I had the pleasure of meeting Robert Warman, CEO of Langham Hospitality Group, a few years ago at the ILTM trade show in Cannes, where we discussed his vision for Langham Hotels on luxury, guest experience, and the challenges facing the hospitality industry of tomorrow. We spoke about the concept behind Langham Hotels. Langham Hospitality Group is the hotel arm of Great Eagle Holdings, one of the leading property developers in Hong Kong. With more than thirty luxury addresses across major cities on four continents, Langham hotels are defined by authentic service, innovation, and design.
Robert Warman served as CEO of LHG from 2014 to May 2018, bringing to the role thirty years of experience in luxury hospitality built at Ritz-Carlton and Capella Hotel Group.
The art of hospitality is the fundamental element of welcoming a guest. How would you define this art of hospitality within Langham hotels?
The art of hospitality at Langham comes down to personalized service delivered with elegance. Today's luxury hotel guests want a service that is friendly, warm, and attentive without being intrusive or overbearing, all within a relaxed atmosphere. They know we are there for them whenever they need us. We train our teams to create an environment of elegant, refined service without being too forward, while remaining available. That, to us, is balanced service with elegance.
A hotel's success is judged on the quality of service delivered by its staff. Langham hotels carry expertise dating back to 1865 (the opening of the Langham Hotel London). What environment are you creating today to develop your employees' talent?
Within our Langham hotels, we try to give each employee the opportunity to build an environment for which they are personally responsible. They should not simply repeat the same actions, because there is no single solution for everything. Through this, each employee is given the authority to do what is needed to ensure the success of the guest experience.
They must also be able to express our values and our vision in their own personal way. By teaching our hotel employees the values of Langham Hotels, we give them the opportunity to make those values their own and embody them every day. Once again, what matters is empowering each employee to protect the company's image and represent its values.
You are preparing to open many hotels in the years ahead. How do you picture the future of luxury hospitality?
Luxury today is no longer defined by age, position, or status. It is defined by those who still want service from people genuinely available to them. It is not simply about having a lot of people around you: it is about receiving the expected service at the exact moment the guest wants it. That requires kindness and an understanding of the guest's emotional state, so as to offer solutions that suit them at that precise moment.
It is also a place where guests can discover life the way they want to discover it. Today, so many things are planned in advance, and people tell you 'Be like this... Do that...' In our view, a guest comes to luxury hospitality for an experience that lets them affirm their own personality. In that sense, our teams are trained to serve guests according to their own expectations, not those defined by the company. In the years ahead, our role will be to offer guests life experiences shaped by what they want in the moment, and to be able to respond very quickly and personally to each and every guest.
What is your vision of sustainability in your hotels? How do you embody this commitment?
The company is headquartered in Hong Kong, and the region has always been mindful of how it uses its natural resources. So we decided early on to put environmentally responsible programs in place in every hotel. It is one of the key pillars of Langham Hotels.
Every hotel takes part in a comprehensive program called CONNECT. We have to deliver profits to our owners while making sure we respect the planet on one hand, and the work of our employees on the other. We make sure every one of them is treated with respect and dignity. The same holds true for our guests, to whom we offer excellent service and environmentally responsible products.
We make sure every employee understands the importance of protecting the planet and the environment. This is not a program for a handful of people in our group: our entire workforce is genuinely involved. It is even one of the criteria by which every hotel and every manager is evaluated: achieving strong performance while safeguarding the environment and helping improve our world.
What advice would you give hospitality school students hoping to build a successful career in luxury hotels?
My advice for succeeding in luxury hospitality is to hold on to your passion. Later in their careers, many will want to move through different roles, all the way up to hotel general manager. Never forget the essential truth: our business comes down to the interaction between an employee and a guest. Luxury is defined by that moment. We can all buy the same china, offer the same linens, and build the same hotels. What we cannot do is create the same emotion for everyone. Nor is it possible to instill passion in every employee so they can deliver that emotion. It is up to the manager to instill that emotional state in them, or at least to create the conditions for it to happen.
We will keep changing the look of our hotels, the type of bedding, the thread count of every sheet, the food, or the artwork. What we cannot replace, however, is the experience that unfolds. We owe it to ourselves to keep our employees' passion alive and to give them the freedom to interact with the guest. That is where luxury is headed in the future.
Share this article with a colleague, a client or a partner.
That is often how an idea enters a house, and then its habits.
What you say about it matters more than what I say.
A keynote, a mission, an article in the magazine: if my work has been useful to you, a few lines on Google are worth more than any argument.
Leave a review on Google →
