Will AI help bring back the invisible manager into the spotlight?
In hospitality, guest experience is the currency that keeps your doors open. An awful experience, such as a poor welcome, bad food, inattentive service, even slow Wi-Fi can cause reputational damage. But above all, there’s a silent killer lurking in many hotels and restaurants. It’s the invisible manager. With luck, you’ve probably met one or two of the visible tribe.
Take heart though, invisible managers are really not bad people - just executives who spend more time in the back office than on the lobby or restaurant floors. The problem is that while they’re buried in admin, the guest experience is quietly taking a hit. The more time a manager spends in the office, more guest experiences get smacked. Imagine an orchestra without a visible conductor, the music still plays - but the magic? It’s missing.
The hotel manager as we knew it no longer exists. Then it was all about visibility. Managers were out front, orchestrating the whole guest experience, like a captain at the helm steering the ship. Hospitality was, and still is, about connection. However, the quintessence of hotel leadership has undergone a profound transformation, led by the tides of technology, guest expectations, and global disruptions. At the heart of this transformation is the hotel general manager.
One of the strongest drivers for AI adoption in hotels is operational efficiency. By automating manual tasks, such as, to name but a few examples; check-in/out, concierge Q&A, scheduling, and housekeeping sequencing - hotels free staff to focus on higher-value tasks. Hospitality's core work is stubbornly physical and face-to-face, so AI will mostly bite back-office and “middle” roles first.
Perhaps most importantly, will AI reverse the trend and free hotel managers from the endless cycle of reporting and analysis that has gradually pulled them away from interacting with guests? For decades, our managers have been dragged deeper into administrative work that keeps them behind a desk rather than creating relationships with guests and associates.
Igniting the spark of Hospitality
Beyond the foundations of comfort and service, the role of the hotel manager still remains as being the chief architect of creating memorable, if not positive guest experiences. Through his or her leadership, service offerings, atmosphere, and even mundane touchpoints like check-ins can differentiate a hotel in today’s fiercely competitive field.
Imagine walking into a hotel and approaching the front desk, where the receptionist who was staring into the screen, looks up and says “Can I help you?” That first less than thirty seconds impression, tells you that this hotel has a serious problem. A weak leadership!
As we gaze into the future, it's evident that technology will further shape and define the role of the hotel manager. Over the next five years the manager’s calendar will flip from 70/30 Admin-to-Leadership to 90/10 Leadership to Admin. It would not surprise us to discover that the manager in the 2030’s works fewer hours on administration than a 2026 manager spends on emails. Leaders in hospitality feel this shift coming, but most don’t know what to do about it.
Shafeek Wahab- Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Motivational Speaker, Mystery Guest Auditor, Ex-Hotelier
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