The guest sees a stay. Behind it are several hundred people organized into departments, each with its own head, budget and standard, all reporting through the executive committee to the general manager. This page sets out that structure and then turns to what the hoteliers interviewed for my three books say about how it works and how they rose through it.
The general manager and the executive committee
The general manager runs the property and answers for everything in it, to the guests, to the team, to the owner and to the brand. Reporting to the general manager is the executive committee: the hotel manager or resident manager, the directors of rooms, food and beverage, sales and marketing, finance, people and culture, and engineering, and at many properties the executive chef and the director of spa. This layer holds the standard on every shift the general manager is not present for, which is most of them. Susanne Hatje described the general manager’s job across all of it.
“As general manager, I must be a part of every facet of the business: finance, marketing, rooms and beyond.” Susanne Hatje, then general manager of Mandarin Oriental, New York
The separate page on what a luxury hotel general manager does covers the day itself.
Rooms division
Rooms owns the guest’s arrival, stay and departure and is led by a director of rooms or hotel manager. Inside it sit the front office (reception, reservations, the night audit, the telephone operators and bell staff), the concierge, guest relations, housekeeping and, at properties that offer it, the butler service. Housekeeping is usually the biggest single department on the property. Marc von Arnim’s first managerial role was as team leader of housekeeping; Mariano Silvestri’s was as housekeeping supervisor at Park Hyatt Mendoza. The division works as a single circuit of information. Aaron Kaupp gives the example of a housekeeper who notices books on local excursions in a room and passes the observation to the concierge, who has something ready before the guest asks.
Food and beverage
Food and beverage covers every restaurant, bar and lounge on the property, in room dining, banqueting and events, and the kitchens behind all of them. A director of food and beverage leads the front of house side alongside the executive chef, who runs the kitchens and the brigade; the separate pages on the kitchen brigade and the executive chef cover the back of house. For many of the hoteliers in the book, this is where they started. Luc Delafosse led the stewarding department at the Savoy in London before becoming chief steward and then executive assistant manager of food and beverage at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco. Tom Roelens started washing dishes, served as a commis de rang, and held his first leadership position as assistant room service manager. Anneke Brown is direct about it.
“I still today believe the best hospitality people start in food and beverage.” Anneke Brown, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)
Spa and wellness
The director of spa runs the treatment rooms, the therapists, the fitness facilities and, increasingly, a wellness program that reaches into the restaurant menus. Ayman Gharib observed that longstanding guests at Raffles Dubai would contact their butler, shisha sommelier or spa therapist directly to arrange their next stay. The spa is also one of the touchpoints the Forbes inspectors score, and a property that performs brilliantly there and acceptably at the front desk does not earn the rating.
Sales, marketing and revenue
The director of sales and marketing leads the teams that fill the hotel: group and corporate sales, leisure sales through travel advisors, marketing and public relations, digital channels and, in a separate function at most properties, revenue management, which sets rates and manages distribution. Pinar Kartal Timer remembers reservations arriving by telex and fax; Taljinder Singh and his mentor Patu Keswani wrote the first presentation on revenue management within The Taj Group. Mariano Silvestri in the Maldives and Marc Brugger in Hong Kong and Beijing both describe social media as central to how guests now find and choose a property.
Finance
The director of finance owns the budget, the accounts, purchasing and payroll, and reports to the general manager and to the owner. The best operators let the team see the numbers. Patrizio Cipollini at Four Seasons Hotel Firenze shared the hotel’s financial results with all staff every year and gave each department its own budget to deliver. Kai Speth describes inviting ideas from colleagues on how the finance department could be more efficient alongside ideas on menus and housekeeping procedures.
People and culture
Human resources recruits, inducts and trains the team, and at the properties in the book it does much more than administration. George Cozonis argues that every luxury hotel should have a training department with classrooms, trainers and a commensurate payroll. Pinar Kartal Timer speaks with every new applicant herself after the interviews with human resources and the department head, and her new recruits spend a full day hearing from every department head about what their unit does and how it relates to the others. Stephen Ansell assigns each new team member a personal coach in their department for the first three months.
Engineering and security
The director of engineering keeps the building running, from plant and power to the renovation program. Security protects the guests, the team and the asset around the clock. Guests rarely see either department, and the hoteliers in the book are explicit about the regard they deserve.
“As a leader, I always treat colleagues in housekeeping, engineering, and the kitchen with the same respect and dignity I would the most honored hotel guest.” Mariano Silvestri, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)
A 50 key resort and a 500 key city hotel
The departments are the same at both ends of the scale. What differs is how many people hold each role and how many layers sit between the general manager and the line. At a small resort the general manager may chair a committee of four, know every guest by name and walk every corner of the property before breakfast. At a 500 key city hotel the general manager has a hotel manager and a full committee of directors, each with managers beneath them, and relies on that senior tier to hold the standard. Philip Barnes, then at the Savoy, told me that staying in his own hotel felt like being stalked by 600 people, because everyone knew when he went to breakfast and whom he had dinner with. A large property at full occupancy also produces several hundred guest interactions a day, and no single leader’s attention can cover them, so the standard has to live in the training, the daily lineup and the department heads.
How the people in the book moved through it
Almost no one in the book began near the top. Ayman Gharib started as a steward in a restaurant chain in Lebanon, washing dishes and polishing champagne glasses. Krister Svensson started as a steward in Stockholm.
“I learned early on that starting from the bottom was incredibly important to understanding roles you would otherwise be oblivious to later on.” Krister Svensson, then general manager of The St. Regis Bangkok
Christian Hassing joined as a bellboy, moved to the telephone department and then to reception. Adrian Gray began as a receptionist in Edinburgh. Torsten van Dullemen started as a reservations agent at the Savoy. Nicholas Yarnell’s first leadership role was front office manager of the Connaught; Susanne Hatje’s was director of rooms at The Mark in New York. Luc Delafosse went from stewarding through food and beverage to hotel manager and then general manager. The route is usually front office or food and beverage, then a department, then rooms or food and beverage at director level, then hotel manager, then the top job.
The habit does not stop at the top. Ayman Gharib and his senior colleagues spend a day shadowing a colleague in an operational department. Pinar Kartal Timer sends new department heads to spend a week rotating through other units before they take up their own. The site’s question on how to become a hotel general manager and the question on how long it takes follow the full path.