What Hotels Need to Become, Through the Eyes of 3 General Managers
Skift Take
Hotel leaders can expect to juggle new roles as travel returns — namely, taking a more community-inclusive approach to management and incorporating lifestyle guest experiences on site.
What the hotel recovery feels like at the level of the practitioner — past the macro view and looking at the actual practice of running the show post-pandemic as travelers return — was the crux of the conversation among three of the hospitality world’s experienced luxury hotel managers from New York to the UK and Rwanda, moderated by Skift On Experience columnist Colin Nagy at the Skift Hospitality & Marketing Summit on Wednesday.
Thomas Carreras, general manager at Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown, said that the learning started with how to greet guests again with safety as a primary concern, while making sure they felt little had changed in terms of value as they walked in. "The energy level is great, everyone is enjoying re-welcoming guests.”
Olivia Richli, general manager at Heckfield Place luxury country-house hotel in rural Hampshire, less than 50 miles west of London, said that nature had become a priority in travelers' experiences which put Heckfield Place in a perfect place to receive domestic travellers eager to escape the long UK lockdown connect with its spacious outdoors as well as learn from its on site garden produce.
“The demand that we’ve seen from people who can’t travel, the Brits who usually travel to the U.S. or on safari or the Maldives and the Caribbean are desperat
