Hospitality Excellence Is Not About Doing Everything Perfectly: It’s About Getting Better
There is one word we use far too readily in Hospitality: excellence. It appears in corporate presentations, quality manuals, welcome speeches, strategic plans and team meetings. We promise excellent service, pursue excellent experiences and aspire to excellent results. The problem begins when we try to explain exactly what it means. After many years working in hotels, I am increasingly convinced that excellence has far less to do with reaching a particular standard and far more to do with how we choose to work when no one can guarantee the outcome.
Brad Stulberg’s reflection in The Way of Excellence strikes me as particularly interesting because it separates excellence from two concepts with which we often confuse it: perfection and obsession. Excellence is not about never making mistakes. Nor does it mean constantly demanding more until work becomes a competition against ourselves and others. It is an ongoing process of growth around something we consider important. Applied to our industry, I would say that an excellent hotel is not necessarily one where nothing ever goes wrong—that hotel probably does not exist—but one that has developed the ability to learn, correct, persevere and improve systematically.
Hospitality is also an extraordinarily demanding laboratory in which to test this idea. We work with people serving other people, twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year. We sell rooms that disappear from inventory at midnight, serve food that must be prepared at specific times, manage expectations we have not always created ourselves, and coordinate departments whose rhythms are entirely different. In such an environment, aspiring to absolute perfection is not only naive; it can become counterproductive. Hospitality excellence must be built within everyday imperfection.
Over the years, I have also learned that great results rarely come from one isolated major decision. They are usually the consequence of hundreds of seemingly insignificant decisions made well over a long period of time. A room inspected before it is released. An issue we do not leave until tomorrow. A difficult conversation we choose to have. An employee we teach something to rather than simply reproach. A rate we defend because we believe in our positioning. A call we return. A complaint we analyse. A smile after ten hours at work. None of these actions seems extraordinary on its own, but together they build something extraordinarily difficult to copy: a culture of excellence.
That is why I am far more interested in talking about the journey than the one-off result. A hotel can have a bad day and still be exceptional; equally, it can achieve an excellent result in a given month while continuing to face significant structural problems. A rating, occupancy, a review, RevPAR or a profit and loss statement are snapshots. Excellence, by contrast, is a film. What matters is not only where we are today, but where our trend line is heading and what we are becoming as we move forward.
Hospitality excellence is built through repeating what matters
One of Stulberg’s ideas that resonates most with me is the combination of mastery and mattering: progressively mastering what we do while, at the same time, feeling that what we do matters. It seems to me an especially powerful definition for Hospitality because our work requires both dimensions. Technique without purpose produces efficient but cold organisations; enthusiasm without technical mastery produces good intentions that, all too often, come with poor results.
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We may have outstanding procedures, impeccable dashboards, perfectly structured budgets and excellent operating standards. All of that is necessary. But when people cease to understand what their work is for, quality eventually deteriorates. Equally, we may have a delightful, willing and committed team, but without training, processes, operational discipline and clear standards, there will come a point when goodwill is no longer enough.
Excellence emerges precisely when we bring those two things together: competence and meaning.
In Hospitality, there is a constant temptation to confuse excellence with sophistication. The more complex a system appears, the more professional we believe it to be. We create procedures to control other procedures, meetings to prepare for meetings, reports that explain other reports, and KPIs whose main purpose ends up being to decorate a dashboard. Meanwhile, a room may still not be properly inspected or a guest may be waiting too long for a response.
Complexity can become an excellent way of avoiding what is essential.
When I assess a hotel operation, I try to return regularly to very simple questions: are the rooms genuinely clean? Is preventive maintenance working properly? Do we welcome guests well? Do we serve on time? Do we resolve problems quickly? Does each person know what we expect of them? Are we selling properly? Are we controlling our costs? Are we learning from our mistakes?
They do not seem like particularly revolutionary questions. That is precisely where their importance lies.
The philosophy of Lean applied to Hospitality starts from a similar logic: identifying which activities genuinely create value for the customer, reducing those that do not, and developing a culture of continuous improvement. Research into Lean Hospitality highlights precisely the potential of bringing systematic methods for waste reduction, process optimisation and quality improvement into hotels. Excellence does not need to keep adding things; it often requires eliminating friction, bureaucracy, unnecessary movement, recurring errors and activities that consume time without improving the guest experience.
