How Even Luxury Products Can Fall Down.

By Thomas Brown

CEO at Ad Altus Advisors

(via LinkedIn)

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thomasbrownadaltius_rosewood-is-spending-on-the-wrong-things-activity-7450218887264096257-0uFN?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAc4_wgBbSlrZK5_cG6da52f1BrFnwrJaig

Rosewood is spending on the wrong things. The result is a beautiful product that doesn’t work.

I’m staying at one right now. The finishes are staggeringly expensive, the materials are extravagant, and everything you can photograph looks exactly as it should.

But then you notice the cracks. Every last housekeeping staff member is sent home after a certain hour. In the evenings, a single person is covering in-room dining, housekeeping, and other functions. If you want a bottle of champagne sent up at the same time four other people order a cheeseburger, I hope you’re not in a hurry.

And it’s not just about the niceties of room service. Staffing cutbacks affect room allocation, arrival experience, check-in, check-out, and virtually every touchpoint of the stay. A hotel that doesn’t have the staffing to keep its promises is not a luxury operation.

The cause is no mystery. They’re allocating capital to what you can see and starving what you experience. The money is going into design and capex, while the operation is left trying to keep up with too few people and too little support. Rose Hunt would not recognize this.

This is a pattern across multiple properties, and it isn’t unique to Rosewood. You can see it in new builds where the budget leans heavily into finishes and amenities and assumes the service will somehow just deliver. Newsflash: service won’t just magically “catch up.” You actually have to invest in staffing and service levels.

If you’re buying or allocating into a luxury hotel, don’t stop at the expensive fabrics, the millwork, and the renderings. Ask what the staffing model looks like at 85% occupancy. Ask who’s on property at 11 p.m. Ask how many people are budgeted to deliver housekeeping, in-room dining, front office, and guest requests when the hotel is full. The real test is whether the operation can keep the promises the design is making.

These decisions get made long before guests check in. It sits in the capital stack. What gets funded, what gets cut, and what gets deferred all show up in the guest experience.

If you get this wrong, no amount of design will save you. You can’t build a luxury hotel by starving the operation. This is how expensive hotels fail, quietly and in plain sight.

thoughts from Gary- The Radiance model concurs with this article. Nobody cares about gold plated

( or even real gold ) bathroom fixtures if the Room Service serves cold soup! Put the money in good people.