Return to luxury

The truly great luxury experiences in hotels of old were dominated by proprietorship and ownership at all levels of the hotel.

One thinks of the early Peninsula, the Oriental Bangkok, the Raffles (early days), the Ritz, the Plaza Athenee, The Grand Stockholm, the Savoy and the Imperial.

All those wonderful hotels of yesteryear – they had without exception extraordinary levels of attention for their guests from the sense of arrival, the room, the cuisine and the attention to the experience of visiting a new city or resort their concierges provided guests with exceptional support.

I was a hotelier brought up in the wonderful Regent group of and witnessed the evolution of a return to luxury in creating individuality for each and every property – the only commonality being management style.

I favour a relaxed, attentive and involved style on behalf of management and all members of the team; a return to times when the general manager of the hotel spent well over 70% of his time in direct contact with his guests and employees.

In the heavily branded world, we have become obsessed with meetings, invariably not being able to contact the GM or the management team because they are in yet another meeting.

The essence of my style of management would be to return hoteliers to being just that – hoteliers – individual flair of each hotel being paramount to success.

To do such a thing – to create a group of individual flavours turns the management company into a creative agency to insure the very notion of “cookie cutterness” is expelled from the menu.

It means a move away from short-term results to long-term results – something post-financial crisis in the sustainable era that economies at large are discovering. Thus it is refreshing to see such ideals emerging at a time when we need them more than ever.

My core views are very much at the centre of our Ativa Group drive to achieve this lofty ideal – one hopes this is beginning of a new revolution in the hospitality industry where others will follow the same example and in turn return hotel management to the hoteliers who will serve with a greater degree of passion as they are given greater responsibility and authority in a world where the trend hitherto has been to give added responsibility with less authority.

The notion of the independent hotelier being an authority that does not need to go to head office for every decision means that this style of luxury hotel keeping will be one based on old values of trust, loyalty, responsibility and passion will flow through to respective teams.

The management company needs to be highly creative to deliver the independence based on strong core values so that in the long term, the hotels will prosper and lead in the luxury hotel market.

 ABOUT

Bill Black is managing director of Bangkok-based boutique hotel management company Ativa Hospitality.

Bill gained more than 25 years of experience as general manager of the Regent / Four Seasons Hotels in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Singapore.

In 2004 he founded Bed Management Company – a hotel management firm specialising in boutique properties.

www.ativahospitality.com