When I spoke with Axel Bethke, he was general manager of Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort by Anantara in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The book notes that he has since become General Manager of Kempinski Hotel Das Tirol in Austria.
Bethke appears in three chapters, and in each he speaks to the same underlying habit: a property that pays attention in person. On knowing the guest, he told me that anticipating needs is the best way to demonstrate excellent service, and in the same breath that it is difficult to teach and harder still to execute consistently. His answer is dialogue. The team at Qasr Al Sarab is coached to treat every exchange with a guest as a chance to learn their likes and dislikes, and the profile built that way, in the moments the guest is actually in the room, is far richer than anything a database lookup can produce. On recovery, he runs the sequence with the temperature turned up: listen actively, show genuine concern, make the guest happy again swiftly and completely, and give staff the authority to do it without involving leadership. Afterwards, investigate the cause and share the fix across the team so the mistake does not recur.
“Conversation is the best way to understand our guests and their preferences.” Axel Bethke, then general manager, Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort by Anantara
In the book, Axel Bethke appears in Chapter 9, Knowing Your Guest, where his coaching of staff to interview guests through ordinary conversation is the dialogue driven end of the anticipation practice; in Chapter 10, The Recovery, where his insistence on staff empowerment earns a paragraph of its own, because recovery is won or lost in minutes and a failure routed upward is a failure left unrepaired; and in Chapter 12, The Digital Discipline, where he names the one role technology cannot replace. Guests have endless local information online, he told me, and still the concierge stands. The restaurant proprietor who holds a table at midnight for this concierge’s guest, the driver who knows the right route at six in the evening: these relationships belong to a specific human being, accumulated over years, and no AI tool can trade on them.
“When guests are angry, you must kill them with kindness. You must be sincere and honest.” Axel Bethke, then general manager, Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort by Anantara