Hospitality Taught me Humility

Hospitality Taught me Humility

Over the years I have been part of, or supported owners and managers of, hotels, resorts, restaurants, tourism businesses, and hospitality platforms as they succeeded, struggled, recovered, and sometimes failed.

One observation has remained remarkably consistent.

Hospitality assets rarely fail because of a lack of capital, systems, brands, concepts, technology, or effort.

More often, they under-perform because of a lack of alignment between managers and owners about who is responsible and accountable; in other words, or more likely, the fancy language you may recognise from a poster put on the wall of the cantina: “Governance”.

Governance.
This word sounds distant when things are going well, or you may not know the full picture.
But it becomes the subject of each and every discussion when expectations are not aligned.

Much of what I know today was not learned in classrooms.
It came from years of operational exposure, difficult environments, blood, sweat, tears, mistakes, recovery, responsibility and accountability.

Responsibility and accountability are not LinkedIn buzzwords.
They require standing up for what you believe in, and taking the blame when you are wrong.
Managing operational crises, safeguarding debt service, payroll, supplier commitments, ownership transitions, business recovery, and complex stakeholder environments taught me that performance problems rarely exist in isolation.

Revenue, operations, commercial strategy, cost structures, governance, leadership, and capital allocation are interconnected.
Believe me, I have seen my share, and I have learned the hard way.
As a professional. And as a family man.
Standing up for what is right, also when you realise the failings of the other party as well as your own, is not an easy call to make.
It requires maturity. And over time, maturity shapes character. Which proves my point.

Failure in one phase of your professional life, or your business, can lead to maturity in the next. Failure becomes valuable when approached with humility, accountability, and a willingness to learn from operational reality.
The real danger begins when employees or organisations become emotionally invested in defending decisions that no longer serve the business.
That is when facts become inconvenient. That is when reporting becomes selective. That is when accountability becomes blurred. That is when capital starts funding hope rather than strategy.

Over time, I have developed three core management principles that continue to shape my thinking about how to responsibly run a business.

  1. Commercial performance does not operate in isolation.
  • Revenue is not the starting point, and must not be limited to revenue management, but start by asking what is the optimal use of the property (“Highest-and-Best-Use”, or in short: HBU)
  • Revenue is the consequence of a much larger system involving governance, capital allocation, product definition, market positioning, sales execution, organisational capability, and ultimately the guest experience
  • Equally, the outcome of commercial performance should not be measured solely through operating indicators such as Average Daily Rate (ADR), Occupancy, RevPAR, or Gross Operating Profit (GOP). These metrics are important, but they are not the final objective.

The real question is whether the business is creating value: value for guests, value for employees, value for owners, and value that can be clearly explained and demonstrated to shareholders, lenders, and other stakeholders.
Sustainable commercial performance is therefore not merely about generating revenue.
It is about strengthening the long-term value of the business, the asset, and ultimately the land upon which it stands.

  1. Portfolio growth requires differentiated strategies.

Governance frameworks can often be standardised. Economic reality cannot.

  • What works for a luxury resort will not necessarily work for a mid-market city hotel
  • What works for an owner-operated asset may fail completely in a multi-property platform
  1. Organisational capability remains the critical link between strategy and execution.
  • Many performance challenges are not caused by a lack of capital, systems, brands, concepts, technology, or intent
  • They are caused by inconsistent application, unclear accountability, and weak execution at both management and ownership level

Strategy is rarely the problem. Execution usually is.
The compass I use to navigate these situations is governance.
Not governance as bureaucracy.
Rather, governance is the operating system of decision-making.
It creates clarity around decision rights, accountability, expectations, information flows, and risk.
Because organisations generally perform well when people understand who decides, who executes, who is accountable, and how decisions translate into action.

After more than twenty-five years in hospitality, I remain convinced that sustainable EBITDA growth is rarely the result of individual initiatives.
It is usually the result of alignment. Alignment between ownership objectives, organisational capability, commercial strategy, operational execution, and capital allocation.
When those elements align, performance follows. When they do not, no amount of effort can compensate indefinitely.

Thank you for reading my article.

This article is about how hospitality taught me humility.

