The published ones are external audits such as Forbes Five-Star, AAA Five-Diamond and the Michelin Key, which inspect hundreds of touchpoints across a stay. The leaders I interviewed treat those criteria as a floor. The real standard is the one they set internally, in daily behavior, well above what any inspector checks.
There are two answers to this question, and the gap between them is where most of the interesting leadership happens.
The first answer is the published one. Luxury hotels operate under a set of external audits: Forbes Five-Star, AAA Five-Diamond, the Leading Hotels of the World, the Michelin Key and, since 2023, the World’s 50 Best Hotels. Each is an independent inspection against criteria the operator did not write. Each can be revoked. The Forbes inspection is the most visible. Unannounced inspectors evaluate hundreds of touchpoints across a stay, from check in to the room, the bath, every food and beverage outlet, the spa, the back of house and the departure, and the property has to deliver at the standard at every one. A hotel that performs brilliantly at the spa and acceptably at the front desk does not get the rating. The bar is the floor, never the average.
The second answer is the one the leaders I interviewed actually work to. They treat the audits as the minimum below which they would consider themselves to have failed, and they set the operating standard internally, in their own daily conduct, well above it. Pinar Kartal Timer, then general manager of Pera Palace Hotel, Jumeirah, in Istanbul, told me that as a perfectionist, good is never enough, for her or for the luxury business. In the same breath she said the team cannot live at that pace without continuous coaching and time to improve. Both postures together are the standard. Either one alone fails within eighteen months.
Brian Gullbrants, then president of Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, described the mechanism by which the internal bar does its work.
“If you ask for excellence, you’ll get a job well done. But if you demand perfection, you’ll achieve excellence.” Brian Gullbrants, then president of Wynn Las Vegas and Encore
The bar the leader sets is the bar the team works toward. Aim at excellence and the result, over time, is adequate. Aim at perfection and the team lands at excellence, because the asymmetric pursuit pulls the output above where it would otherwise have settled.
There is a practical reason the audit cannot be the operating standard. Audits are lagging indicators by design. By the time the inspector arrives, the property has either built the culture that meets the standard or it has not, and no tightening of the inspector facing surfaces in the final week will hide the difference. The audits also change. Forbes has expanded its inspection points as the definition of luxury has shifted, and Michelin has refined its criteria more than once. An operator aiming at the audit is aiming at a moving target. An operator whose standard already sits above it absorbs the revisions without noticing.
The chefs I interviewed hold the identical view of their own audits. Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin in New York, whose kitchen has held three Michelin stars longer than most three star kitchens have existed, told me he does not think about the awards on his way to work.
“I believe that if we work hard and focus on what we do best, the awards will follow.” Eric Ripert, chef, Le Bernardin, New York
The leader who thinks about the awards is thinking about the audit. The leader who thinks about the work is the one who, over the long run, holds the awards.
Chapter 7, In Pursuit of Perfection, sets out the audit systems on both sides of the industry, why the best operators treat them as floors, and what happens to a property when the leader stops aiming past them.