Between Forks

In hospitality, we talk a lot about teams.

But rarely about the people caught between the team and the company.

Middle leaders.
Department heads.
Hotel managers.

They carry the pressure from above:
targets, standards, guest experience, profitability, audits, brand expectations.

And at the same time, they carry the pressure from below:
staff shortages, turnover, burnout, conflict, operational gaps and emotional fatigue.

All while trying to operate inside systems that were built for a completely different reality.

Different labour markets.
Different guest expectations.
Different operating models.

What concerns me most is that the industry has normalised this level of sacrifice as “commitment”.

Being available 24/7.
Replying to messages the moment you walk through your front door.
Never fully switching off.
Constantly firefighting.

That is not sustainable leadership.

It is operational survival.

And when a business depends on people sacrificing themselves just to keep the operation stable, the problem is rarely the people.

It is the system.

Hospitality does not need more resilient leaders.

It needs structures that stop breaking the people holding everything together.

Some managers are not great operators.

They’re just brilliant at compensation.

They remember everything.
Fix problems quickly.
Cover gaps before anyone notices.
Step in constantly.
Keep the operation moving no matter what.

And because the business keeps running, everyone assumes the system works.

But often, it doesn’t.

The operation is simply being held together by people compensating for structural failure in real time.

That’s why some hospitality businesses become dangerously dependent on specific individuals.

Not because those people are “excellent”.

But because the system was never designed to function properly without them.

And the longer this continues, the harder the business becomes to scale, stabilise or replicate.

Because compensation hides design problems.

Until the person carrying them leaves.

Turnover is not your problem.

It’s your output.

Every system produces something:

– revenue
– service quality
– margin
– behaviour

And yes, turnover.

So when people keep leaving,
the question is not:

“Why can’t we retain talent?”

The question is:

“What kind of system are we running
that consistently produces exit?”

Because people don’t leave randomly.

They leave predictably.

From:

– unclear roles
– unstable priorities
– constant operational friction
– environments that require more energy than they return

Fixing turnover at the hiring level
is like fixing leaks by adding more water.

It keeps the system running.

It doesn’t make it work.

If your operation is stable only when you are fully staffed,
you don’t have stability.

You have dependency.

And dependency is expensive.

There’s a moment in every operation that no one talks about.

It’s when people stop telling you what’s actually happening.

Not because they don’t care.

But because they’ve learned it doesn’t change anything.

They’ve already adapted.

They stay longer without saying it.
They fix things before they reach you.
They stop pointing out what’s broken because it’s faster to just deal with it.

From the outside, everything looks fine.

Service runs.
Guests are happy.
Numbers don’t raise alarms.

But internally, the system is already under strain.

And the more people compensate, the less visible the problem becomes.

Until one day, someone leaves.

And suddenly it feels unexpected.

It isn’t.

That decision started much earlier.

When effort became the solution to a design problem.

If your operation depends on people absorbing friction silently,

you don’t have a communication problem.

You have a structural one.

They built a cocktail bar without ice.

Luxury hotel. Northern Europe.
Beautiful space. Signature cocktails. Premium positioning.

No ice machine.

Not in the bar.
Not in the back.

Nothing.

In a cocktail bar.

A proper solution was proposed.
Small adjustment. Real capacity.

They said no.

Too expensive.

So they chose a cheaper fix.

Thermal boxes.

That’s when the system started to break.

Mid-service, someone had to leave the bar.
Go down two floors.
Wait for access.
Carry ice back.

While the bar was full.

At the same time:

The bar was designed for two bartenders.
It needed four.

Cocktails were sent to other outlets.
Room service. Restaurant.

Everything slowed down.

Drinks delayed.
Orders piling up.
Guests waiting.

Reviews started reflecting it.

Inside, it was worse.

People leaving. Every week.
Good bartenders. Hard to replace.

And still, nothing changed.

Until it had to.

They finally installed the ice machine.

It cost less than 20%
of what had already been lost by not doing it earlier.

This is not about ice.

It’s about decisions.

Designing from the outside
and expecting the system to cope.

It always does.

Until it doesn’t.

Where is your bar without an ice machine?

Luxury is easy to spot in a lobby.

It is harder to spot in the staff corridor.

But that is where many hotel brands tell the truth.

A marble reception.
A beautifully scented arrival.
Carefully designed guest rituals.

And then:

— a cramped team dining room
— poor ventilation
— fluorescent lighting
— back-of-house spaces nobody would ever show a guest

This is usually treated as a secondary issue.

It isn’t.

Because the internal environment is not decoration.

It is operating infrastructure.

When a hotel invests heavily in the visible experience and neglects the invisible one, it creates a very specific kind of erosion:

cynicism.

