When I spoke with Krister Svensson, he was general manager of The St. Regis Bangkok in Thailand. The book notes that he has since become General Manager of W Melbourne and Area General Manager for Marriott International’s luxury hotels in Australia.
Svensson speaks to three things in The Luxury of Attention. The first is the apprenticeship. He began as a steward in a Stockholm restaurant, and he told me that starting at the bottom gave him an understanding of roles he would otherwise have been blind to later in his career. The second is the scale at which a global company can know its guests. Under Marriott International, preferences are tracked across the whole portfolio, captured before arrival and refined during the stay, so that a guest who stayed in Singapore years earlier arrives in Bangkok to the same pillow and the same dietary note. The system, run well, lets a global brand behave locally like a property that has known the guest for years. The third is the channel shift. His property put a butler service on WhatsApp because guests were more comfortable texting than calling, and that choice became the standard I describe in The Digital Discipline.
“I learned early on that starting from the bottom was incredibly important to understanding roles you would otherwise be oblivious to later on. I learned to appreciate that every job was important and valued, no matter how small it may seem.” Krister Svensson, then General Manager, The St. Regis Bangkok
In the book, Krister Svensson appears in Chapter 2, The Apprenticeship, where his start as a steward sits alongside Ayman Gharib’s start washing dishes in Lebanon; in Chapter 9, Knowing Your Guest, where his account of Marriott’s preference tracking is the most ambitious example of the practice I document; and in Chapter 14, The Future of Luxury and Craft, where his WhatsApp butler is one of the forecasts from our conversations that has since come true.
“Under Marriott International, we track the likes, dislikes and preferences of guests across the entire portfolio of 6,000 hotels around the world.” Krister Svensson, then General Manager, The St. Regis Bangkok