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I've Dealt with Hundreds of Luxury Hotel General Managers over the years, and most of them are fantastic both at what they do and as people. Just as with the best luxury hotels, which excel not only with their beautiful interiors but also superb service, it takes a combination of hard and soft skills to be a great GM. Sadly, I had a conversation recently with a GM who shall remain nameless and managed, even in our brief call and email, to exemplify some of the worst traits I've ever seen in a luxury hotel GM.
1. Patronizing
A great hotel GM highly values a travel company's insight into guests, and has humility when it comes to issues a guest has brought up involving his staff. This GM let me know that he would look into the matter and would unilaterally decide what was best for the guests and the hotel. Extremely poor form.
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2. Doesn't Honor Sales Manager's Goodwill Gesture Promise
Since I wasn't able to reach the GM, I was separately in touch with the hotel's Senior Sales Manager, who agreed to provide an additional goodwill gesture to the clients based on the fact that they were outright lied to. The GM didn't honor the goodwill gesture, and the Senior Sales Manager had to backtrack. This wouldn't have occurred at the Four Seasons, where Sales Managers are far more empowered (and where, in my years of experience, it's much less likely to have a hotel associate lie and blame the guest in the first place).
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3. Minimizes the Issue if the Hotel is at Fault
In this case, the guests found that a hotel staffer had lied to me (and to them) in a way that blamed the guests for the issue that occurred. It's never classy to blame a guest for an associate's misstep. The GM's response? He downplayed the lying, saying that in the context of everything that the hotel had to deal with due to COVID-19, it was insignificant. If the GM was running a hospital overrun with COVID patients, not a luxury hotel, fair enough. But most of my luxury hotel clients are incredibly savvy, and savvy or not, most guests don't want to be lied to then have it trivialized. A huge part of what guests pay for in a luxury hotel is superb service, and with that service should come integrity, and owning up to a mistake.
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4. Lack of Curiosity
I find that the best luxury hotel GMs have an innate curiosity, not only about the world, but specifically about what they can do better and how they can better inspire their team. That was not this GM. Even though I pointed out that the guests were in close contact with me and had let me (not the hotel) know their concerns about the staffer who lied, did he ask whether the guests had provided any additional feedback to me, and ask to have me let him know if they were still not happy with the resolution? Nope. He merely asserted that he had solved the problem, case closed. Zero curiosity, zero request to be apprised of any additional guest feedback that came to me directly.
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5. Poor Attention to Detail
A good proxy for how detail-oriented someone is, I find, is to see if, after a number of emails from me, they spell my name correctly. A GM who spells my name as Hillary after multiple emails with my signature line showing the correct spelling of my name just isn't paying sufficient attention. If s/he spells my name incorrectly, chances are s/he could make the same mistake with clients and many other details while on the job. What might not matter for a cheap motel matters enormously at the luxury hotel level.
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If you've encountered terrible luxury hotel GMs, what were the traits that made them so, in your view?
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