There are several principles I try to keep in mind because they seem especially useful for any Hospitality professional:
- Consistency before heroics. I would rather have a department that operates properly 350 days a year than one capable of spectacular performances when a problem arises that could probably have been prevented. In our hotels, we still reward the firefighter too much and the person who quietly prevents fires too little. True operational excellence is often boring: reviewing, checking, anticipating, maintaining, training and repeating.
- Discipline before motivation. No team stays motivated every day. Neither do we. There are wonderful mornings and others when our Hospitality vocation takes a little longer to wake up than we do. That is why a professional organisation cannot depend solely on enthusiasm. Discipline turns certain behaviours into habits, enabling us to do our work properly even when circumstances are not helping.
- Trend before snapshot. An isolated result can mislead us. What is truly interesting is observing trends. If we analyse reputation, satisfaction, productivity, ADR, RevPAR, GOPPAR, turnover, absenteeism, direct sales or any other relevant indicator, we should ask less, “What number do we have?” and far more, “Where are we heading, and why?” Hotel strategy needs precisely that long-term orientation which connects everyday decisions with a higher direction.
- Purpose before procedure. A standard works much better when the person responsible for applying it understands why. Modern organisational excellence links purpose, vision, strategy, culture, execution and results, understanding improvement as an ongoing cycle rather than a project that can one day be considered complete.
- Accountability before excuses. Hotels are extraordinarily sophisticated machines for producing excuses: high season, low season, understaffing, overstaffing, groups, suppliers, weather, difficult guests, systems, maintenance, last-minute bookings... Some of these are entirely true. But none of them improves the operation. The productive question is always another one: what part of this situation can we control, and what are we going to do differently?
- Recovery before dramatisation. Errors are an inevitable part of an activity as human as ours. What matters is the speed and quality of our response. Specialist literature on hotel guest satisfaction gives specific importance to service failure recovery, together with employee training, evaluation and feedback. Making mistakes should concern us; systematically repeating the same mistake should concern us far more.
- Curiosity before arrogance. One of the greatest dangers of accumulating experience is, paradoxically, believing that experience provides us with all the answers. The more years I spend in this industry, the more questions I find. Guests change, teams change, markets change, and we should change too. Experience retains value only when it is accompanied by intellectual curiosity and the ability to unlearn.
This last point seems especially important to me. There comes a moment in every professional journey when you can begin to live on what you know or continue learning what you do not yet know. The first option is far more comfortable. The second keeps the professional alive.
The next-play mentality
There is an expression used by Stulberg that seems particularly appropriate for a hotel: next-play mentality.
A guest has just posted an unfair review.
Next play.
An occupancy forecast was wrong.
Next play.
We made a bad hire.
Next play.
A dinner service has not gone as we expected.
Next play.
We have lost an important account.
Next play.
This does not mean ignoring the error. Quite the opposite. It means analysing it without allowing it to become our identity. Understanding what happened, correcting what we can correct, learning, and getting back into the game quickly.
I have seen teams remain psychologically trapped for days by an incident that lasted twenty minutes. And I have also seen exceptional teams resolve difficult situations, learn from them and continue working normally. The difference was not only in their technical capability. It was in their emotional maturity.
This mentality is especially relevant for those of us responsible for other people. Our emotional state spreads through the hotel much faster than we usually imagine. If we react to every problem as though we were facing a catastrophe, we will end up creating teams that hide problems. If we analyse them with calm and rigour, we will build teams capable of raising them before they become bigger.
That does not mean minimising everything. It means distinguishing between urgency and importance.
In a hotel, almost everything can seem urgent. The guest is waiting, the room must be released, the restaurant is opening, the supplier is arriving, the group is checking in, someone has called in sick and the phone is ringing. But managing solely through urgency ends up destroying our ability to work on what is important.
Excellence requires setting aside energy for what may not produce results this afternoon but will determine our results in six months’ time: selecting better, training, developing managers, reviewing processes, carrying out preventive maintenance, understanding the customer, protecting positioning, controlling costs, analysing information and building culture.
