NEW YORK CITY — When Ed Malone was transferred to Aruba in 1987, he thought he would be there for a period of time measured in months. The island was then a sleepy outcropping with a nascent hospitality industry, and it got under his skin. Today, though he lives and works in New York City, Malone’s head and heart are still in Aruba.

Malone, a Gilford native and member of the Laconia High School graduating class of 1972, works for the Aruba Tourism Authority as the area director for North America, a region which represents the majority of visitors to the south Caribbean island. And, since tourism has grown to dominate the Aruba economy, Malone is responsible for a significant part of the nation’s gross domestic product.

But this weekend, Malone will be back where he started, in Gilford. He will be joining a co-worker to represent Aruba at Penny Pitou Travel’s “Passport to the World” Travel Show, which will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 24, at Contigiani’s Event Center, located at 140 Country Club Road in Gilford.

“I lived a stone’s throw from where this trade show is at Pheasant Ridge (Country Club),” Malone said. He grew up on Glenridge Way and attended elementary school in Gilford, then, because Gilford Middle and High School hadn’t yet been built, went to high school in Laconia.

As a young man, Malone wasn’t sure what was next for him. He went to UNH for a year, then came back home to regroup, but soon was back at UNH.

“Somehow, I’m not really sure, I ended up enrolling in the business school, hotel administration.” He graduated in December of 1977, and got a job in upstate New York.

“By education and profession, I am a hotelier.”

For the next decade, he worked for various hotels around the country – Iowa, Tennessee, Texas – and he was working for a hotel company in Minnesota when he was asked to take a temporary station in Aruba, where the company had purchased the Americana Aruba Beach Resort and Casino.

“I was there for two months and they said, ‘Do you want to stay here and run this hotel or go back to Minnesota?’” Malone ended up running that hotel, a 200-room beachside property, for 12 years.

“After I had spent many years there, I said, this is where I’m supposed to be,” he said, though the Aruba of today is different from the island of 30 years ago.

When he arrived, Aruba had a few hotels and limited contact with the bustle of the outside world. Perishable goods arrived on a container ship, once each month. Over that time, Malone has seen hospitality flourish into the island’s biggest and most consistent businesses. Aruba’s location, less than 20 miles north of Venezuela, is outside of the hurricane path, and its low crime rate and calm, sandy beaches have made it the preferred destination for many island vacationers. And, on the strength of the hospitality industry, Aruba now has the highest standard of living in the Caribbean.

After the Americana, Malone worked for several other hotels in Aruba, while also consulting with business associations. Since 2014, he has worked for the Aruba Tourism Authority.

His new job came with a catch. Since he was tasked with selling the island to the U.S. and Canada, he would have to leave the tropical paradise for its polar opposite: New York City.

“When they asked me to come here, I said, wow, if I thought moving to Aruba from Minnesota was culture shock, moving from an island in the southern Caribbean to Manhatten?... It’s just a whole different kind of life.”

There are about 750,000 visitors to Aruba from the U.S. and Canada each year, not including cruise ship passengers. That represents 65 percent of all visitation to the island, and most of those visitors are from Boston, New York or Philadelphia.

Malone lives and works in the city, though he continues to own a home in Aruba, which he visits whenever he can.

It’s worth it for him, because he can continue to promote and grow an industry that he has helped to foster for the past 30 years, for an island to which he has become devoted.

“It’s been great to be part of it, quite frankly. Great people, I developed a sense of passion and love for the island,” he said. “What I really enjoy is promotion of the destination, the fact that I can tell the Aruba story... I love telling that story because I have lived it, it’s a unique opportunity to be able to do that. I have seen Aruba grow from a small island that welcomed a few tourists 30 years ago to a major player in the Caribbean. I get a great sense of satisfaction out of it.”

Malone’s visit this weekend will be the first time home in more than four years.

“I’m looking forward to driving around my old stomping grounds. I always find, when I go back, as much as it changes, it doesn’t change. It’s changed so much, but it’s still the feel of a neat little New England, New Hampshire town. It brings back great memories.”

Ed Malone