The Lost Art of the Complaint in Luxury Hospitality

I began writing this a couple of weeks ago while on holiday at a boutique hotel on the Indian Ocean. Two days in, I sat down with the General Manager and told him plainly that things needed to change or I would leave. I hadn't travelled that far to adapt myself to the hotel's convenience, however beautiful the setting. And the water was, I'll admit, exceptionally turquoise.

The problem was orientation.

I had just come from another property where everything felt instinctively calibrated around the guest. The contrast was immediate. Nothing here had gone spectacularly wrong — the staff were polite, the architecture pleasing, the service outwardly competent — but everything operated according to the hotel's internal logic rather than mine. The hotel functioned smoothly for itself.