When I spoke with Ayman Gharib, he was general manager of Raffles Dubai and Sofitel Dubai Wafi in the United Arab Emirates. He began his career a long way from either property, as a steward in a luxury restaurant chain in his native Lebanon, washing dishes, peeling onions and polishing champagne glasses. The book notes that he has since become CEO of Kisawa Sanctuary in Mozambique.
Gharib speaks to the pragmatic apprenticeship and to the furthest reach of anticipation. The steward’s job, he told me, taught him the fundamentals of the industry, along with patience, perseverance and determination, and he still holds that nobody succeeds in this business without understanding its basics. The second subject is a story that illustrates anticipation as cleanly as any I have heard. A regular guest of Raffles Dubai was about to make his first visit to another Raffles property overseas. Without being asked, and without the guest having imagined it was possible, the team flew his regular butler to that hotel so that a familiar face was waiting in the room when the family arrived, and stayed with them for the entire visit.
“To surprise him and his family, we flew his regular butler to the hotel so that when they all arrived, our colleague would be waiting to welcome them to their room and take care of them during their entire stay.” Ayman Gharib, then general manager, Raffles Dubai and Sofitel Dubai Wafi
In the book, Ayman Gharib appears in Chapter 2, The Apprenticeship, where his start as a steward in Lebanon sits with Krister Svensson’s start as a steward in Stockholm as examples of careers built from the bottom up, and in Chapter 9, Knowing Your Guest, where the flying of the butler is the type specimen of what the chapter calls generative anticipation: the property creating an experience the guest could not have requested because it had not yet been imagined. The gesture cost a plane ticket. The story has been told in countless conversations since, by Gharib and presumably by the guest, and the economics of it, calculated honestly, run absurdly in the property’s favor.
“You need to understand the basics of the business to be successful.” Ayman Gharib, then general manager, Raffles Dubai and Sofitel Dubai Wafi