Consumer sector focus: Redefining leadership in experiential luxury

To help them stay relevant in the fiercely competitive luxury market, many companies are expanding beyond products and services into offering emotionally resonant, immersive experiences. Luxury retailers are entering the hospitality space through hotels, restaurants, and private clubs, while hospitality brands are launching luxury product lines that carry their brand into customers’ homes. The convergence is striking: Armani, Bulgari, Ralph Lauren and Prada run restaurants; Four Seasons and Soho House have expanded into homeware and interior design. Another emerging trend with the potential to become a gold standard is high end brands launching members clubs: Audemars Piguet’s AP house and Harrods’ The Residence are both examples.

At the core of this experiential evolution is the recognition that each sector—hospitality and retail—brings complementary strengths. Luxury hospitality excels at delivering curated, high touch experiences, while luxury retail leads in building aspirational brand narratives.

In a market where loyalty is increasingly linked to emotional connection, both sectors are striving to engage customers in more meaningful and lasting ways. As Anna Nash, president of Explora Journeys, explains, “Experiences nurture our minds and bodies and improve people from a cultural perspective . . . the emotional side of how these make people feel is key.” Experiences, she adds, are a form of “stealth wealth”—less about materialism, more about meaning.

This shift is evolving the leadership requirements in experiential sectors, and companies now require leaders with a more rounded set of capabilities that focus on visionary leadership, extreme client centricity, and service-driven culture building. As a consequence, cross-sector recruitment is accelerating at the C-suite level, particularly in roles such as CEO, CMO, and CHRO. Not all such transitions are simple, however. Operational roles are often seen as more challenging to move into, given the intricacies of experience delivery on the ground.

To find out more about how the sector is evolving, and what it means for leadership capabilities and succession planning, we talked to three leaders who have been transforming their organizations to meet the increasing customer demand for exclusivity and hyper tailored experiences.

What does it take to lead in experiential luxury?

The executives we spoke with point to three critical capabilities for success in this evolving space: visionary leadership, deep customer centricity, and the ability to foster a service-driven culture.

Visionary leadership

Experiential luxury calls for leaders who can imagine and deliver the extraordinary. Customers are short on time and high on expectations, so leaders must be curious, bold storytellers who are able to articulate a compelling vision, scale-up the business, and push creative boundaries, all while remaining grounded in brand identity. 

Alejandro Reynal, CEO of Four Seasons, exemplifies this mindset. For him, the brand’s goal is not to sell rooms but to craft experiences—from city-specific offerings to private jets and yachts. “The focus is on how we keep guests within the luxury ecosystem of our brand,” he says. In his view, service is the differentiator — and innovation is key to elevating it even further.

Extreme customer centricity

True luxury is personal. For any company transitioning into the sector, growth is fueled by end-to-end hyper-customization. As Nash points out, “Luxury cannot be rushed; it needs to be thought through to the utmost detail.” Delivering truly personalized offerings means that high-end hospitality must enhance its focus on the presales and post-experience journey, while retail needs to further elevate its game in building customer loyalty through communities that provide an exclusive sense of belonging and emotional connection. 

Leaders in luxury must also adopt a holistic, stakeholder view—considering the impact of every decision on guests, employees, shareholders, and partners alike. For Reynal, this perspective has been essential. “You have to put yourself in your stakeholders’ shoes,” he explains. “Since joining Four Seasons I have consistently asked myself how each decision will be perceived across our stakeholder landscape—from guests to employees, shareholders and property owners—and how it reinforces the strength and integrity of our brand over time.” 

Technology can support teams in delivering customer centricity. Mandarin Oriental group chief executive Laurent Kleitman highlights that even though for some people, immersive experiences and technology may seem incompatible, technology can free employees to focus on creating meaningful interactions with their customers. It can also help brands gather data about their customers, which is critical for enabling personalization and creating truly bespoke experiences. 

Service-driven culture mindset

In this emerging sector, a strong organizational culture is not a nice-to-have—it’s a strategic advantage. Every employee must be empowered to act as an ambassador of the brand, with a mindset of ownership and pride. 

While strong operational frameworks are essential, success often lies in how employees interpret and extend the brand ethos in real time. “The empowerment of teams means encouraging them to avoid just operating in the playbook, but to develop creative minds, social intelligence, and social dynamics,” explains Kleitman, who on a weekly basis receives multiple guest feedback messages that praise the people, not the products. In his view, the best employees “love their brand, create experiences, and are customer centric.” They are able to respond to complex, shifting demands with warmth and creativity. Empowering teams in this way requires trust, empowerment, and a focus on servant leadership.

Leaders must, of course, balance ambition with operational discipline and ensure that customer expectations don’t exceed what the organization can deliver consistently. “We don’t benchmark our culture,” says Kleitman. “We understand where it comes from and what makes it ours.” He cites Mandarin Oriental’s high engagement scores as evidence that a strong internal culture translates directly to external success. For him, the key is simple: “Love others—both your guests and your people. Everything relies on human interaction.”

Fostering leadership for the future

Finding and developing the right leaders in the experiential luxury sector requires rigor, creativity, and alignment. Whether internal or external, candidates should undergo thorough assessments, including interviews, stakeholder reference checks, cultural impact evaluations, and scenario-based simulations. The goal here is not just to test for skills, but to understand whether leaders embody the behaviors and values needed to strengthen the organization’s culture.

Over the past 12 to 18 months, a number of brands have begun addressing expertise gaps by hiring from adjacent luxury sectors. Several leading hospitality groups—including Mandarin Oriental and Four Seasons—have appointed leaders with careers outside traditional hospitality. 

