I’m writing this on a hillside in Tibet where I’m working with a lovely collection of hotels, each delicately balanced somewhere between the clouds and the earth, each full of an extraordinary sense of magic.
Tibet has given me a wonderful insight – the kind of insight you only get when you’re entirely removed from your norm – and the kind that I know will carry LHC forward with an extra dimension of understanding from here on.
Out here, under the enormous sky, as far from traffic jams and QR codes as you can imagine, I’m reminded that, although cultures can seem wildly singular, some things – some universal human needs of care and service – simply don’t change. What I’m seeing, reinforced by this entirely new angle on hospitality, is that people are people the world over, and that our core tenets of humanity don’t waver from continent to continent, budget to budget. And yet, I can also see how these things can be so easily overlooked if the immediate needs of an operation outweigh them.
So, today, this is my question. Are we doing enough to nurture and support this crucial constant in our business? Are we really putting the customer first? Or are we still making them bend to fit our operational needs, even if we dress that decision up as ‘efficiency’? It might be subtle, but if you look hard enough, I’m sure that’s where you’ll find a new piece of gold to lead you forward.