This is where another fundamental dimension appears: patience.
Contemporary Hospitality has a certain obsession with immediacy. We want to change a commercial strategy and see results tomorrow; change a procedure and expect everyone to internalise it immediately; train someone for two hours and consider them trained; introduce a guest-experience initiative and instantly see improved ratings.
But human organisations do not work that way.
A culture is built slowly because it is built through repeated behaviours. Organisational change requires vision, communication, participation, follow-up and consistency; indeed, business transformation models insist that it is more important to consistently execute an appropriate approach than to become obsessed with constantly seeking the perfect methodology.
And that leads us directly to the long term.
Excellence requires staying in the game long enough to develop judgement. There is knowledge we can acquire in a classroom, and other knowledge that only emerges after experiencing many high seasons, many openings, many P&L statements, many complaints, many good and bad hires, and enough situations in which we discover that what we were absolutely convinced of was not quite so true.
That process generates something far more valuable than knowledge: it generates professional judgement.
But staying in the game does not mean working all the time.
One of the mistakes our industry has romanticised for far too long is associating commitment with exhaustion. Endless shifts, absolute availability, phones permanently switched on and a strange competition to prove who sleeps the least. For years, we have even turned these behaviours into a kind of professional badge of honour.
They are not.
Rest is part of performance. Periodically stepping away from work allows us to regain perspective, creativity and patience. An exhausted person may continue carrying out tasks for a while, but progressively loses quality of judgement, empathy and the ability to distinguish what is important from what is secondary.
Sustainable excellence requires intensity, but also recovery.
It also requires humility.
True professional confidence does not come from believing we can do everything. It comes from having worked enough to know what we do well and, above all, what we still need to learn. Experience should create confidence, but also an awareness of our limits.
And perhaps that is why truly good people in this profession tend to keep asking questions.
How would you do it?
What are we overlooking?
Why is this happening?
What does the guest think?
What does the team think?
What data contradicts our hypothesis?
What could we simplify?
What should we stop doing?
These are far more powerful questions than pretending always to have an answer.
We also need the right people around us.
The image of the brilliant professional who transforms an organisation solely through individual talent may work very well in certain films. It works far less well in a hotel. The guest experience runs through Front Office, Housekeeping, Maintenance, Kitchen, Restaurant Service, Reservations, Sales, Administration and many other touchpoints. The very nature of hotel operations makes employee performance an immediate part of the guest experience and guest satisfaction.
No one builds Hospitality excellence alone.
We need people who challenge us, who know things we do not know, who warn us when we are wrong and who share a certain way of understanding work. Research into competencies in our industry has historically highlighted the importance of communication, business acumen, interpersonal skills, personal values and strategic thinking. It is difficult to develop all of them in isolation.
That is why I try to view excellence not as a summit, but as a direction.
Perhaps we will never arrive.
And that is probably better.
Because when an organisation begins to consider itself excellent, it risks beginning precisely to cease being so. Complacency appears, we stop questioning certain practices, and we turn past successes into arguments for justifying present decisions.
I prefer to think that we can do great work and still find twenty things to improve.
My first piece of advice, therefore, would be to stop pursuing perfection and start pursuing consistency. Do not try to transform twenty things at once. Identify the behaviours that have the greatest impact on guests, employees and results; turn them into simple standards; observe them; correct deviations; and repeat them until they become a natural part of the operation. Then improve the next element. Excellence rarely walks through the front door making noise. It usually slips in quietly through hundreds of small, well-executed habits.
The second would be to deliberately protect what matters from what merely makes noise. Set aside time to think, train, listen to the team, observe the guest and analyse the business. Do not allow managing the hotel to prevent you from improving the hotel. A fully occupied day can create a gratifying sense of productivity while, at the same time, not bringing us one centimetre closer to our important goals.
And the third would be to choose carefully who you travel the path with. Seek out professionals who are better than you in certain areas, listen especially to those who have enough confidence to disagree, and build an environment where learning is not interpreted as admitting weakness. Because after many years in Hospitality, I still believe that one of the most reliable signs that we are making progress is discovering how much we still have to learn. Excellence is not becoming perfect. It is never ceasing, little by little, to become better professionals, better teams and better hotels.
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