Presence, manners and the capacity to notice the guest in front of you matter more than any technical skill, because the technical skills can be taught and these cannot. The best operators also look for balance: friendly without being familiar, assertive without being rude, confident without being arrogant.
Ask a general manager which skills they hire for and the technical list comes quickly. Languages, systems, revenue management, a sound palate. Ask which skills they would refuse to hire without, and the answer changes. In my interviews with eighty hoteliers and chefs, the qualities that made the second list were never technical. They were the qualities that let a person be fully present with another person.
Philip Barnes, then general manager of The Savoy in London, put it in characteristically dry terms.
“We’re not in the business of saving lives, nor are we trying to put a man on the moon. We’re trying to look after guests in the best possible way, and the one thing we can’t teach is the right attitude. If they have the presence, manners and wherewithal, we can teach them pretty much anything else.” Philip Barnes, then general manager of The Savoy, London
Presence, manners and wherewithal is a useful shorthand, and each word carries weight. Presence is the capacity to be with the guest rather than half with the guest and half with the clock. Manners is the instinctive courtesy that does not need a script. Wherewithal is the practical sense to act on what you have noticed. Barnes’s point is that everything else, from wine knowledge to the property management system, can be taught to someone who arrives with those.
Pinar Kartal Timer, then general manager of Pera Palace Hotel, Jumeirah in Istanbul, gave me the most precise description of the balance an operator is looking for. Each quality she named comes paired with the distortion it can slide into.
“Hotel employees should be friendly but not pally, assertive but not rude, kind but not weak, humble but not timid, and proud but not arrogant.” Pinar Kartal Timer, then general manager of Pera Palace Hotel, Jumeirah, Istanbul
Anyone who has worked a floor will recognize that register. The agent who is friendly becomes pally and the guest feels the distance collapse in a way they did not invite. The one who is assertive tips into rudeness under pressure. Kindness without a spine becomes a doormat for the difficult guest. Humility that cannot speak up lets a mistake pass. Pride in the property that becomes pride in oneself reads as arrogance from across the desk. Timer’s five pairs are a workable interviewer’s checklist, and she used them, interviewing every hire into the hotel regardless of position.
Underneath all of these is the skill the book treats as the foundation: noticing. The soft skill that separates a good operator from a great one is the habit of registering the specific guest and what they need right now. Aaron Kaupp’s team at Le Royal Monceau noticed that an engaged solo traveler was missing her fiancé, and filled her room with helium balloons carrying his photograph. Graham Ledger’s team at Singita noticed a guest’s standing order for a gin and tonic and built a surprise gin bar into the bush dinner. Neither gesture required a technical skill. Both required a person who was paying attention and had the confidence to act.
Two cautions for anyone building a career on these qualities. The first is that they are read by intuition, which is why Marc von Arnim, then general manager of Park Hyatt Sydney, said the interview process is simply using your instinct about whether the candidate speaks from the heart. There is no certificate for it. The second is that soft skills erode under bad conditions. Fear, exhaustion and a leader who does not shield the team from difficult guests will wear down presence and kindness in even the best natured hire. The skills travel with the person, and they need the right room in order to show.
Chapter 8, The Human Touch, names the trait the best operators hire for, sets out the conditions that protect and erode it, and takes up the harder question of how the standard is carried forward once the leader who embodies it has moved on.