https://monocle.com/magazine/the-escapist/2017/staying-power/
Clean lines
Four Seasons’ president and CEO Allen Smith knows what keeps guests coming back time after time to the brand’s storied hotels: a fine-tuned and deeply knowledgeable service alongside a refined product. We met him in Toronto.
Four Seasons is known the world over for its top-notch hotels. The company traces its origins to Toronto in 1961, where it was founded as a motor-hotel for business travellers. Since 2013 its president and CEO has been Allen Smith, an affable 60-year-old American who was formerly in charge of one of the world’s largest property-investment firms. He is refreshingly frank about the direction he thinks Four Seasons should take: do less but do it better.
Despite his willingness to chart a new course for the hotel brand, Smith says that a constant in Four Seasons’ ethos is the understanding that service is its strongest asset. That remains the case whether the location is a redesigned former sailing club in Miami or one of the company’s longstanding properties in cities including Damascus, Vancouver and Kyoto. We met Smith at Four Seasons’ testing laboratory in Toronto to find out more about the brand, its imminent expansion into Asia and how it is now branching out into residential developments.
Monocle: Are there things that you have decided Four Seasons should not do?
Allen Smith: We don’t chase trends. We are a brand that stands for timelessness in what we do. Since I joined, we have opened 22 new hotels but we have also exited seven. That speaks to our willingness to say there are certain situations where, for a variety of reasons, it’s time for us to move on. It’s a strong statement of how important product quality is to the brand. Our growth needs to be measured. You have to be willing to wait for the right opportunity.
M: When you took over, you mentioned wanting to do less but better. What did you mean?
AS: Four Seasons is an extraordinary brand – and it was before I arrived. When I talk about quality over quantity, I’m making it clear that Four Seasons is not in the commodity business. Every single one of our hotels is unique and every single one is custom-built in its character. If you’re going to pursue that strategy, you can never compromise on the quality of the physical product or the service you provide. If we wanted to simply drive unit growth, we could make lots of compromises to accumulate hotels. But that’s not the business we’re in.
M: But you are diversifying. How does that work?
AS: Four Seasons is known as a hotel and resort company. In reality it’s about hotels, resorts and residences. If we look at our new projects, 80 per cent are mixed use, consisting of both hotel and residential components. In many cases the hotel would not get built but for the residential element. But to sell those residential units you need the hotel to provide the services. That combination defines the approach we take now; it has allowed us to go into projects we wouldn’t have otherwise done, such as Twenty Grosvenor Square in London. Another extension of the brand is in the Four Seasons Jet: the concept is an end-to-end travel experience where everything you can think of has been thought of, from the moment you leave your house to the moment you return. That experience resonates with people.
M: How has technology changed the face of the hospitality industry?
AS: You have technology-based disrupters: companies that have scale and financial resources we can’t match. We’re relatively small in comparison. To think we can go head to head with Priceline or Expedia or Airbnb in the online world – we can’t win that game. I think of the next tier – Marriott, Accor, arguably Hilton – as consolidators. They are focused on every hotel segment, from economy to luxury. That allows them to face off against online competitors. And then you get to the luxury space, we represent one of the largest of that ilk. We have this unique pedigree and history, we have a company based on a principle called the Golden Rule [treating others as you’d hope to be treated yourself]. It isn’t a slick corporate slogan, it is something that resonates deeply with our employees. One of the things I never lose sight of is that this is the ultimate people business – and the people at Four Seasons have a passion for service that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
M: What sets Four Seasons’ approach apart?
AS: I routinely get letters from our guests sharing experiences they’ve had with us – often joyous but in other cases tragic. A woman was travelling with her husband when he passed away unexpectedly at our hotel; she wrote me a five-page letter about what our team did to support her. As she put it, through their care and compassion they “allowed me to keep breathing”. It’s extraordinary. What’s so compelling is that these are situations for which there is no playbook, there’s no training manual. We don’t always get it right – we’ll be the first to admit that – and that was one of the brilliant things about Izzy [Isadore Sharp, 85-year-old founder and chairman of Four Seasons]. He realised that when you make a mistake, correcting it is often one of the best ways to win back your customers. The genuine emotional connection our employees seek to make with people is really extraordinary.
M: How are your guests’ expectations of luxury travel changing?
AS: Innovation has become much harder. There was a time when you could innovate by introducing things in the guest room, such as complimentary bath amenities. We have gone well past that. Innovation today is around guest experience. Guests are looking for a personal connection; they’re looking for a set of authentic experiences. And those qualities can only be delivered effectively by people who have a deep understanding of what we are trying to accomplish, a passion for service and a level of emotional intelligence that allows them to exercise judgment in the moment. For that reason it’s hard to do well all over the world and that’s why we stand out.
Key facts
Founded: By Isadore “Izzy” Sharp. The first Four Seasons hotel opened on Jarvis Street in Toronto in 1961.
Current portfolio: 105 resort and residences in 43 countries.
Annual revenue: €3.8bn.
Employees: 45,000 worldwide.
