You Are Here : Home >>> Zolon Wilkins III

�

Zolon Wilkins III
Company: Planet Zolon
Texchange�Board Title: Membership Committee

�

�

Having worked with his father from an early age, Wilkins has an almost innate sense of how to run a successful business. He said he acquired his love of cooking and his creativity from his mother and grandmother, who were in the food service business. His grandfather was opposed to his going into the restaurant business and gave him the opportunity to run the family company he founded in 1991, Lexington Services, which became the largest hotel reservations provider in the United States and the second largest in the world.

�I grew up in the hotel business and swore that I would never be in it. I always wanted to be a chef, always wanted to cook,� Wilkins said.

�

After earning an undergraduate degree in business administration from Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University), Wilkins graduated from culinary school at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, R.I. From there, he went to work as a chef for a year and a half at the Rainbow Room in New York City, a stepping-stone for aspiring chefs. While he was in New York, his family sold the hotel business his grandfather founded in 1956 and started Lexington Services.

�

�It was sort of pre-technology in the hotel reservation industry and my grandfather thought it was going to be hot,� Wilkins said. �In 1995, my grandfather said to me, 'If you're ever going to do anything with your life, why don't you come back and try this out?' We grew the company from 1991 to 1998; we had about 5,000 hotels in our service and we were booking about half a billion dollars a year all over Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America. We had some of the highest profile hotel clients in different cities around the world.�� Lexington Services, at the time, was the largest provider of reservations and technology services to hotels in North America and second largest in the world.

�

The family sold the business in 1998 to My Travel/Airtours, PLC, the world's second largest consolidators of vacation packages with 15 million customers. Wilkins ran the company and served on the management board of directors for My Travel North America from 1999 to 2002.

�

Now he is busy growing his restaurant concept with three restaurants in downtown Fort Worth.

