Master of all trades

Toshiro Maruyama is an old-school, guest-obsessed general manager (GM), but his hotel is a different type of traditional. The former Tokyo Disney World cast member operates Shiroumaso (White Horse Inn), his family’s centuries-old ryokan in the Japanese Alps. Until 1937, the former farmhouse offered its spare rooms to weary travellers free of charge, and, even now, Maruyama believes his family’s long tradition of offering hospitality for its own sake – of heart before business – continues to define his multi-award-winning ski resort.

Well, that’s part of it. Naturally, Shirouma-so is also shaped by the fact its GM is a sake sommelier, body combat instructor and taiko drummer who MCs winter sports world cups. And it goes without saying that he’s a teacher, school director, financial administrator and chef, too.

It’s certainly a general skill set – almost wide enough to bridge the gap between Disney’s mass market machine and the rare type of luxury that’s measured in tatami mats. Talking to Maruyama, though, you’d think he found a shortcut. Hospitality takes all types, and you don’t necessarily need to cater to each with specific talents if you can cultivate a perspective that allows you to understand what’s common to all of them.

“The basic idea is the same,” he explains. “Disney has a lot of backstory – not history like at the inn, but stories that add more and more layers to the customer’s satisfaction on top of the rides and the entertainment. It’s the same in hotel management. The meals we serve come with the background of our vegetable garden, and the traditions and history of the region. We always try to explain that. It’s the same style as Disney – it’s a show.”

Their individual career arcs may not span quite such chasms, but GMs the world over can appreciate the elegance with which Maruyama has put flexibility and openness at the centre of his vision. His apparently meandering career path wasn’t directed by the acquisition of specific technical skills, and he isn’t too precious about his product; instead, his first concern has always been understanding people – whether guests, staff or neighbours – on their own terms.

The same could be said of many a great GM, but Maruyama’s embrace of compromise is a relatively new approach. As Ezio A Indiani, EHMA president and GM of Principe di Savoia, Milan, details, “In the past, a GM was successful if he was very tough and straight. He’d say, ‘No discussion – this is what needs to be done,’ and that would be the end of it. But that doesn’t work anymore.”

Indeed, however commanding the leaders that came up before digitisation may have been, technology continues to redefine hospitality at every level, and the idea that an executive has the aptitude to make the best decision in every scenario is looking more like a fairy tale by the year.

“Computers today have capabilities far beyond anything you’ll ever do on them,” says Jannes Soerensen, GM of The Beaumont, London, in an explanatory analogy, “and you’ll never maximise the potential of your high-end sports bike.” Operating a hotel is more like trying to optimise both at once. “We have such an overload on information, intelligence and resources that we have to challenge ourselves to best use whatever is most important to us and our guests.”

For Soerensen and Indiani, the GMs that make the most of that challenge are the ones that can balance leadership and vision with motivation and empowerment. Technology has shaped the personalities and expectations of the people now joining hotels at least as much as the hotels themselves. Any hotelier that doesn’t respect that fact may as well ask the finance department to write out spreadsheets by hand.

“Today, a GM needs to be a bit of a psychologist, a bit of an ambassador, and very diplomatic,” stresses Indiani. “You can’t lose any opportunity to say thank you, to strengthen the relationship between the management and staff, because one of the greatest values we have now is a motivated team, and that means all the employees.”

The people business

Unusually for a GM, Soerensen started out as a concierge. Like Maruyama, who became a personal trainer at Goldman Sachs to develop honest personal relationships with the type of customers he believed Shirouma-so needed to target, Soerensen took his work as an opportunity to “learn in depth what people want, how they feel, how things make them behave, and, ultimately, how to enrich their lives”, across Berlin, Paris, Barcelona and New York.

He later found similar lessons expressed in Karmic Management by Christie McNally, Michael Gordon and Michael Roach. “I’ve come to believe that you shouldn’t worry about your own success,” Soerensen summarises. “It will come as a consequence of other people having success when they engage with you.”