This is the first of a series of articles – “What hospitality taught me about myself” – in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey, and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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The People Who Taught Me

The People Who Taught Me

When people speak about mentors, they usually describe a senior figure who intentionally guided their development.
My experience was different. Most of my teachers never applied for the role.

Some never realised they were teaching me at all.

  • An Executive Chef taught me humility
  • A Stewarding Manager taught me respect
  • A General Manager taught me authenticity
  • An HR Director taught me that people and performance are not enemies
  • A COO taught me pace
  • A CEO taught me to first set direction
  • A peer taught me the difference between competence and trust
  • Others taught lessons they never intended to teach

Some through generosity. Some through discipline. Some through conflict. Some through disappointment.
Many through example. A few through warning.
What connects them is not whether I agreed with them.
What connects them is that something survived the encounter.
A lesson. An idea. A perspective. A question.

The more mature I become, the less interested I am in judging people as successes or failures.
Most people are both. Most people possess strengths and weaknesses. Most people are struggling with challenges invisible to everyone else.
The same is true of organisations. And certainly, true of myself.

Looking back, I realise my career was shaped less by formal education than by observation.
Watching people. Learning from people. Admiring people. Occasionally arguing with people.
And sometimes discovering wisdom in places I did not expect to find it.

The people who taught me rarely resembled the teachers I imagined I needed.
Perhaps that is why their lessons endured.

Reflection

This article is about gratitude.

This is the sixteenth of a series of articles – “What hospitality taught me about myself” – in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey, and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

The most valuable teachers are not always the most impressive.
Often, they are simply the people who leave us unable to think exactly as we did before we met them.

I carry many such people with me. Not their titles. Not their positions.
Not their achievements. But, their lessons.
And in the end, that may be the only part of any of us that truly survives.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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The Professional I Could No Longer Trust

The Professional I Could No Longer Trust

Not every lesson arrives through success and admiration.
Some arrive through disappointment, hurt, and betrayal.

One of the most capable professionals I encountered during my career taught me exactly that.
Her expertise was genuine. She opened the door to my early career in advisory work. I learned from her. Significantly. We collaborated, exchanged ideas, developed opportunities, and worked together over many years.

At least that was how I understood the relationship.

Over time, circumstances changed. A client relationship moved elsewhere.
People I had worked with were pursued to join her for a very promising opportunity.
Looking back, I no longer view the events as a misunderstanding or a difference in perception.
The consequences were significant, both professionally and personally.
What had taken years to build—relationships, concepts, and frameworks—disappeared remarkably quickly.

I have experienced my share of professional disappointments. Few affected me as deeply as this one.
The commercial and contractual consequences were not the most important part of the story.
The real lesson was different. The experience forced me to confront a possibility I had previously preferred not to consider.
Professional competence and personal trustworthiness are not the same thing.

For a long time I struggled with that conclusion.
Not because I did not understand what had happened.
Rather because I found it difficult to reconcile the contradiction.
How could somebody demonstrate such professionalism in one area and such poor judgement in another?

Years passed.

I struggled. I adapted. I rebuilt.
I developed new capabilities and new business lines.
I strengthened structures that reduced dependency on individuals and created greater resilience.
In many ways, this experience reinforced a theme that would later become central to my professional thinking: governance.

For me, governance is not bureaucracy.
Governance is the operating system of decision-making.
It creates clarity around decision rights, accountability, expectations, information flows, and risk.
Proper governance does not eliminate human error or poor judgement.
It does, however, reduce ambiguity and make organisations less vulnerable when trust is tested.

One principle gradually emerged from this experience.
Revenue can be purchased.
Trust must be earned.
In the long run, trust is often what produces sustainable revenue.

Over time, my frustration diminished.
My conclusion remained.
The professional relationship ended because trust had been broken.
Some things can be repaired. Others cannot.

Yet something interesting happened.
My respect for her professional capability survived.
I continued to recognise her expertise.
I continued to acknowledge the contribution she made to my own development.
The relationship ended. The lessons remained.

That distinction took years to understand.
It would be easy to reduce the story to heroes and villains.
Reality is rarely that simple. Neither are people, nor me.

Looking back, I learned two lessons:

  • One about commercial thinking
  • One about character

Both were valuable. Only one survived the relationship.

