Toxic hotel leadership can look impressive on a spreadsheet. The department hits its number. The menu gets compliments. The big client renews. Meanwhile, the people working closest to the person getting the credit are trying to work out how much longer they can stand it.

Consider an illustrative hotel department. Its leader is excellent at the visible part of the job and repeatedly humiliates people during the invisible part. A colleague raises a concern. Someone above them answers, “That’s just how they are.” The concern goes nowhere, and the leader continues receiving praise.

That response is a decision about whose comfort the hotel will protect. Everyone who hears it gets information about how power works in that building.

After eighteen years in hospitality, I have very little interest in celebrating a beautiful guest experience without asking what it took from the people who delivered it. A hotel should be capable of making guests feel welcome while treating its own people with respect. Leadership has to take responsibility when those two things come apart.

How toxic hotel leadership earns its permission

A commercially valuable person can become difficult to challenge. The hotel worries about losing their contacts, their skill or their reputation. Eventually, colleagues start arranging their work around the behavior. Someone else delivers the bad news. A supervisor cleans up the argument. New employees get warned about which version of the person they might meet.

That arrangement consumes other people’s time and judgment. It can also make the person at the center look more effective than they are, because the work of containing the damage never appears beside their results.

Revelio Labs’ 2022 research with MIT Sloan Management Review identified toxic culture as a strong predictor of attrition in its cross-industry analysis. It gives leaders a reason to examine conduct alongside compensation. It does not tell you why a particular colleague left your hotel; you still have to listen.

A chef who enforces food safety, a banquet captain who gives a clear instruction under pressure, and a DOSM who addresses a missed commitment all have legitimate responsibilities. Humiliation, threats, discriminatory treatment and making someone afraid to report a mistake are behaviors a hotel should address directly.

The team is learning what gets rewarded

Imagine a new supervisor watching someone shout down a steward and still get described as indispensable. What lesson are they supposed to take from that? They may learn to stay quiet. They may learn to copy the behavior. Neither gives the hotel a stronger future.

The 2024 study of abusive supervision in commercial kitchens examined bullying, leadership, job satisfaction and intentions to leave. Its findings also described commitment sustained by camaraderie and passion for the work. A team can care deeply about hospitality while struggling with how it is managed.

The person who stays to protect a younger colleague may be making the department bearable. Be careful about giving their manager the credit for that loyalty.

This reaches beyond the kitchen. A salesperson can be charming with clients and contemptuous toward operations. A manager can meet a labor target by making the team carry work that has never been properly planned. A GM can talk about culture while dismissing every inconvenient account of how the hotel feels to work in.

Make toxic hotel leadership part of the performance conversation

Review how results were achieved. Ask who trains replacements, who handles repeated conflicts and whether people can disagree with the leader without becoming the next problem. Look for patterns across accounts, shifts and departures, while checking the facts carefully. A turnover number alone cannot identify a culprit.

Give people a route to raise a concern outside the person they are concerned about. Handle it with appropriate confidentiality and fair review. Follow through on substantiated conduct, including when the person involved brings in business. Watch what happens afterward to the people who spoke.

A hotel also needs a plan for coverage and succession. When one person’s departure could destabilize an entire department, ownership and the GM have an operating dependency to solve. Fear of that dependency should not become permanent permission to mistreat people.

Decide what your praise is teaching

Choose one person the property routinely calls indispensable. Examine the conditions around their success with the same attention you give their results. This is a review of the operation, with evidence and fair treatment, rather than a hunt for somebody to blame.

Then ask a harder question: if a junior employee treated someone the same way, would the hotel respond differently? If the answer depends on the revenue attached to the person, your team can probably already see it.

Good people should be able to learn from talented colleagues without having to survive them. When leadership keeps excusing toxic hotel leadership, it asks everyone else to pay for the talent it wants to keep.

Before calling someone your best performer, ask the people who have to make their performance possible.

Continue GD in Hospitality Field Notes, and explore the operating references in Hospitality Intelligence.