Arnie Weissmann
There is only one place where the Four Seasons' well-regarded training program clashed so badly with the local culture that the hospitality management company pulled up stakes and left: the Four Seasons Resort Exuma at Emerald Bay, on the Bahamas' Great Exuma island.
Consistency of service regardless of location had become a cornerstone of the brand, and for reasons too complex for Four Seasons managers to understand and overcome, Bahamians from the island were not willing to align with their standards. The resort struggled for four years before shuttering in 2007. After going into receivership, the property was sold to Sandals in 2009.
Officially, the company said that the reason it abandoned the $300 million, 500-acre property was that it had difficulty attracting skilled Bahamians from Nassau to work at the resort. Sandals later acknowledged that it had underestimated operating costs and lack of airlift, but, with 13 properties in the Caribbean at the time, it did not experience the same culture clash as Four Seasons. Today, Tripadvisor's reviews of the Sandals Emerald Bay are generally positive, and while the reviews summary notes that feedback on service is "split," it also highlights the property's dedicated and friendly staff.
Diego Angarita had been brought to Exuma by Four Seasons as assistant manager and had seen, very close up, what had happened. In 2016, the 22-year veteran was tasked with helping convert the Viceroy Anguilla into a Four Seasons as its hotel manager.
"When we took over, we got it wrong," Angarita, now the hotel's general manager, told me when I visited the property earlier this month. "When I spoke to the staff about my expectations, to them it was like I was talking gibberish. It reminded me of my days in Exuma."
The Four Seasons in Exuma had been the only luxury property on that island when it opened, and Four Seasons may have concluded that there was no way the local population could comply with their service expectations. Tiny Anguilla, on the other hand, has long been home to some of the finest luxury resort properties in the Caribbean, including Cap Juluca and Malliouhana. Angarita knew something else was amiss.
He committed himself to better understand the local culture, listened to staff feedback and, to begin a reset, stood in front of his team and admitted he had made mistakes.
"When we came in and tried to 'Four Seasons' them, we took away the genuine part," he said. "They were trying to be what we told them to be, but it was unnatural."
He focused on encouraging them to be themselves. "There's a great tradition of hospitality here," he said. "It's a small island, but family households are large, and it's not uncommon for one sister in a family to work in a restaurant on property, one in room service and one in housekeeping."
He realized he would have to deviate from some brand guidelines to blend in the local culture and still meet guest expectations. One small change he regards as a turning point was to allow the staff to put their nicknames on their name tags rather than their formal names. In parallel, he no longer required staff to address guests using only their surnames, nor to end every interaction by saying, "What else can I do for you?"
He understood that a staff-guest fist bump might not be appropriate at the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris, but it was perfectly fine on Anguilla.
"Local matters," he said. And he also credits the allowance of more local culture with helping his guests adapt to the resort environment more quickly. "Most of our guests come from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut," he said. "I tell the team, give them 24 hours to decompress. The first 24, they're wired and demanding. But after 24, they wake up, see the view, get to know the staff, and then it flows."
Guest satisfaction scores have never been higher, Angarita said. And, unlike at other destinations, "guests don't want to talk to me. They want to talk to staff. They're in the Caribbean."
He also found that, although the island offers a job pool that includes potential hires with luxury service experience, it isn't necessarily what he's looking for.
"A guest asked one of our young team members, on his first day, for a pina colada. The server responded, 'What's in that?' Well, that's teachable. What's not teachable is how to smile. He has a great smile," Angarita said.
Over the next three years, the property plans to replace the current spa with an expanded wellness center and renovate every food and beverage outlet and all the guestrooms.
But Angarita knows the hard amenities mean nothing without staff satisfaction. Reflecting on Four Seasons founder Issy Sharp's axiom, "Take care of your people and they'll take care of your guests," Angarita views the past differently. "Although we didn't succeed in Exuma," he said, "we would do a better job today."
Correction: Diego Angarita's titles in Exuma and when he first arrived at the Four Seasons Anguilla property were incorrect in an earlier version of this article and have been corrected