And, more importantly, this helped me avoid becoming a cynic and remain guided in my work with people by trust.

Reflection

This article is about discernment: the ability to recognise that competence and trustworthiness are not the same thing.
Competence creates confidence. Trust creates relationships. The difference matters.

This is the fifteenth of a series of articles – “What hospitality taught me about myself” – in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey, and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

When I was younger, I believed competence naturally created trust. Experience taught me otherwise. Competence creates confidence.

Trust creates relationships. The two often appear together. Occasionally they do not.
The difference matters.

Some of the most successful people I have encountered were not necessarily the most trustworthy. Some of the most trustworthy were not necessarily the most successful.
The rare individuals possess both. Those are the people worth keeping close.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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Trust is the Final KPI

Trust is the Final KPI

For many years, I believed that successful projects could be recognised quite easily.

Revenue increased. Profit improved. Market share grew. Guest satisfaction rose. Budgets were achieved. Property value improved. Debt service secured. Investment plan on schedule.

The numbers told the story. At least that is what I thought.

Then I started noticing something.

When I looked back on the projects that remained most meaningful in my memory, I rarely remembered the final spreadsheet.
I remembered the people.

A conversation years later. An unexpected phone call. A recommendation. A friendship.
A door that remained open long after the assignment itself had ended.
Or occasionally, a door that closed forever.

That observation forced me to reconsider what success actually meant.

One organisation in particular taught me this lesson.
The engagement lasted several years. The discussions were often challenging. The expectations were not always aligned.
At times I pushed harder than the organisation wished to move.
At other times the organisation moved more slowly than I wished to accept.

There were disagreements.
There were difficult conversations.
There were moments when it would have been easier for both sides simply to stop talking.

Yet something survived.
Trust.

Years after the project ended, the relationships remained. The conversations remained. The respect remained.
Even some of the disagreements remained.
What disappeared was the need to be right.
What remained was confidence in each other’s intentions.
That fascinated me.

The project itself had eventually stopped.
The relationship had not.

And that forced me to ask a question. What exactly had been created?
Certainly not a report. Certainly not a spreadsheet. Certainly not a KPI.
The answer, I believe, was trust.
Not blind trust. Not emotional trust. Professional trust.

The confidence that somebody will tell you the truth even when it is uncomfortable.
Also when it’s myself on the receiving end.
The confidence that disagreement does not imply disloyalty.
The confidence that criticism serves improvement rather than politics.
The confidence that intentions remain aligned even when opinions differ.

Looking back, I increasingly believe trust is one of the most misunderstood assets in business.
Everyone talks about it.
Few measure it.
Yet organisations built upon trust can survive extraordinary pressure.
Organisations without trust often struggle even under favourable conditions.

The same applies to partnerships. Teams. Families. Perhaps even countries.
Trust rarely appears on a balance sheet.
Yet its absence eventually appears everywhere else.

Reflection

This article is about trust.

Not the trust that exists when everything goes well, but the trust that survives disagreement.
The more mature I become, the more suspicious I become of success that destroys trust.
The immediate outcome may appear attractive, but the long-term cost is often invisible until it arrives.

Agreement proves little. Trust reveals itself when people remain connected despite conflict.

For many years I searched for better metrics. Today I sometimes wonder whether trust was the metric all along.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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The COO Who Managed Pace

The COO Who Managed Pace

If the CEO represented ambition, the COO represented management.
That combination proved both powerful and instructive.

The COO was exceptionally intelligent. Capable. Curious.
And perhaps most importantly, humble enough to learn.
Over the years, he absorbed an extraordinary amount of knowledge.
Operations. Finance. Performance management. Governance. Strategy. Commercial thinking. Organisational design.
He learned continuously. Not because anybody forced him to. Because he wanted to understand.

As the organisation matured, he became increasingly capable of connecting the dots.
He understood why certain decisions mattered. He understood why assumptions mattered. He understood why expectations mattered.
He could see the chain.

Yet he responded differently from me.
That difference would teach me an important lesson.
When the organisation began asking larger questions, my instinct was to follow the logic and accelerate.
The answers were needed. The decisions mattered. The opportunity existed. Why wait?

