A culture of exceptional service is assembled in order: hire for character, induct new people slowly and personally, rehearse the team daily like an orchestra, and protect it from the pressures that would erode it. Each stage is a leader's decision repeated over years, and skipping any one of them shows up in the service within months.
After years of listening to hoteliers and chefs, I came to think of the work as a chronology: hiring, onboarding, culture, defense, departure. A culture of exceptional service is what you get when a leader works every stage of that sequence with discipline, over years. It cannot be installed. It has to be grown, in order.
The sequence begins at the interview. Across eighty conversations, with people who do not know one another, the hiring advice was the same: hire for character, because everything else can be taught. Marc von Arnim, then general manager of Park Hyatt Sydney, described what he listens for.
“When interviewing applicants, I look for people that speak from the heart and display a level of emotional intelligence. The luxury hotel industry is about how we make the customer feel, and therefore part of the interview process is simply using your intuition when interacting with an applicant.” Marc von Arnim, then general manager, Park Hyatt Sydney
The candidate who can describe a difficult guest without a rehearsed corporate answer, or name a colleague they admire and explain why with feeling, has shown the capacity the work will demand every day. Graham Ledger, then general manager of Singita across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, formalizes the same instinct as an 80/20 rule: eighty percent enthusiasm and cultural fit, twenty percent technical ability that can be taught. He asks candidates whether they are still in touch with old friends, because a person who maintains a friendship over a decade is likely to maintain a returning guest relationship over the same span.
The second stage is induction, and the best operations treat it as a serious, multi day process rather than an HR formality. At Four Seasons Resort Lanaʻi, Tom Roelens told me, every new employee spends two days learning the goals and beliefs of the company, the culture of Hawaiʻi and the history of the resort. Stephen Ansell assigns each new team member a personal coach in their department for the first three months. Von Arnim attends every new recruit’s orientation himself to explain the expectations and the larger vision for the hotel. A recruit who in most operations would never meet the general manager has been told on day one that they are inside something that takes them seriously. Ledger’s orientations at Singita run from three days to more than three weeks, on the principle that a poorly inducted staff member will fail spectacularly.
The third stage is the daily work of alignment. Patrick O’Connell of The Inn at Little Washington in Virginia, three Michelin stars, gave me the metaphor I have kept.
“It’s very much like an orchestra and my role is parallel to a conductor’s. I’m always looking for any flaws and imperfections that need correction.” Patrick O’Connell, The Inn at Little Washington, Washington, Virginia
The musicians are trained separately before they join. The rehearsal, repeated daily, turns their separate trainings into the single performance the guest pays for. A new musician rushed past the rehearsal is audible in the section for months, and the same is true of a new line cook or a new front desk agent. The key word for O’Connell is collaboration. Everyone’s contribution matters, and everyone has to be on cue.
The fourth stage is protection. A team that is hired well, inducted carefully and rehearsed daily can still be eroded by the difficult guest, the impatient owner and the visiting brand inspector who has come to find a problem. The leader who stands between the team and those pressures gets a level of service the same team cannot deliver without that cover. The team does not need to be told this is happening. They feel it.
A culture of exceptional service is the visible result of four invisible disciplines. Each one costs the leader time that something else will claim. Each one, cut under quarterly pressure, is paid for later in reviews, repeat guest ratios and the hours spent recruiting again.
Chapter 4, First the Team, sets out each of these stages in full, from the interview question to the dignified departure, and closes with the economics of a team built over a decade.