Malana VanTyler
Image Credit: Pexels
The ultra luxury boutique hotel space is dominated by such brands as Aman, Bulgari, Cheval Blanc, Six Senses, Mandarin Oriental and Four Season. They are the gold standard in refined architecture, sophisticated service, and cutting-edge technology. Formally, they do set a standard that many hospitality providers aspire to. Yet in practice, many luxury hotels often fall short in the core mission of hospitality: creating a genuine sense that the guest is truly welcome.
Yuri Vanetik, a U.S. lawyer with many overseas based clients, travels often for work and pleasure. His hotel experiences reflect hospitality industry’s greatest systemic failure – dehumanizing guests. With extensive international travel experience across Europe, Asia, Latin America, Eurasia, and the Caucasus, Vanetik stayed in both capital-city hotels and provincial properties. There, he repeatedly observed how luxury hospitality is reduced to rigid protocols, inflexible policies, or incremental monetization. In this article, we highlight his perspective drawn on years of business travel to ponder the underlying causes of this industry disconnect and to suggest what stakeholders need to do that could restore luxury hospitality’s guest oriented mission.
During his travels, Vanetik discovered a clear distinction between small hotels and the rest of the luxury segment. In small hotels, the guest experience itself is a product: guests are addressed by name, relationships are personal, and problems are resolved quickly and thoughtfully, because every satisfied guest is essential to the hotel’s continued success. This is not to say that boutique properties don’t fail, but they have higher stakes and their ultimate product is their service rather than ballrooms and banquet halls.
In contrast, larger luxury hotels adhere to strict protocols and disregard your personal experience. You can enter a marble lobby or lie down on a snow-white bed and still feel like you’re on a film set, where every action is monitored and billed. The welcoming atmosphere is paper thin in the rest of the luxury segment.
Speaking about this issue, Yuri Vanetik shared a recent experience from his stay at Hotel Las Arenas Balneario Resort in Valencia. Online, the property appeared impressive: a prime beachfront location, positioned as a luxury seaside resort.
Yuri extended his stay through the hotel’s web portal and approached the front desk for a routine request of staying in the same room — the room was available he was told. However, the management told him that due to the specifics of the booking system, remaining in the same room would require a small additional charge.
“ The staff prioritizes earning a few extra euros and treats you not as a valued guest but as if you were paying a parking ticket. It’s a formal, commercial, anything but human relationship,” Vanetik explained, commenting on his interaction with the front desk staff.
This is precisely how luxury hospitality loses its core compass. The original purpose of making the guest experience invaluable has, by bitter irony, been diminished by bureaucracy and inflexible policies.
The tyranny of protocol dominates the luxury hotel space. Luxury hotel staff are well-trained about rules, but they often know nothing about people. Employees learn the rules and memorize them like a prayer, learning the importance of following them. But they don’t learn when to deviate from the rules. It is the old spirit of the law and letter of the law distinction. According to Yuri Vanetik, management is more willing to refuse politely than to agree wisely.
The emphasis has moved to optimizing revenue through small surcharges and protocol. The idea that guests are temporary and the hotel will continue operating has created an asymmetry in the relationship between people and properties. In such circumstances, hospitality is just an empty word.
Yuri Vanetik believes that small additional fees are killing hospitality. Sometimes, at luxury hotels, guests are forced to pay for even the most basic services: early check-out, late check-in, room change, and so on. These fees don’t impact the hotel’s profit, but they do ruin the guest’s overall experience. When every gesture of kindness is taxed, guests certainly don’t experience true luxury hospitality.
Another problem is that professionalism is often confused with emotional distance. Staff are trained to behave in a reserved, formal manner and to high standards. This all makes the service cold and impersonal. The most memorable vacation stories are about how a guest was helped to check in quickly after a difficult night at the airport, or how the linens were promptly changed after a spilled cup of coffee. These are small gestures that cost the hotel nothing, but can linger in the guest’s memory for a lifetime.
As a frequent hotel guest across different regions of the world, Vanetik identifies the following factors as the root of the luxury hospitality failure:
— Rewarding employees for following rules instead of delighting guests
— Excessive automation that prevents deviations from rules
— Minimal attention to employee emotional intelligence
— Attempts to extract short-term profits from small services
— Cultural emasculation of local brands: global companies set impersonal standards across all their locations
Yuri Vanetik sees the solution to these problems in straightforward actions that don’t require financial investment. First and foremost, employee training should focus on a single core principle: earning the guest’s trust and loyalty, even when that means stepping outside formal guidelines.
Second, staff must be given greater decision-making autonomy. Guests too often hear phrases such as “I need to check with management”. Yet many situations require immediate action! Trust your employees more, Vanetik argues.
Luxury hotels also place significant emphasis on staff appearance. While this is important, it is far more critical that employees are courteous, empathetic, and able to assess situations quickly. Recall The Grand Budapest Hotel: anticipate guests’ needs before they are expressed.
Finally, luxury hotels must relearn how to show that they care — ideally, sincerely, but convincingly will suffice. Courtesy without genuine concern is easy for guests to detect.
Luxury hospitality was supposed to free guests from unnecessary problems and inconveniences, but behind strict standards and rules, it has lost its essence. Every little detail, be it late check-in or extra towels, has become an expense for guests, and they no longer feel welcome at top hotels.
Simple gestures from management can restore luxury: helping a guest with luggage, rescheduling a check-in date, etc. Comfort is built on small details, and for staff, these may be subtleties, but for guests, they create a lasting impression and signal respect. This is far more valuable than a smart room or a dazzling view.
Yuri Vanetik is a U.S. attorney and political strategist who has been traveling for many years for work and to satisfy his quest to learn about other cultures.