Rocco, with over 25 years of global experience in luxury hospitality, what have been some of the most significant cultural challenges you've faced, and how did you turn them into opportunities to lead and build winning teams?
I remember my first expatriation in Dubai where I was working with people from the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, Lebanon, etc. It was a challenge at first because I did not know what made them tick.
But then I realised it was a lot simpler than I thought.
The basic human values are the same around the world. Things like Respect, Trust, Integrity, have no boundaries. If you apply them, people will start to open up and believe in you as their leader.
This is how I managed to succeed in Dubai and from there in another 10 countries.
Given your commitment to create 'My Humble House' as a unique business model, can you share how different cultures have influenced this vision and how you plan to integrate various cultural elements into your leadership approach?
It was in fact the opportunity to live and work in different countries and meet different people which made me create My Humble House.
I have applied all I learned from the best companies in all the works I have been doing and the results are amazing.
Now I have the possibility to put all of what I learned in one single business to make it flourish even further.
My Humble House, may not be the most innovative hotel concept (in fact which one is?), but it's the only one that truly takes employees participation to the next level, not only by sharing profit but also by ensuring continuity of the business by preserving profit for the future.
Leadership in hospitality often demands adaptability and foresight. How do you incorporate aspects of human behavior, neuro marketing, and NLP into your leadership style to drive luxury customer experiences?
I learned to put myself in others' shoes when making decisions and always think that people reacts always with the best intentions.
One of the most important things I learned when reading about NLP was in fact asking myself this question ''what if the person in front of you is acting this way because of something he is going through now? What if you would start a conversation by sharing your purpose of it first?''
With this in mind, any confrontation will change. Even if an altercation took place, later you can go back with a cooler mind and think again on what happened and decide the real course of action. This could be an apology, to re-establish partnership, or can be an open dialogue to rebuild trust.
You've been described as having phenomenal tenacity and ambition. Could you share an instance where these traits directly contributed to enhancing the customer experience in a multicultural team setting?
Several times during my career I felt abandoned or betrayed by the company. This is when tenacity and ambition kicked in.
Always go back to ''what brought me here in the first place'' and you will see how new opportunities will come to you.
In your extensive career, how have you balanced maintaining a consistent luxury brand experience across diverse cultural environments and what strategies have you found most effective?
I believe that first is about the company culture and its alignement with the locale where it's based. Only then a leader can achive the company's goals.
One of the most important skill a leader must have is integrity. Without it is impossible to optimise performances and truly get the best out of the team.
How do you empower and engage diverse teams under high-pressure situations like hotel pre-openings, ensuring a seamless and culturally sensitive luxury guest experience?
I am one of the ''old style'' hoteliers and still apply the MBWA (managing by walking around) and lead from the front.
While I have an office, I still enjoy meet and greet guests ensuring they are having a great time but also provide moral support to the team that work very hard to deliver the very service we promise.
Looking ahead, how do you envision the role of cultural intelligence in leadership evolving in the hospitality industry, particularly in crafting unparalleled luxury experiences?
A lot is happening in the area of technology and AI. I am of the opinion that this novelties might be great to make business more efficient but there will be a cost to pay. The human touch will become colder and less human over time. As the majority of people hands over ''boring tasks'' to technology and rely ever more to it, I am not sure this will actually help the human connection.
In fact, all tech companies keep talking about boring tasks, I have never lives a day doing the same thing. Particularly where there is a lot of human interaction, it can never be the same, boring task.
Anyway, let's see what the future will bring.....
