Guest-First Leadership: The New Role of the GM
For decades, the hotel general manager was the final authority on everything that mattered. Then came specialization. Marketing, sales, revenue, and finance were carved into silos, each with its own dashboards, deadlines, and dialect. The GM’s remit quietly narrowed to “keep operations running and put out fires.” Guests kept arriving; the firefighting never stopped. However, the one thing no one owned—the end-to-end guest journey—fell between the cracks.
The core problem is that specialists optimize transactions while guests buy experiences. Without a single leader to connect destination demand, promise, price, and delivery, silo KPIs can be achieved while guest satisfaction and profit stagnate. The result is familiar: rate fights, conflicting reports, and teams working hard toward contradictory goals.
It’s time to restore the GM as the orchestrator, the accountable owner of the guest journey, not as a super-specialist, but as the leader who aligns all specialists around one narrative anchored in the local destination (the real reason the guest is here). The GM sets the promise, ensures the team can deliver it consistently, and closes the loop with learning that improves both happiness and total spending per guest.
What follows is a concise, practical reframing of the GM role—why it failed, what to own, and how to establish a foundation—and a clear conclusion: the only person uniquely suited to optimize the whole is the general manager.
Brief History: How We Got Here
Era of the “Generalist GM” (pre-silo) — final authority on most decisions
One property, one P&L, one boss. The GM set rates in conjunction with sales, guided marketing messages, approved promotions, and established service standards and recovery protocols. Decisions were made quickly because context was shared in one head and during one daily stand-up. Success was measured as happy guests, healthy margins, and a steady owner.
Rise of specialization — functional silos, centralized mandates, KPI fragmentation
As brands scaled and tech matured, expertise professionalized. Corporate centers and regional hubs assumed responsibility for marketing, sales, revenue, and finance, while property teams concentrated on operations. Each function has its own tools, targets, and rhythm. The upside: deeper skills and better compliance. The downside: being disconnected from the guest, competing priorities, and slower decision-making at the property.
Unintended consequence — the guest journey has no single owner
With specialists optimizing their slice (campaigns, conversion, RevPAR, cost lines), no role remained accountable for the end-to-end experience anchored in the destination promise. A guest’s trip now crosses multiple owners with no conductor. You can “win” channel mix while undermining arrival, or boost occupancy while degrading experience quality. The journey, and its outcomes, fell between the cracks.
The Case for Change: Why a Journey Owner is Essential
Guests buy experiences, not transactions.
Nobody books a “rate + room” in isolation—they buy a purpose-driven trip shaped by the destination and how your hotel enables it. When the promise (why come), the price (what it’s worth), and the delivery (what actually happens) are orchestrated, you lift NPS, repeat intent, and spending per guest. When they’re not, you invite churn and discounting.
Silo KPIs can rise while NPS and profit fall.
Marketing can hit traffic goals, Sales can fill the calendar, Revenue can lift RevPAR, and Finance can trim costs—yet the property still underperforms. That’s misaligned optimization:
- High occupancy and underprepared operations lead to slower service and lower guest satisfaction ratings.
- Discount-driven conversion leads to weak price integrity and poorer flow-through.
- Cost cuts in housekeeping and F&B lead to a decline in cleanliness/quality, resulting in fewer ancillaries.
- Only an accountable journey owner can make the trade-offs that protect the whole.
The destination is the reason for the stay.
Travelers choose a place first, and then a hotel second. Embedding the hotel in local demand and culture (seasonality, events, trails, dining, arts) raises perceived value and resilience. Destination-anchored offers (micro-itineraries, partnerships, seasonal experiences) support stronger pricing, better attach rates, and more memorable stays, outcomes no single silo can deliver alone.
Bottom line: Without a GM owning the end-to-end journey, you achieve transactional wins but experience experiential losses. With a GM, you get coherent promises, consistent delivery, and profitable loyalty.
Definition: The GM as Guest Journey Owner
Scope (end-to-end):
Attract → Capture → Prepare → Deliver → Review (close the loop)
- Attract: Define who the hotel is for (target guests) and the destination-anchored promise. Align campaigns and content to moments of demand.
- Capture: Guard price integrity, create attractive offers, and resolve trade-offs between channel mix and owning the guest already at the time of booking.
- Prepare: Orchestrate pre-arrival personalization, upsell bundles, and staffing readiness for the arriving guests.
- Deliver: Ensure service standards, recovery SLAs, and experience execution (itineraries, partners) match the promise.
- Review: Close the loop at weekly meetings by reviewing guest and employee feedback (reviews, surveys), addressing root-cause issues, scaling what works, and stopping what doesn’t.
Accountability
- GM = Accountable for outcomes of the total journey (NPS/review score, repeat intent, revenue & profit per guest).
- Functional experts are responsible for execution within their domains:
- Marketing: audience fit, destination story, qualified demand.
- Sales/M&E: win-themes, delegate outcomes, displacement logic.
- Revenue: create offers, price integrity, and demand capturing.
- Operations: service delivery, quality, recovery.
- Finance: measure flow-through, fund scalable experiences.
- IT/CRM: data capture, identity, automation.
What this achieves: one owner, one narrative, one rhythm. Specialists still excel, but the GM ensures the parts add up to a memorable and profitable experience.
The GM is the Only Role Built for This
Specialists optimize parts; the general manager must optimize the whole. When marketing chases clicks, sales fills space, revenue tunes prices, and operations runs the floor, someone has to connect the promise to the delivery and protect long-term profit when short-term KPIs collide. That someone is the GM.
By owning the guest journey, the GM restores coherence to the business: a single narrative anchored in the destination, a unified decision-making process, and a single measure of success, memorable stays that drive revenue and profit per guest. This is not a return to the old “generalist who does everything,” but a modern orchestrator who aligns experts to outcomes.
The payoff is both human and financial: more explicit purpose for teams, fewer firefights for managers, better reviews for guests, and stronger flow-through for owners. The job becomes meaningful again—lead the journey, not just the shift.
Call to action: Start now with one scorecard, one weekly guest journey review, one destination-anchored offer. Prove it works, then scale.