NEW YORK CITY—Francois-Olivier Luiggi got a taste (literally) of what it’s like to serve people as a boy growing up in France.
It was there that his family would gather en masse for holidays in the South of France, some 20- or 30-strong. When it came time to eat, the group did not go to a restaurant. Instead, it was up to Luiggi’s grandmother to plan and cook every meal for a week for the crowd.
He said he was the only one in the group fascinated by what his grandmother was doing.
From those beginnings, Luiggi went on to hotel school and five years ago received his first post as a GM, a role he occupies at the 214-room Langham Place Fifth Avenue. Through it all, serving others and matching the needs of the property’s guests has been a guiding force for Luiggi.
“I never looked back, really,” he said, sipping a glass of red wine in the Langham Place’s on-property restaurant, Ai Fiori.
His guest-centric day begins the moment he opens his eyes in the morning and reaches for his phone. From there, he checks on the overnight report and whether there were any complaints. He then reviews the day’s performance numbers.
Luiggi, who began his career working in hotel roomservice, said he welcomes every interaction he has with the 5-star hotel’s guests. He especially welcomes complaints.
“If I go to work and nothing happens, I am disappointed,” he said. “If no one complains, I can’t make any friends. If someone complains, there is a 99.9% chance they will become your best customer. They come with a complaint, you grab it and fix it and they become your best customer.”
Langham leadership
Luiggi takes a similar approach with how he interacts with and leads the staff of the Langham Place.
“Your leadership style is very personal,” he said. “Half of it is your own personality, your own temperament. There are many different styles of GMs. What’s important is who you are surrounding yourself with. The whole team is complementing each other and yourself.”
As GM, he said his role has become less about accomplishing specific tasks and more about ensuring those underneath him share his vision for what the hotel is trying to accomplish.
“I love to engage. I am a nurturer. I want to know everything. This is the only way I can be. It’s not a style other people should have. It just fills your personality,” he said.
The staff of the hotel meets three times each day to go over arrivals, requests and if there are any extraneous issues that might affect the guest experience, he said.
“The guest has to be at the center of everything we do,” he said. “And that only happens if we talk about it a lot. I mean, a lot.”
Or else: “You will be out of business pretty quickly.”
Connecting with people is not a difficult task for Luiggi.
“It sounds like a bumper sticker: I love people,” he said. “Most people love people. We are very social creatures.”
NYC market
Luiggi is bullish about the overall state of the hotel sector in New York City. Leisure and corporate travel is up, he said.
“Looking at the numbers for the summer, it appears the exchange rate will not impact summer travel,” he said. “More and more people are coming. It keeps going up.”
He is likewise not concerned about overbuilding in the city.
“Hotels keep getting built and everything gets absorbed,” he said. According to STR, there were 83 hotel projects representing 13,300 rooms under construction in New York City as of May 2015. STR is the parent company of Hotel News Now.