The greatest challenge of any luxury hotelier is without any doubt change. Not change itself, but the hesitation to let go of the status quo and the past, and to embrace the future… to embrace the future and with that to stay relevant.
At every single luxury hotel I worked so far, employees would always tell me about the golden past, how everything was better years ago and how things are going down nowadays. They would tell me about the sumptuous flower bouquets in every guest room, the abundance of luxury amenities, and how money didn’t matter. How our guests would all be dressed in the finest suits and dresses, and how glamorous and ostentatious everything was. With the words of Bob Dylan the times they are a changin’… you cannot stop change.
Our guests don’t define luxury in material goods like flowers and amenities anymore, they define it by experiencing and collecting enriching experiences. They define luxury with service that goes beyond.
My wife and I visited the W Koh Samui on our vacation to Thailand at the beginning of the year, and while the hotel was fantastic, it’s not the breathtaking view, nor our amazingly beautiful villa with the private pool, and the fine dining restaurant we keep talking about, it’s the service that stayed in our memories long after our departure. Unfortunately my wife got food poisoning from the food at the airport and got sick as soon as we arrived at the property. In the evening while we we’re trying to eat a little at the restaurant and hoping for her to get better, the waiter noticed that she didn’t feel well and offered assistance.
While he wasn’t able to help himself, he right away got the director of rooms, who arranged the hotel limousine for us and asked one of his employees to escort us to the hospital to stay with us until we would return to the property later that night. Once my wife got better and we came back to the hotel, they arranged some porridge in our villa with a note for her to get better soon. We felt that the hotel truly cared about us, and that we built a connection with the people working there. Continue reading The Greatest Challenge of Any Luxury Hotelier