The COO saw the same reality. Yet he reached a different conclusion.
The organisation could only move as fast as it could absorb change.
The business could only move as fast as its culture could absorb change.
His instinct was not to accelerate. His instinct was to regulate. To create time. To allow understanding to develop. To allow acceptance to develop.
To allow people to move together. He was not opposed to change. He was protecting its sustainability.
Organisations do not change when a conclusion is reached. They change when enough people are ready to accept it.

As discussions progressed, both the CEO and the COO chose a more measured pace.
Despite the slower pace, the organisation continued learning.
The culture continued evolving. The curiosity survived. The momentum remained.
Perhaps the pace was not a weakness. Perhaps it was a bridge.

Looking back, I have come to appreciate that a mandate is not implemented in a vacuum.
It must adapt to the reality of the organisation it serves.

Reflection

This article is about how patience taught me that sustainable change happens at a pace people can absorb.

This is the thirteenth of a series of articles – “What hospitality taught me about myself” – in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey, and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

Throughout my career, I have often been drawn toward the logic of an argument.
Follow the chain. Understand the consequences. Reach the conclusion. The logic remains important.

But organisations are not spreadsheets. People require time. Cultures require time. Trust requires time.

The more mature I become, the more I appreciate that sustainable change is rarely determined by the quality of the conclusion alone. It is also determined by the organisation’s ability to absorb it.

The COO taught me that progress is not measured solely by speed. Sometimes progress is measured by what survives the journey.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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The CEO Who Initiated a Dialogue Rather than an Instruction

The CEO Who Initiated a Dialogue Rather than an Instruction

The organisation had asked for performance management. At least that is what everyone believed.
The mandate sounded straightforward.
Improve performance. Increase profitability. Strengthen accountability. Introduce structure. Measure outcomes.
The objectives were sensible. The implementation began.

Managers learned. Reports improved. Discussions became more disciplined.
Departments became increasingly aligned. People started asking better questions.
At first, the questions were operational. Then commercial. Then strategic.

Then something unexpected happened. The questions started travelling upwards.
Department Heads wanted clarity. The General Managers wanted clarity. The senior leadership team wanted clarity. Eventually, the same questions began appearing repeatedly.
What are our objectives? What assumptions are they based upon? What are we trying to become? What are we optimising for?

The questions were not rebellious. They were logical. The organisation was learning.
And learning organisations tend to become curious.

When budgeting time arrived, the CEO was asking the organisation to improve profitability.
A reasonable request in any organisation.

The response from the management team was equally reasonable:

  • What is our Highest and Best Use?
  • What market positioning are we pursuing?
  • Which customer are we targeting?
  • What brand strategy supports that choice?
  • How much capital are we prepared to invest?
  • When will that investment occur?
  • What return are we expecting?
  • What organisational structure is required to deliver it?

The fascinating part was that nobody had instructed the organisation to ask these questions. The organisation had taught itself.
Performance management had created curiosity.
And curiosity has a remarkable quality. Once it takes hold, it becomes difficult to reverse.

There was no hostility in these questions. No resistance. No politics.
Simply a request for clarity in order to plan and execute effectively.

What followed was a growing realisation that important assumptions about who the organisation was, where it wanted to go, and what it ultimately wanted to become had never been fully articulated.
Eventually, the discussion returned to management itself: Tell us what you believe we can achieve. Tell us what you need to achieve it.
What had started as a project about measurement gradually became a conversation about direction.

Looking back, I believe this was the real success of the project.
Not the reports. Not the systems. Not the numbers.
The organisation had learned how to think and had begun discovering what it was and what it wanted to achieve.

Reflection

This article is about how curiosity transforms performance management into organisational learning.

This is the twelfth of a series of articles – “What hospitality taught me about myself” – in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey, and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

Many people believe performance management is about measurement.
I have gradually come to a different conclusion.
Performance management is fundamentally about setting expectations.
Measurement simply reveals whether those expectations have been achieved.

The difficult part is rarely the measurement.
The difficult part is defining the expectations first.
Governance begins with that clarity, because expectations define decision rights, accountability, information flows, and ultimately the basis upon which performance can be assessed.
And not merely the financial expectations.

