When I spoke with Amit Majumder, he was general manager of Jumeirah Vittaveli in the Maldives. The book notes that he has since become Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Atoll Estates in Dubai. He appears in two chapters, and in each he gave me a sentence the chapter could not improve on.
Majumder speaks first to the upper end of what it means to know a guest. Every luxury brand builds mechanisms to track preferences. The mechanisms are widely available. What separates the best operations is the human discipline of acting on what the mechanisms surface, and of using that information to remove friction from the guest’s experience while returning the choice, where it matters, to the guest. His definition of luxury is the standard the chapter measures everything else against.
“True luxury is having what you’re merely thinking about be presented to you before you voice that desire. Every luxury brand invests in, and creates, mechanisms to track the preferences of their guests, but what sets each of them apart is how that information is used.” Amit Majumder, then general manager, Jumeirah Vittaveli
He speaks second to recovery at the scale of catastrophe. Majumder was in Asia when SARS emptied the hotels. Apart from a few health officials there were no guests, and people were losing their jobs across the industry. His team saw an opportunity in the empty building and convinced the shareholders to invest in a refurbishment, on the argument that there would never be a better time to expedite a renovation. Within a few months, without any loss or displacement of business, the property reopened as a renewed product that commanded higher rates, and the jobs of his colleagues were saved in the process.
“You must adapt when the goal posts move.” Amit Majumder, then general manager, Jumeirah Vittaveli
In the book, Amit Majumder appears in Chapter 9, Knowing Your Guest, where his sentence on what a guest is merely thinking about captures the top rung of the chapter’s ladder and his line on how information is used becomes its operating principle, and in Chapter 10, The Recovery, where the SARS refurbishment shows the recovery posture applied to a crisis in which the property could not serve guests at all and chose instead to serve its own renewal while protecting its people.