The brand says excellence.
The system says endurance.

People notice.

And once they do, several things happen quietly:

— pride drops
— attention to detail weakens
— care becomes mechanical
— turnover stops being surprising

This is why culture cannot be built through language alone.

Not in hospitality.
Not in premium environments.

If your internal spaces contradict your external promise, the team will trust the building more than the values on the wall.

And when that happens, service may still look polished.

But the structure underneath is already cracking.

A premium hotel is not defined only by what the guest sees.

It is also defined by what the team has to absorb to make that experience possible.

Last week, I heard a sentence I’ve heard many times before.

“We’re struggling with turnover.”

It was said calmly. Almost casually.

As if it was just part of the business.

No tension.
No urgency.
No real question behind it.

And that stayed with me.

Because turnover is not neutral.

It’s not something that just “happens”.

It’s something a system produces.

Quietly. Gradually. Repeatedly.

Not in one big moment.

But in small, daily frictions:

— the extra shift that becomes expected
— the day off that disappears
— the role that was never clearly defined
— the decision that arrives too late

None of this looks dramatic.

But people feel it.

They carry it.

Until one day, they don’t.

And then we call it turnover.

But by then, the decision was already made.

Much earlier.

In a system that kept asking for more than it was designed to support.

What’s difficult is that many of these operations are still “working”.

Service is delivered.
Revenue comes in.
The numbers… more or less hold.

So nothing feels broken enough to question.

But something is.

Because when people start leaving quietly,
when they stop recommending the place they work,
when they wouldn’t choose to come back—

That’s not a people problem.

That’s a signal.

A very human one.

Telling you that the system is taking more than it gives.

And systems like that don’t fail loudly.

They erode.

Until one day, there’s nothing left to absorb the pressure.

And by then, it’s expensive to rebuild.

Much more expensive than it would have been to listen earlier.

There’s a comfortable lie in many companies:

“We have a talent problem.”

No.

The problem is the system.

Because you can hire someone brilliant, expensive, experienced…
and watch them fail within weeks.

Not because they don’t know how to do the job.
But because they step into an environment that:

— forces them to put out fires instead of build
— shifts priorities every other day
— measures poorly (or doesn’t measure at all)
— rewards urgency and punishes consistency

And then something predictable happens:

Talent adapts… or it burns out.

And when it burns out, we do the easy thing:
blame the person.

But the reality is more uncomfortable:

A bad system turns good people into inconsistent performers.
A good system turns average people into reliable ones.

It’s not magic. It’s structure.

If you’re dealing with turnover, repeated mistakes, or exhausted teams,
don’t start by looking at the CV of the next hire.

Look at the environment they’re expected to operate in.

Because that’s where everything is decided.

— What gets prioritized
— How information flows
— What gets tolerated
— What gets measured

Talent doesn’t fail by default.

It breaks when the system pushes it to.

And fixing that isn’t sexy.

But it’s the only thing that scales.

Most hotel EBITDA is not performance.

It’s what’s left after the system absorbs what it cannot fix.

Across the industry, EBITDA margins typically sit between 15% and 20%.

On paper, that suggests control.

In reality, it often signals something else.

A system that is holding together.

Not a system that works.

This is a False Stability Margin.

A business that looks stable from the outside,
while internally everything is compensating for something else.

The margin holds.

Because the system absorbs what it cannot resolve.

You see it most clearly in F&B-driven assets.

Rooms generate margin.
F&B concentrates complexity.
Labour stretches to keep the operation running.
Structure expands to manage what should not exist.

Nothing in the P&L looks broken.

That’s exactly why it is.

Look closer.

An 18% EBITDA with a 35–45% F&B revenue mix rarely comes from efficiency alone.

It usually means the operation is working harder than it should to produce the same result.

Overbuilt kitchens.
Menus that exceed operational capacity.
Labour models disconnected from demand patterns.
Management layers created to stabilise unstable systems.

None of this appears in the number.

Because it is not something you manage.

It is something your system allows.

Most operators optimise the residue.

They adjust costs.
They push teams.
They refine outputs.

The number holds.

The system does not improve.

So the margin stays stable.

And the business slowly deteriorates underneath it.

This is where the illusion becomes expensive.

Because the real question is not whether the margin looks acceptable.

It is whether the business generates sustainable cash flow.

Many do not.

They report acceptable margins while continuously reinvesting to maintain the same operational level.

Ageing kitchens.
Operational fatigue.
Continuous capex cycles.

This is not performance.

It is pressure, sustained over time.

If your EBITDA needs constant attention to hold,
the problem is not performance.

It’s design.

I don’t improve margins.

I redesign what produces them.