The Banana Republic Hotel
Reader’s Note: The story that follows is presented as fiction.
It is inspired by experiences accumulated over more than thirty years in hospitality and organisational advisory work.
Events, conversations, characters, timelines, and organisations have been altered, combined and fictionalised to protect confidentiality and prevent the identification of any individual or enterprise.
The management lessons are real.
Among all the hotels I have worked in and advised over the years, one stands apart.
It marked a turning point in my career.
There was a time before it, a time during it, and a time after it.
I knew when I accepted the assignment that it would not be easy.
The hotel had established a certain reputation.
I was brought in, or so I believed, to change that culture rather than become part of it.
I soon discovered that experience alone does not always prepare us for the choices we must make.
The experience taught me humility as a person and a deep appreciation of governance as a professional.
Over the years, working with hotels in many different countries, I encountered levels of pilferage and corruption that took my breath away.
It reflected a broader environment in which weak governance had become normal across both the private and public sectors.
Having worked in both luxury and volume hospitality, particularly in emerging markets, I learned that hotels attract more than guests seeking a good bed, food, and friendly service.
They can also attract colourful and opportunistic investors, managers, and employees who are drawn to the movement of cash.
This very large hotel, with more than 1.000 beds, operated more like a factory than a hotel.
It had developed its own informal economy resembling a small banana republic.
Throughout its history, as I had observed also elsewhere, informal payments and personal favours had become widely accepted.
Salaries were not always what motivated behaviour.
For some, the real money flowed elsewhere, through vendors, suppliers, and commercial relationships that existed largely beyond the hotel’s formal controls.
Everyday life reflected that same culture.
The lobby bar had become a regular meeting place for individuals whose presence created an intimidating atmosphere for guests and employees alike.
I experienced the intimidation myself when I stood up for how some of the staff were being treated by customers.
One colleague found an elegantly simple solution—the credit is all his.
The nearby police station was offered discounted lunches in the staff canteen, requiring officers to walk through the lobby several times a day.
The regular police presence quickly persuaded the unwanted clientele to find another venue.
One day, a trusted employee quietly drew my attention to filming taking place in the hotel that was wholly inconsistent with its purpose and reputation.
This was not incidental but part of a series of adult films recorded over time on the hotel premises.
Young ladies, barely of legal age or past it, dreaming of glamour or stardom, were waiting in the hotel lobby to be escorted to the guest rooms chosen as the film’s settings.
What surprised me most was not the activity itself or its having become common knowledge throughout the hotel.
What surprised me was that it had become impossible to ignore.
It made me conscious of the risk of when and how I reported my findings to whom.
It was another reminder that, where governance is weak, organisations gradually lose control over how their assets and reputation are used.
I could have looked the other way, as others had seemingly done before.
In the absence of appropriate governance, I chose not to.
The practice was being stopped immediately.
The hotel management company promoted a culture inspired by values, spirit, and bespoke authenticity.
It had engaged highly capable professionals who genuinely believed in the standards, processes, and services defined in what management was supposed to deliver.
Regular meetings were held to review key performance indicators, with discussions centered on revenue, profitability, and operational performance.
Yet, when I walked the hotel floor, the reality told a very different story.
The expectation of management’s compliance seemed strangely disconnected from everyday operations.
The language spoken in boardrooms bore little resemblance to the behaviours I observed throughout the hotel.
It does not take too much effort to diagnose what is wrong by studying the numbers.
The hard part is to accept accountability upon diagnosis and take responsibility to fix it.
When this is absent, it destroys value, weakens businesses, and ultimately erodes the morale of the very people who make those businesses possible.
Over the years, I have learned that while problems are often diagnosed from the top, sustainable solutions are usually built from the bottom up.
The devil is in the details, and he is rarely found in public but somewhere at the bottom where no one has looked before—or perhaps no one did want to look too closely.
The hotel was caught between its past and its future.
Looking back, I could have walked away.
Instead, I chose to confront it.
I chose to lead through accountability rather than through control and punishment.
That sounds straightforward, but it proved to be one of the most difficult leadership decisions of my career.
