Luxury Hoteliers Magazine 4th Quarter 2018 | Page 88

Managing a luxury hotel today is a balancing act on a tightrope stretched across the divide between art and science. Today’s leaders in luxury hotels are expected to dance on the high wire while juggling glass balls of owner-relations, union-negotiations, risk-management, sustainable-value-creation, revenue- management, guest-relations, and omni-channel-marketing while wearing a perfectly tailored suit and a genuine smile. If the challenges are so daunting, why are so many young people from all over the world dreaming of becoming a luxury hotelier? From one of the renowned schools for hotel management in Switzerland, we gain some insight into how young hoteliers, still in hotel management school, imagine what their future in the luxury hotel business looks and feels like in context of the legends in luxury hotel keeping, from César Ritz, Horst Schulze, Kurt Wachtveitl, Isadore Sharp, to many others. 88 ILHA