What does the luxury of attention feel like as a guest?

It feels like being known without being watched. The room is right before you ask, the person at the desk remembers what you said yesterday, and nobody performs any of it. The luxury of attention is the leadership idea I developed from eighty interviews with the world's finest hoteliers and chefs, and from the guest's chair it is the difference between a stay you rate and a stay you remember.

The luxury of attention is the leadership idea I developed from eighty interviews with the world’s finest hoteliers and chefs: the unforced, undivided attention of one person to another, treated as the discipline behind exceptional service and leadership. Most of my book is written for the people who run hotels and restaurants. This page is for the people who stay and dine in them, because the idea is easiest to understand from the chair where it is felt.

Being known without being watched

From the guest’s side, attention is mostly invisible. The room is the way you like it before you have said how you like it. The person at the desk uses your name and remembers the thing you mentioned on the way out yesterday. The table you are given is the quiet one, because someone noticed last time that you chose the quiet one. None of it is announced. Pinar Kartal Timer, then general manager of Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah in Istanbul, gave me the three feelings the whole apparatus exists to produce:

“Guests should be made to feel welcomed, appreciated, and acknowledged.” Pinar Kartal Timer, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

Acknowledged is the word that matters. Any hotel can welcome you; the good ones are warm. Acknowledgement means that a particular person registered a particular you, which is the thing a guest cannot buy by paying more for the room.

The line between attentive and intrusive

Guests sense immediately when attention tips into surveillance, and the best operators are more alert to that line than their guests are. Mariano Silvestri, then general manager of Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa, put the balance plainly:

“Giving guests a sense of privacy while still being sensitive to their needs is a fine balance because, after all, no guest wants to feel abandoned, however private they are.” Mariano Silvestri, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

Philip Barnes, then running The Savoy in London, added the part guests rarely consider, which is that the hotel’s file on you is always out of date:

“One of the dangers of personalization is that a guest history only tells you a snapshot of time. It doesn’t tell you where they are today, so you have to regularly validate certain information that you have about your guest.” Philip Barnes, then general manager of The Savoy, in The Luxury of Attention

That is why real attention feels like a conversation rather than a record. The hotel that greets you with last year’s preferences is reading a file. The hotel that notices you are travelling alone this time, and tired, is paying attention.

What luxury has become

The hoteliers I interviewed were candid that the old luxury of being waited on has given way to something harder to deliver. Pedro Dias, then general manager of The Surrey in New York, described the shift:

“As a luxury hotel industry, we are transitioning from pampering guests in a classic, white-glove sense, to one where guests being in full control of their experience is the new luxury.” Pedro Dias, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

And Aaron Kaupp, then general manager of Le Royal Monceau, Raffles Paris, defined what the guest who already has everything is looking for:

“In other words, luxury today is recreating an experience of what a guest already has at home or would like to have at home.” Aaron Kaupp, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

Put the two together and the guest’s experience of attention comes into focus. It is a place that has worked out what you would have arranged for yourself, and arranged it, and then stepped back so that you feel in charge of your own stay. Luc Delafosse, then managing director of Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, called hospitality “the craft of knowing in advance what guests need and want,” and the hotels that practice it make you feel foreseen rather than managed.

Why it cannot be automated

A guest in a good hotel today is surrounded by technology that makes the stay smoother, and the hoteliers welcome it. They also draw a line. Christian A. Hassing, then general manager of Mandarin Oriental, Singapore, put it this way:

“While automation, applications and other technologies have provided new opportunities for the luxury travel industry to boost efficiency, technology cannot replace the human touch nor the personal relationships developed between our guests and colleagues.” Christian A. Hassing, in The Luxury of Attention

As a guest you can test this on any stay. The app that remembers your pillow is efficient. The person who notices that you did not sleep is attention, and that is the thing the book is about.

How to be the guest a team remembers

The relationship runs both ways, and the hoteliers say so. Tell the hotel what you need, because the guest who says nothing and expects telepathy makes the work harder. Use the names of the people who look after you; they use yours. Notice the attention when it arrives, and say so, to the person and to the general manager, because recognition is what sustains the people who give it. Patrick O’Connell of The Inn at Little Washington told me: “On each visit there needs to be a fresh surprise for the guest.” The returning guest who lets a place surprise them is the guest a team works hardest for.

Chapter 9 of The Luxury of Attention, Knowing Your Guest, sets out how the best hotels and restaurants build the attention described here, and the key idea page explains where the idea came from.