Luxury GMs Need a Sharp Point of View, Not a Manual

Skift has a short piece that cuts to the chase: as hotel brands scale and standards copy-paste across continents, the GM's real job is to protect what makes the hotel belong to its place. That means the chain no longer asks you to execute. It asks you to think.

The article doesn't offer a checklist. It makes a case. When every hotel serves the same caviar, the same high-thread-count sheets and the same spa treatments, what's left to differentiate? Your eye, your taste, your guts. Saying "no here", "yes there", or "we do that differently" turns a technically correct hotel into a place with character.

My read: this is a major shift for the industry. We've spent years hiring GMs who follow the playbook to the letter. Now the conversation is about how bold you dare to be. Not improvising, but having an actual point of view. Are you in Tuscany? Then the guest needs to taste wine you picked because that producer is your neighbor and tells you stories. That can't come from a corporate manual.

What about revenue management? A GM with a sharp point of view will also optimize better. They don't chase the neighborhood's ADR, they set it. They don't compete on price, they compete on story. That's how luxury defends itself against OTAs and photo-to-photo comparison. Playing it safe in luxury is no longer just boring. It's commodity.