When I spoke with Torsten van Dullemen, he was general manager of The Landmark Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong. The book notes that he has since become General Manager of Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park in London.
Van Dullemen speaks in the book to what has happened to the general manager’s job over a generation, and he captured it for me in a single comparison of before and after. Twenty years ago, guests checked in, guests checked out, and the general manager focused on service. Today the same person has to understand the legal aspect of the business, the pace of technology, digital marketing, public affairs, and how to work with owners and shareholders, or the hotel cannot be run successfully. In our conversation he was describing a role that is materially more demanding than the one his own mentors held, and technology is the largest single reason for the difference. The point I draw from it in the book is aimed at the aspiring leader. The job they are preparing for is a different job from the one that existed when the people who trained them entered the industry. Its technical surface is broader and its operating tempo is faster, and the service that sits at the center of it has not gone anywhere.
“Twenty years ago, guests checked-in, guests checked-out, and you focused on service. Today, if you don’t understand the legal aspect, the pace of technology, digital marketing, public affairs, and how to work with owners and shareholders, you cannot run a hotel successfully.” Torsten van Dullemen, then General Manager, The Landmark Mandarin Oriental
In the book, Torsten van Dullemen appears in Chapter 12, The Digital Discipline, where his account of the widening role frames the chapter’s argument about what technology has done to the work of running a luxury hotel, and what it has left untouched. His before and after is the measure I use for how far the job has moved and for what an aspiring general manager now needs to learn.