Leader ‘leadership’ perceptions within a luxury hotel environment

Abstract

This study considers the role of leadership within the hospitality sector as a key tool in raising performance levels. Hospitality is unique in its service-based approach reliant on employees to ensure an effective service. Post Covid-19 and Brexit, the hospitality sector has seen a shift in reliance towards a home workforce and as such retention has become an area of greater importance. This case study investigation adopted a qualitative approach to consider perceptions of six managers within a UK based luxury hotel. Semi-structured interviews were used to draw out their experience of approaches used to ensure effective delivery in their areas of responsibility. The research concludes a shift in leadership approach (autocratic to democratic) as a necessity to retain staff, particularly as the shift to a greater reliance on a home workforce due to Covid-19 and Brexit starting to impact the sector. There does however remain a need to be more autocratic in certain situations to ensure quality of service remains. Subsequently. communication becomes critical in the building of relationships. The research considers leadership approaches from the managerial perspective and is based on individual perceptions. Traditionally research has been conducted from the employee perspective.