Once people understand how a business works, they naturally begin asking why it works the way it does.
What started as a discussion about performance eventually became a discussion about purpose, positioning, capital, structure, and strategy.

Looking back, that was the real achievement.
The organisation had not merely learned how to measure performance.
It had learned how to think.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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The HR Director Who Learned to Love Numbers

The HR Director Who Learned to Love Numbers

If somebody had told me at the beginning of the project that the strongest advocate for performance management would eventually emerge from Human Resources, I would have been sceptical. Very sceptical.

At the time, the HR Director represented something important within the organisation: culture, care, wellbeing, development, and respect.
The company genuinely cared about its people. And she was one of the principal custodians of that culture.

Performance management worried her.
Not because she opposed improvement. Because she feared what numbers might do.
Like many people, she saw a potential conflict. People on one side. Performance on the other. Compassion versus accountability. Culture versus profitability.
The concern was understandable. Many organisations manage to create exactly that conflict.

Yet something unexpected happened.
She became curious. She asked questions. She challenged assumptions.
And, at times, she gave me a hard time.
She wanted to understand. Not the spreadsheets. The thinking behind them.
Slowly, patiently, and somewhat reluctantly at first, she began exploring concepts she had previously avoided.
Performance. Productivity. Profitability. Measurement. Expectations.

The more she learned, the more her perspective changed.
Not because she cared less about people. Quite the opposite.
She gradually realised that satisfied employees do not emerge from good intentions alone.
They emerge from functioning organisations.
Sales must perform. Operations must perform. Finance must perform. Engineering must perform. Managers must perform. Expectations must be clear.
Responsibilities must be understood. Resources must be available.
Only then can an organisation create the conditions that allow people to thrive.
That realisation changed her perspective.

She eventually understood something important.
People are not separate from capital.
They are one of the most significant investments any hotel makes.
Most organisations treat people and capital as different conversations.
One belongs to Human Resources. The other belongs to Finance.
Yet sustainable organisations depend on both working together.

She came to recognise that salaries, training, development, engagement, and leadership are not merely costs.
They are investments expected to generate outcomes, just as any other investment within the business.
Equally, she understood that capital without capable and motivated people rarely delivers its intended return.
People and performance are not competing priorities.
Nor are people and capital. In healthy organisations, people, performance, capital and purpose are interconnected.

Strong performance creates opportunity, stability, investment, development, and career growth.
Strong people create the performance that makes those things possible.
The relationship is not adversarial. It is symbiotic.

Over time, she became one of the strongest advocates for performance management within the organisation.
Not despite her commitment to people. Because of it.
She recognised that performance management, applied within a healthy and humane culture, protects both people and capital.
Most importantly, she reached that conclusion herself.

Years later she joined the Board.
The promotion was deserved.
Not because she had mastered numbers.
Because she had learned to integrate two worlds that many people mistakenly separate: people and capital. Humanity and performance.
She understood that neither can succeed sustainably without the other.

Reflection

This article is about how curiosity taught me that people and performance succeed together or fail together.

This is the eleventh of a series of articles – “What hospitality taught me about myself” – in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey, and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

One of the most persistent misconceptions in business is that people and performance are in competition with each other.
My experience suggests the opposite. Poorly managed organisations damage both.
Well-managed organisations support both. The challenge is not choosing between people and performance.
The challenge is understanding that sustainable performance creates the conditions in which people can succeed.

The HR Director taught me that lesson. And she taught it far more convincingly than any consultant ever could.

Looking back, one outcome gives me particular satisfaction.
The organisation no longer required external advocates for performance management.
One of its strongest advocates had emerged from within: The HR Director herself.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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The Most Admirable Hotel General Manager I Know

The Most Admirable Hotel General Manager I Know

Over the years, I have worked with many Hotel General Managers.
Some were commercially brilliant. Some were operationally exceptional. Some were charismatic. Some were disciplined. Some were feared. Some were respected.

One in particular remains in my memory.
Not because he was the most analytical, or achieved the best KPIs.
And certainly not because he was the most demanding.
In many ways, he is my opposite. His teams genuinely love him.
Not merely respect him. They love him.
There is a difference.