However, recruiting from outside the sector is typically particularly complex for operational leadership roles. There remains a widely held belief that effective operators must possess domain-specific knowledge to grasp the nuances of the hospitality or retail culture and business models. For instance, retail operations leaders often come from merchant backgrounds, bringing an understanding of product seasonality and agile supply chains. Hospitality leaders must master the intricate touchpoints of a multidimensional guest experience—from booking through checkout—and engage sensitively with a diverse network of property owners. And while technical skills can be learned, the relational dynamics with property owners often require a longer ramp-up.

For executives transitioning into a new luxury sector—particularly those tasked with driving change—tailored onboarding is essential. These onboarding programs must not only equip new leaders with industry context but also find ways to harness their external expertise across the broader organization. Effective onboarding includes the following approaches:

• Meaningful frontline experiences: New leaders should spend time in key operations, shadowing different functions and gaining a ground-level view of the customer journey. Reynal describes his onboarding at Four Seasons as “purposeful around engaging and visiting our hotels, resorts, and residences,”—a chance not just to see the properties, but to witness the brand’s people in action. These first-hand experiences helped shape his understanding of the company’s culture, its strengths and its path forward.
• Context for the brand's evolution: Understanding the brand’s heritage and trajectory helps new leaders identify why things work in a certain way, where continuity matters, and where change is possible. Kleitman reflects on the importance of Mandarin Oriental owner’s mentality, which is “fast-paced, decentralized, a culture of can do” and notes that Mandarin Oriental has roots in Hong Kong and Shanghai, cultural anchors that shape leadership decisions to this day.
• Cultural immersion: Direct engagement with the company’s culture—including its unwritten norms and values—enables more authentic leadership and alignment with customer and employee expectations. Nash recalls that at Aman, her previous company, there was a pervasive “act like an owner” mindset instilled in each employee that created a cultural sense of pride in their company and linked their individual achievements to organizational goals. An effective cultural immersion also requires that when new leaders join from outside the organization and sector, the new company is mindful in understanding the new joiner’s different perspectives with an open mind.
• Network building: Helping new leaders cultivate strong internal and external relationships is essential, especially in sectors where brand loyalty and partnership dynamics are critical to long-term success. Reynal highlights the importance of creating “fellowship—both internally with employees and with property owners” as an important step in building trust, alignment and leadership credibility.

Considerations for cultivating a leadership pipeline in luxury

Because finding highly tailored leadership talent on demand can be challenging, especially in a fast-moving, highly competitive sector, organizations are placing renewed focus on developing internal talent pipelines. For new HR leaders, this often becomes a strategic priority, with attention focused in the following two areas:

Broadening career development pathways: In hospitality, there is a strong tradition of operators rising through the ranks, while in retail, sales associates have typically moved into store management. These traditional trajectories remain important, but companies are increasingly creating space for individuals from less conventional backgrounds—both internal and external—to step into leadership roles.

Establishing structured succession planning: Identifying critical roles and proactively nurturing talent to fill them requires investing in tailored development programs, building a strong internal culture that encourages retention, and mapping out potential external candidates. Kleitman notes Mandarin Oriental’s “Talent Agenda,” which includes a long-term commitment to recruit and develop over 15,000 people over the next 10 years. The most impactful talent development strategies span all levels of the organization—from senior leaders to early-career hires—and are anchored in the core capabilities of visionary thinking, deep customer centricity, and the ability to create service-led cultures.

Developing these skill sets may include cross-functional rotations, secondments, and targeted learning, whether through internal programs or through partnerships with hospitality and design schools to engage future talent early. Nash emphasizes the importance of soft skills in leadership development, noting that “while technical skills can be taught, it’s harder to change the person.” Her advice: “Take time; you can’t afford to get it wrong. It needs to be authentic, resonate with the customer, and move the brand forward.”

Kleitman echoes this, highlighting skills such as data literacy, creative thinking, brand alignment, and empathetic leadership. He also points to luxury retail brands increasingly hiring from hospitality schools as a signal of the broader appreciation for service-oriented skillsets in luxury retail.

Conclusion

The convergence of traditional luxury sector and high-end hospitality and retail is forging a highly customized sector focused on curating extraordinary experiences. Leading in this space demands more than just strategic ability—it calls for a deep understanding of affluent customers, a relentless drive to innovate, and a passion for people.

While cross-sector hiring is on the rise, particularly at senior levels, ensuring long-term success requires thoughtful onboarding, deep cultural immersion and understanding of the brand, and meaningful integration. At the same time, the most forward-thinking organizations are reimagining talent development from within, broadening career pathways and building robust pipelines.

Ultimately, the leaders who thrive in experiential luxury will be those who not only understand the brand and the business, but who also inspire teams and elevate customer experience into something exceptional.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the executives who shared their insights with us for this article: Laurent Kleitman, group chief executive, Mandarin Oriental; Anna Nash, president, Explora Journeys; and Alejandro Reynal, CEO, Four Seasons. Their views are personal and do not necessarily represent those of the companies they are affiliated with.

About the authors

Guy Cote (gcote@heidrick.com) is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ Miami Beach office where he leads the global Hospitality & Leisure Practice.

Robin Holroyd (rholroyd@heidrick.com) is a principal in the London office and a member of the global Consumer Markets Practice.

Caroline Pill (cpill@heidrick.com) is a partner in the London office and a member of the global Consumer Markets Practice.