Resistance rarely presented itself openly.
Instead, it was quiet, persistent, and often invisible.
The team working alongside me did an extraordinary job.
Replacing everyone would probably have been easier, but economic reality dictated otherwise.
I have found that people employed at the same company have a remarkable tendency to accept what is inappropriate when management has normalised it.
To reduce reality to villains would have been too easy; people deserve better.
Therefore, when signalling a different approach, one that was guided by transparency, many members of the existing management team chose to walk that path with me.
Departmental managers were trained to understand their departmental KPIs.
Responsibility migrated to where decisions were made.
As a result, I no longer needed to chase operational shortcomings.
For example, when F&B guest capture rates or average guest check values fell below target during a particular shift, department managers initiated the analysis, identified the cause, and implemented corrective action themselves.
That allowed me to spend less time exercising control and more time providing leadership.
We eliminated the inappropriate use of the hotel store.
Rather than banning unaccountable staff purchases, I publicly bought the same items during management meetings, paid with my own credit card, and asked for a receipt.
Nobody needed an explanation.
The signal was clear.
What applies to the General Manager applies to everyone else.
We chose to work with the trade union rather than around it.
I realised that the primary challenge was to change the organisational culture.
I addressed this two-fold; on the one hand, I studied the existing labour agreement and worked diligently with the trade union in preparing a new one.
Second, to achieve immediate impact, I presented the hotel’s performance to the staff each month in language everyone could understand—together with the trade union.
Sharing reality fostered a shared sense of ownership.
Gossip and speculation gradually disappeared.
I was invited by a leading newspaper to be interviewed.
Such PR opportunities are often used by hotel management to raise the hotel’s profile within the local business community.
I chose a different approach.
Rather than putting myself in the spotlight, I asked the journalist to interview members of my line staff instead.
Over the following months, interviews were published with maids, clerical staff, and many others who would normally never find themselves in the limelight.
I deliberately chose not to influence, edit, or manipulate these interviews.
It was a gamble.
The outcome still gives me goosebumps.
The care, pride, and sophistication with which these colleagues represented the hotel were extraordinary.
Each represented the hotel as though they carried ultimate responsibility for it.
Sharing the hotel’s performance with them had made a difference.
Wholesalers, tour leaders, and suppliers occasionally arrived carrying envelopes, hoping to negotiate next year’s contracts.
They left with those envelopes unopened.
Instead, I insisted on transparent pricing.
Slowly, steadily, and deliberately, we repositioned the business.
We developed a new market positioning strategy and established a sales team to implement it.
Low-yield wholesale business was gradually replaced by a market segment the hotel had never seriously pursued before: Meetings & Conferences.
Direct bookings increased through a fully redesigned website that rewarded guests with additional value rather than discounted prices.
We worked diligently on improving cash flow, not just short-term gross operating profit (GOP).
Despite resistance from both inside and outside the organisation, I gradually tightened payment discipline while reducing wholesale allotments.
The Food and Beverage proposition was strengthened by recruiting a signature Executive Chef.
For the first time, the hotel actively promoted its culinary competence—not to compete with the city’s restaurants, but to demonstrate that we were no longer simply the cheap half-board hotel.
We converted an unused restaurant into a multifunctional staff canteen that also served nearby office workers.
A cost centre became a profit centre, strengthening both staff morale and management’s relationship with the trade union.
Leadership also meant accepting that not every operational inefficiency should be eliminated automatically.
For example, I disliked the twelve-hour reception shifts.
They were physically demanding for the front-line staff and, from a service and revenue perspective, far from ideal.
Yet they created alternating short- and long-work weeks that allowed several receptionists, many of them single mothers, to balance work and family life.
I could have changed the rota. Instead, I chose to understand why it existed.
Not every compromise serves the business. Sometimes it serves the people who make the business possible.
The staff entrance may have looked like the gates of hell, but it was in keeping with the rest of the building.
We tried to brighten things up where we could, despite financial constraints and a collective labour agreement that often worked against both the hotel and its staff.
I tried to foster a sense of belonging through small gestures.
