Gerrit Graef was general manager of The Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh when I spoke with him for The Luxury of Attention. The book notes that he has since become General Manager of JW Marriott Marquis Dubai.
Graef speaks to two subjects in the book, and in both cases he states the point in plainer commercial terms than anyone else I interviewed. The first is recovery. Chapter 10 argues that a complaint is the moment a property’s attention, which the guest was never supposed to notice, becomes fully visible, and that the operator’s job is to make it worth seeing. Graef puts the return in terms any operator can act on. Any kind of complaint, he told me, must always be treated as an opportunity to adapt, to learn from mistakes and to deliver better service in the future.
“Negative feedback is the breakfast of champions. We learn and grow from these moments, and it’s our responsibility to turn every crisis into an opportunity to do better.” Gerrit Graef, then general manager, The Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh
The chapter sets his breakfast of champions beside the accounts of three other operators and reads them as one discipline seen from four stations.
The second subject is brand, and here he gave me a line the chapter could not improve on. The Ritz-Carlton, he told me, is not selling hotel rooms.
“We are selling an experience. If The Ritz-Carlton was merely a hotel, our guests would find the same product for less elsewhere.” Gerrit Graef, then general manager, The Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh
That is the operating definition of brand for any property at this level. The hotel selling rooms is selling a commodity. The hotel selling an experience the guest cannot find elsewhere has an identity that holds it above the commodity floor, and that identity is what the property must protect. Brand, on this reading, is what the property is, repeated daily until the market recognizes the substance and pays a premium for it. The marketing comes afterward. A property that works the marketing without protecting the substance ends up with a brand that is hollow at the center, and the market will identify that given enough time.
In the book, Gerrit Graef appears in Chapter 10, The Recovery, on complaints as an opportunity to learn, and in Chapter 11, Staying True, on selling an experience rather than rooms and on brand as substance before marketing.