He is approachable, patient, and genuinely interested in people.
He remembers names, families, birthdays, concerns, and successes.
People naturally want to do well for him.
I admire that. Because – even if our worldview is the same – I could not do it the way he does.
My instinct has always been different. I gravitate toward structure, numbers, expectations, analysis, and systems.
When faced with a problem, I look for causes.
He looks for people first.

Yet over time, something interesting happened.
He became increasingly curious about the commercial and operational logic behind the business.
Not because he wanted to become more analytical, but because he wanted to become more effective.
He started asking different questions.
Questions about profitability. Questions about assumptions. Questions about consequences. Questions about why things worked the way they did.
And then he did something important. He did not abandon who he was. He incorporated what he learned into who he already was.

The result was remarkable.
The warmth remained. The humanity remained. The connection with his teams remained.
But now there was additional clarity, additional discipline, and additional understanding.

Eventually he was promoted.
The promotion surprised nobody. Least of all me.
What impressed me was not the promotion itself.
It was his evolution. He did not become somebody else. He became more complete.
Perhaps more.
He taught me that leadership is not merely about achieving better numbers.
It is about becoming the best version of yourself. The numbers are often a consequence rather than the objective.

His path happened to be different from mine. And that was precisely why it was valuable.

Reflection

This article is about how authenticity taught me that leadership begins with understanding who you are.

This is the 11th of a series of articles – “What hospitality taught me about myself” – in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey, and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

Throughout my career, I have encountered many leaders who tried to imitate others.
The successful ones rarely did. The strongest leaders usually possess a deep understanding of who they are.
They then build upon that foundation, not by replacing their strengths, but by complementing them.

The most memorable Hotel General Manager I know taught me a lesson I continue to carry today.
People do not follow perfection. They follow authenticity. And authenticity becomes more powerful when combined with curiosity and a willingness to keep learning.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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The Gourmet Restaurant That Happened to Have Rooms

The Gourmet Restaurant That Happened to Have Rooms

The hotel was a little gem just outside the city center, a member of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World.
And while it appeared lovely, it was bleeding from every pore.
The hotel was incurring losses and serving the wholesale market rather than the high-net-worth individuals it should have served.
Every month was a struggle to meet debt service, payroll, and suppliers, which invited a series of opinions.

By the time I became the hotel’s General Manager, I thought I understood commercial hotel management.
Revenue management had become one of my passions.
I could read a profit and loss statement with confidence and knew how occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR worked together.
To me, commercial success meant improving the rooms department’s performance.

Ownership appointed an external consultant to supervise the hotel.
He held no formal position within the hotel, yet he exercised considerable influence over its direction.
We could hardly have been more different.
His style was demanding, confrontational, and uncompromising.
We challenged each other constantly.

Despite our differences, he possessed an extraordinary commercial instinct.
One day, he proposed something I considered almost reckless.
“We are no longer going to run a hotel with a restaurant,” he said.
“We are going to create a gourmet restaurant that happens to have rooms.”
I disagreed completely.

The destination was becoming increasingly competitive.
In my mind, the obvious answer was better revenue management, stronger pricing, and higher occupancy.
Why would we deliberately invest in a restaurant that might never generate a meaningful profit?

Rather than trying to convince me in a meeting room, he took me into the city.
For several days, we visited the city’s finest restaurants.
We observed how they welcomed guests.
We studied their menus.
We watched how people lingered long after dinner had finished.

During those visits, he quietly recruited several of the city’s best chefs to join our hotel.
When they arrived, I looked at the payroll in disbelief.
It felt as though we had more chefs than cooking stations.
Salary costs exploded.
Food costs increased sharply.

Many nights, I wondered whether this experiment would end my career.
Yet once the decision had been made, I accepted that my responsibility as GM was no longer to debate the strategy.
My responsibility was to make it succeed.

Together with the team, we transformed the guest experience.
We introduced evenings built around music and local social life.
At the end of lunch, every lady received the rose that had stood on her table as a farewell gift.
It was a small gesture, but guests remembered it and talked about it.

One evening, we introduced something we called the “Chef Catwalk.”
The entire kitchen brigade walked proudly through the restaurant carrying their signature dishes as though they were models on a fashion runway.
It was unexpected. It was theatrical. People loved it.