As business mantras go, it’s a very neat fit for the hotel industry. The Beaumont’s karma is affected by its engagements with everyone from the linen suppliers and bar staff, to Sir Anthony Gormley, who designed a special sculptural suite, and the managers of nearby Selfridges – not to mention the guests.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Maruyama has taken this emphasis on enriching the lives of those he engages with even further. He visits the homes of customers around the world to connect with their communities and cultures, and even helped one family of Australian guests recover after their home was damaged in a bush fire. On top of that, Shirouma-so was actually run by local teenagers for two days last year. Of course, those particular teenagers were part of the international hospitality department Maruyama set up to help save the village high school from closure. Whereas it was underpopulated only five years ago, it’s now oversubscribed – with students from across the country filling its dormitories.

Not that Maruyama makes a class project of his guests and family heritage purely to help Generation Z. In a sense, it’s his chance to play at being a befuddled retiree who needs his younger relatives to make the computer work. Though he was among the first Japanese people to use Facebook, setting up a ryokan page and building a community on the English site before it was officially available in any other languages, there are things even he can’t keep up with. “A lot of the time I learn from the students,” he admits. “They have new ideas that I haven’t had before, and sometimes they’re better than my own.”

Soerensen had it the other way around. When he became the assistant head concierge at The Plaza Hotel in New York, he was by far the youngest member of the team, and was responsible for managing people he still describes as mentors. “All my colleagues had vastly more experience than I did, and they were arguably the better concierges,” he recalls. “So for me the main aim wasn’t to try and be better than them, but to create an environment that allowed them to be at their best.”

Now, working with his executive team at The Beaumont, Soerensen believes he has a responsibility to pick the right idea in the room, irrespective of who has it. “I need to nurture a culture of debate where people contribute and show how much they care,” he explains. “I want people that stir, people that nag, people that appease, and I want all of that in a secure setting where everybody can feel safe, and no one is afraid to make the right decision.”

Indiani agrees wholeheartedly. “You need to delegate, and you need to empower people,” he insists. “If you delegate without empowerment, then it’s a waste of time. It doesn’t take you anywhere. In the end, we can be as good as we want, but if we can’t transfer that to the employees that greet and serve the guests, it means nothing.”

Empowering staff

To avoid that fate, the hotel’s entire staff needs to feel they make meaningful contributions to its success. Indiani emphasises that the GM needs to instil a sense of ownership in every employee, and Soerensen adds that this needs to be accompanied by a commitment to sense-making. Simply put, one of the pre-eminent skills for a good GM is showing others how they fit in.

“Just giving somebody new business cards doesn’t make them a good manager or leader,” Soerensen explains. “We make great employees managers because that’s the next thing to do, but it’s a very different skill set, and it needs a lot of coaching and work.

“It’s really the most complex change they’ll ever deal with. It’s no longer about getting an Excel sheet right or getting a check-in done correctly, but how you deal with a team of different motivations, aims and concerns, and how you unite people so they have the best possible output as a collective. You’re suddenly measured according to very different criteria.”

To smooth the process of promoting and developing talent, The Beaumont’s executive team invests a great deal of time and energy into mentoring and coaching their young managers. It’s one of Soerensen’s favourite things about his work.

“You need to try your best to tune in to where people are in their career and job,” he says. “You can’t undermine or micromanage them, but at the same time you need to make sure they feel supported and encouraged. Everyone’s different, and the same manager in different situations might need more hands-on directing or more hands-off coaching.”

Manager or otherwise, every hotel employee needs to feel they can make mistakes, adds Indiani. For him, if staff members are going to grow and a property’s outputs improve, errors made in good faith actually need to be fostered. He’s emphasising a similar feedback philosophy across EHMA, where he hopes to create an ambience that means mistakes don’t occasion confrontations, but honest discussions that allow those on both sides to grow.