When the Flag Stops Being a Guarantee: Has the Luxury Hotel Brand Lost Its Imprimatur? There was a time when booking a recognised luxury hotel brand felt like an act of reassurance. One might not know the city especially well, or have any personal knowledge of the particular property, but the name above the door carried its own authority. A Park Hyatt was expected to feel like a Park Hyatt, while a Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton or St Regis came with its own set of assumptions. T

I actually stopped and looked at it twice, partly because I assumed I had misread it. Not “Please do not allow dogs to foul this area.” Not “No Urination.” Just two abrupt words that seemed oddly out of place beneath the gates of one of Hong Kong’s oldest English-medium schools. The absurdity of being irritated by this was not entirely lost on me. Hong Kong has larger problems than inelegant laminated signs. Yet I found myself thinking about it for rather longer than was reas

There is a small moment that has become almost impossible to avoid. You will recognise it immediately. An aircraft cabin, a hotel bar, a waiting room. A space governed not by silence, but by restraint. And then, without hesitation, someone takes a call on speakerphone. The voice fills the room. Not loudly, not aggressively, but without the slightest adjustment to the presence of others. No glance, no apology, no awareness of imposition. The conversation proceeds as though the

I had not been upstairs at the Jim Thompson Surawong flagship store in years. That was not because the upper floors had disappeared, nor because the fabrics and furnishings were new. They have always been there. What had shifted, slowly and almost without my noticing, was my relationship with the brand and the level at which I had been engaging with it. For some time now, my experience of Jim Thompson has been concentrated at ground level. Clothing, restaurants, surface encou

I wonder if it’s actually me? There is a phrase my mother used to use, usually with a raised eyebrow and a tone that suggested the conversation was already over. “All fur coat and no knickers.” It was never meant cruelly. More a shorthand for something that looked the part, played the role convincingly, but ultimately lacked substance where it mattered. I found myself thinking of it again this New Year. We spent the holiday at one of Hua Hin’s most talked-about hotels. Award-

There is a quiet ritual in my life that I have come to value far more than I ever expected. For years, the same barber has cut my hair. We do not speak. We sit together in silence in a private room – the only environment in which I can tolerate the process – and he simply gets on with the work. No conversation, no performance, no social choreography. Just fifty minutes of silence carried by competence and trust. It is an unusual kind of intimacy, one that our age rarely recog

It is difficult to explain Dreamforce to anyone who has not stood in the middle of it. For one week each year, San Francisco becomes a stage. Streets close to traffic, buildings light up in Salesforce blue, and the city fills with tens of thousands of delegates moving in purposeful streams between keynotes, cafés and concerts. It feels less like a conference and more like a festival of belief, a gathering built around the promise that technology will make us more connected, m

These are personal reflections on service and standards, written as a guest and observer. They are not connected to any institution or...

Luxury has always been a shifting concept. In one era it meant jewels and fine fabrics; in another it meant servants and carriages. Today, we are told that luxury is defined by design: marble bathrooms, rooftop bars, and branded collaborations. Yet beneath the marketing, the truest luxuries have always been more elemental. They are space and time. Both are in vanishing supply. Both are almost impossible to buy. Walk into a grand hotel of the late nineteenth century, and you s

I have just returned from a week at The Oberoi, Bali. For seven days I did not once leave the resort. It was not that I had no interest...

This essay follows from my earlier reflection on the decline of substance in service. If Polish Without Substance explored the emptiness...

It is an enduring myth of professional life that systems are inherently designed to work. That if something is in place, a form, a...

'Luxury' is a word that used to mean something. It spoke of care taken, of refinement, of a kind of thoughtfulness that was neither...

One of the most exhausting features of institutional life, whether in education, corporate structures, or the softer machinery of public engagement, is the relentless insistence that everything we do is in pursuit of “excellence”. It is printed on letterheads, murmured in team briefings, and embedded in mission statements. Everyone claims to be striving for it, committed to it, or somehow elevating it. The language is always self-congratulatory, regardless of whether the work

Over the years, I’ve worked in a number of institutions — some large, some obscure, some that appear polished until you peek behind the...