On Women’s Day, a locally celebrated occasion, we welcomed every female colleague with flowers.
During particularly hot days, we distributed bottles of water to our housekeeping colleagues while they worked on the floors.
As a team, we also encouraged everyone to spend part of their salaried working time supporting a local children’s foster home, where we organised activities and celebrations for special occasions.
These may have seemed like small gestures in hindsight, but they represented a change in tone that people noticed and helped foster a spirit of dialogue and accountability rather than autocracy.
This particular hotel taught me a lesson I have carried throughout my career.
Operational excellence cannot compensate for governance failure.
- You can improve service
- You can renovate rooms
- You can increase occupancy
- You can recruit talented people
None of it will endure if conflicts of interest remain, the organisation lacks effective compliance mechanisms, and autocracy is chosen as the governing principle.
Integrity is not a slogan.
It is the alignment between what is said and what is done.
It is a truth I have found in every story in this series.
If even one reader pauses before compromising their principles because of something they read here, these stories will have served their purpose.
Thank you, dear colleagues.
Looking back, my gratitude belongs to the many colleagues who chose to embrace change rather than resist it.
Department heads, supervisors, line staff, trade union representatives, and countless others demonstrated professionalism, resilience, and courage throughout that journey.
Whatever we achieved was never the work of one person but of a team that proved that, when people are trusted, supported, and united by a common purpose, remarkable change is possible.
I carry your trust in my heart.
Thank you for reading my story.
This story is the final story of a series—”The Banana Republic Hotel and What It 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.
If you enjoyed reading the story and have the appetite to read another one, you are invited to visit G&A’s website, in particular its INSIGHTS page, where you can find all stories.
I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and perhaps offered a different perspective on why governance matters.
Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.
Terminology for non-hoteliers:
- SOP: Standard Operating Procedure – a documented process describing how a task should be performed to ensure consistency, quality, and compliance.
- KPIs: Key Performance Indicators – measurable indicators used to monitor performance and progress against objectives.
- ADR: Average Daily Rate – the average room rate paid by guests.
- RevPAR: Revenue per Available Room – a measure combining occupancy and room rate to assess hotel revenue performance.
- Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms that are occupied.
- DOF: Double Occupancy Factor – the average number of guests staying in each occupied room. A DOF of 1.0 means every occupied room has one guest; 2.0 means every occupied room has two guests.
- AGC: Average Guest Check – the average amount spent by each guest in a restaurant, bar, or other food and beverage outlet.
- CRS: Central Reservation System – the central booking system that manages a hotel’s room inventory, rates, and reservations across all sales channels.
- PMS: Property Management System – the software used to manage reservations, guest accounts, and hotel operations.
- OTA: Online Travel Agency – websites such as Booking.com or Expedia that sell hotel rooms on behalf of hotels.
- GDS: Global Distribution System – a worldwide booking network used by travel agents and corporate travel departments to reserve hotel rooms, flights, and other travel services.
- CRM: Customer Relationship Management – systems and processes used to manage guest relationships and marketing.
- F&B: Food & Beverage Department – all restaurant, bar, banquet, room service, and catering operations within a hotel.
- Half-Board: A hotel meal plan that includes breakfast and one additional meal each day, usually dinner. Drinks other than those specifically included are generally charged separately.
- MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events – the hotel business related to corporate meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and incentive travel.
- ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – an integrated software system that connects key business functions such as finance, procurement, inventory, human resources, sales, and reporting into a single platform.
- USALI: Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry – the internationally recognised accounting standard used by hotels to measure and compare financial performance.
- GOP: Gross Operating Profit – the operating profit generated by the hotel before management fees, rent, financing costs, depreciation, taxes, and other non-operating expenses.
- EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation – a widely used measure of an organisation’s operating profitability.
- COS: Cost of Sales – the direct cost of producing the goods sold, such as food, beverages, or merchandise, expressed as an amount or percentage of revenue.
- FTE: Full-Time Equivalent – a standard measure of staffing that converts part-time and seasonal employees into the equivalent number of full-time employees.
About the Author
Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 30 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.
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