Eighty first-person interviews with the world's greatest hoteliers and Michelin-starred chefs.
“The disciplined art of human attention... a master class in leadership, with lessons that reach far beyond the realm of hospitality.”
— Hubert Joly, former CEO, Best Buy; author of The Heart of Business
Available now · Kindle ($9.99), paperback ($19.99), and hardcover ($29.99)
When a loyal guest of one Raffles hotel planned his first visit to another property overseas, the team flew his regular butler ahead of him. When the family arrived, the person who had cared for them on every stay was waiting at the door.
That instinct is not generosity; it is a discipline, and the world's greatest luxury hoteliers and Michelin-starred chefs all practice it. The Luxury of Attention draws on eighty first-person interviews to show how the people behind Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, Le Bernardin, and El Celler de Can Roca lead teams, hold standards, and deliver experiences guests remember for decades.
What emerges across these conversations is one discipline seen from every angle: how a career starts as a calling and is forged through years of apprenticeship, how the strongest leaders build a team and then trust it with the keys, how they hold an exacting standard without smothering creativity, recover with grace when a night falls apart, and stay true to who they are while technology and trend churn around them. The thread running through all of it is attention, and its rewards compound over a very long game. These are lessons for anyone whose real work is sensing what another person needs before they think to ask for it.
You'll hear directly from Eric Ripert, José Andrés, Joan Roca, Ana Roš, the late Anthony Bourdain, and dozens more who have given their lives to this craft. Where Setting the Table and Unreasonable Hospitality made the case for why hospitality matters, The Luxury of Attention shows how the world's best actually do it.
“The Luxury of Attention reveals what the world's finest hoteliers and chefs have perfected: how to design unforgettable experiences through the disciplined art of human attention. In Rahim Kanani's hands, their craft becomes a master class in leadership, persistence, and creativity, with lessons that reach far beyond the realm of hospitality.”
— Hubert Joly, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, former CEO of Best Buy, and bestselling author of The Heart of Business“Hospitality at its best has always been a school for wisdom, and The Luxury of Attention is the most thorough syllabus I've read. Rahim Kanani shows us, through the world's greatest chefs and hoteliers, what leadership becomes when one person's full attention to another is the operating standard.”
— Chip Conley, founder of the Modern Elder Academy; former Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, Airbnb; author of Wisdom @ Work and The Modern Elder“The first-ever comprehensive and authentic exploration of originality in contemporary cuisine.”
— Chef Ferran Adrià, elBulliFrom the foreword to A Wealth of Insight: The World's Best Chefs (2019)“An impressive, long-overdue publication of this nature and magnitude.”
— Dr. Dimitrios Diamantis, Les Roches Global Hospitality EducationPraise for A Wealth of Insight: The World's Best Luxury Hoteliers (2017)Great careers in this work begin with a small moment of service that lands as recognition: this is the work I was made for.
Mastery still requires years under a master who can see what the apprentice cannot yet see; the years are not the price of the formation, they are the formation.
Standards are set by what the leader does when no one is watching: the lifted coffee cup, the silently corrected mise en place.
The guest experience can never sustainably exceed the employee experience; the great houses read and protect their people the way they read their guests.
After training your team, empower them to act; trust, once genuinely given, returns as ownership.
Creativity at the apex is the willingness to let failure redirect you, inside a discipline strong enough to catch you.
You hunt perfection and curse the day you find it; imperfection is the engine of evolution.
Nearly everything in this book can be taught; genuine care for another person cannot, so hire for it and build the operation around it.
Anticipation is attention applied to a specific person across hours, days, sometimes years, with the patience to know who they are before they have asked.
When the experience breaks, turn toward the guest at the precise moment most operations turn away; correct, then compensate without question.
Stay as pure as possible while trying to evolve; the houses that said no to the wrong growth outlasted the ones that could not.
The debate is not whether to use the new tools; it is where they belong, where they do not, and who decides.
Passion brings a person into this work; humbleness keeps them in it; durability is what the work returns to those who give it a working life.
The categories of luxury are merging in public; the craft underneath them, the discipline of human attention, is the one asset every entrant must learn.
The general managers behind Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, Raffles, Rosewood, and Singita — and the chefs behind the world's most celebrated kitchens — in a single conversation for the first time.
Eric Ripert · José Andrés · Joan Roca · Ana Roš · Patrick O'Connell · Niki Nakayama · Guy Savoy · Virgilio Martínez · the late Anthony Bourdain · and the general managers of Le Royal Monceau Raffles Paris, The Plaza New York, Mandarin Oriental Singapore, Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, Rosewood Hong Kong, Singita, and dozens more.
The complete roll call of all eighty subjects, with current affiliations, appears in the book.
The project began with two acclaimed volumes of first-person interviews — the hoteliers in 2017, the chefs in 2019. The Luxury of Attention is the book those two made possible: the synthesis, written on the conviction that the two crafts were one discipline all along.
Leadership, management, and the future of 5-star hospitality — in the general managers' own words. Required reading at leading hospitality schools.
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Creativity, leadership and perfection in the world's best kitchens — with a foreword by Ferran Adrià and a tribute interview with Anthony Bourdain.
View on AmazonThe two crafts as one discipline — drawn from all eighty interviews, and from years of continued conversation with many of the subjects since.
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A global authority on luxury hospitality, Rahim B. Kanani writes about leadership, mastery, and the human disciplines underneath both. Across eighty first-person interviews with the world's most decorated luxury hoteliers and Michelin-starred chefs, and years of continued listening since, he has produced three books on what these operators have learned about attention, presence, and the standards that make a life of demanding work worth giving.
He has also interviewed more than 600 of the world's foremost executives and innovators across business, politics, and the arts, including Justin Trudeau, Tony Blair, Michael Bloomberg, Alicia Keys, Madonna, James Cameron, José Andrés, and the late Anthony Bourdain.
The Luxury of Attention is his third book, following A Wealth of Insight, his acclaimed two-book series on the world's finest hoteliers and chefs. He divides his time between Vancouver, Canada, and Washington, D.C.
Media inquiries, interview requests, review copies, and speaking:
press@theluxuryofattention.com
Bulk and corporate orders — hotel groups, restaurant groups, and hospitality schools — are warmly welcomed at the same address.