Local residents began to visit not simply for dinner but because they wanted to be part of what was happening.
Television crews interviewed well-known personalities in the restaurant.
The hotel developed an identity that reached far beyond accommodation.
For the first time, I understood that people were no longer buying a room.
They were buying a story they wanted to become part of.

The restaurant itself never became a major profit centre.
In fact, after all the investment, it only just managed to break even.
Ironically, that was never its real purpose.

The restaurant changed the perception of the entire property.
Our rooms’ guest mix improved. Booking patterns changed.
Guests no longer chose us simply because we had available rooms.
They chose us because they wanted to belong to something distinctive.

The stronger accommodation performance that followed improved the hotel’s annual gross operating profit by 382% within two years.

Looking back, I realised my thinking had been incomplete.
I believed the rooms were the business. They weren’t.
Revenue management remained essential, but only after we had answered a more fundamental question: what was the highest and best use of this particular property?

The business was creating a destination that people actively wanted to experience.
The rooms simply became part of that experience.

I cannot claim the original idea as my own.
It wasn’t.
I can claim to have learned one of the most important lessons of my career.
Sometimes the greatest contribution a leader can make is not to have the best idea.
It is to recognise a better one, make it their own, and execute it with complete conviction.

This project taught me that numbers optimise performance.
They do not define purpose.
Before improving a hotel’s KPIs, you first have to understand what business the hotel is truly in.
Only then do the numbers tell you whether your strategy is working.

Thank you for reading my article.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and perhaps offered a different perspective on why governance matters.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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The Dome in the Pamir Mountains

The Dome in the Pamir Mountains

Some moments stay with me far longer than the hotel budgets, RevPAR reports, or quarterly reviews I once spent so much time preparing.

This photograph captures one of those moments.

Just before the COVID pandemic, I stood high in the Pamir Mountains of Kyrgyzstan with the owner of a small guesthouse from Osh.
Behind us stretched one of the most remote landscapes I have ever visited.
The cold was unforgiving. Yet the atmosphere was filled with optimism.

The year before this owner had joined a study tour I organised in Italy.
The objective was straightforward: to explore how agritourism could create new opportunities for small hospitality businesses.
While others were interested in improving existing operations, he spoke about something entirely different.

He had a dream.
He wanted to build a dome lodge high in the mountains, on the road between Osh and the Tajik border.
The M41, more commonly known as the Pamir Highway (Russian: Памирский тракт, romanized: Pamirsky Trakt), is a road traversing the Pamir Mountains across Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, with a length of over 1,200 km.
It sounded ambitious.

The location was remote.
The operating season was short. Infrastructure was limited.
Most advisers would probably have started by listing the risks.
Instead, we spoke about possibilities.
Not because optimism replaces analysis, but because good analysis should never extinguish genuine ambition.

Despite COVID, despite the lack of infrastructure, and despite difficult financing, he made his dream come true.
The lodge generated year-round employment for local families.
Young people who might otherwise have left their villages for poorly paid work abroad could now build a future closer to home.
Visitors discovered one of the world’s most extraordinary mountain landscapes.
One entrepreneur’s determination had quietly changed a small part of his community.

That project reminded me why I entered hospitality in the first place.

Throughout my career, I became fascinated by numbers.

  • Occupancy
  • ADR
  • RevPAR
  • GOP and EBITDA flow-through
  • Cash flow
  • Governance

They all matter. 
Without them, businesses struggle to survive. But they are not the purpose.
They are the justification.

The real purpose lies elsewhere.
A profitable hotel creates opportunities for owners to invest.
It creates stable employment. It gives young people careers. It supports suppliers.
It pays taxes that, when used well, strengthen economies and communities.
It allows people to dream a little bigger than they otherwise could.

Whenever I review a hotel’s performance today, I still look at the numbers first.
But I try never to stop there.
Because somewhere behind every dashboard are people whose lives will be better—or worse—depending on the decisions those numbers help us make.

The dome in the Pamir Mountains reminded me that the most meaningful KPI is sometimes the one that never appears on any management report.

If my article has created appetite to visit, you can find detailed information and book a room on the dome’s website:
https://pamiralpinehotel.com/en/

Thank you for reading my article.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and perhaps offered a different perspective on why governance matters.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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