Mark Keith

Turn hotel managers into elite hospitality asset managers, diagnose what is not working and fix it. Poor commercial results indicate toxic culture, everyone feels it, top talent, customers stay away. Identifying cause and its removal, is quick and inexpensive, driving income and asset value breakthroughs.

If people cannot change, replace with new people. Recruiting at senior level is a huge risk, Mark’s 12-month guarantee ensures 99% success rate; by resetting performance measures, tracking results, coach with timely interventions to achieve goals.

Poor performance also arises when measuring or tracking the wrong things, remedy requires changing what the team think is important. Measure what drives increased commercial performance. The blind spot in hospitality is invariably adherence to conventional and traditional practices that do not produce commercial goals. Enrollment in new habits and measures, tracked and reinforced by the team themselves, creates a new culture of empowering hospitality, eliminating disempowering micromanagement and ineffective top-down authority. Enrolling teams to enhance customer delight at every touch point, drives the hospitality service profit chain.

Mark’s mastery/methodology of hospitality human dynamics gives his clients an unfair competitive advantage. Even if the competitors see what is happening, they are unable to replicate, for they remain trapped in their habitual perceptions and traditions.

Mark was born in London and as a child enjoyed vacations in Europe and North America. Staying in hotels the waiters were his heroes, especially a waiter in Majorca who invited Mark to join their beach football (soccer) game. Thus at 8 years old Mark got his two transformations, the seed of a hospitality career and youthful flair playing the beautiful game.

He previously served as Managing Director of the Regent Hotel Group, where he got to confirm that warm hospitality can also be profitable. Mark has been in international hospitality for over 40 years, initially in Nigeria, Iran, Turkey, Lesotho, Switzerland, and across the Middle East. Relocating to Hong Kong in 1982 he joined the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. He worked for Hilton, Holiday Inns Worldwide and the Peninsula Group before joining the hotel consulting firm HVS in 2002. Since then, he has been engaged in hospitality consulting and executive search for almost twenty years, across Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

Mark received a commission at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, serving as an infantry officer in The Royal Hong Kong Regiment. In October 2020, he published his first book, ‘Pulling Back the Sheets: The Hotel Owners and Managers Operating & Repair Manual.’

His work has taken him across Asia, Europe and the middle east; he resides in Hong Kong with his extended family. Mark is married to Azza, a Pilates and fitness instructor, they met at a hotel opening, they have two children.

Mark holds a degree in Hotel Management and is a Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality. He has an MSc in Training, from the Centre for Labour Market Studies, University of Leicester and he qualified as a Certified Hotel Administrator, (CHA) with the American Hotel and Motel Association. This feels extraordinary for his school days did not empower him academically. Leaving school to work on a dairy farm, milking and delivering calves, life changed when he enrolled in hotel school doing something he loved.

His military experience gives him rare insights, the traditional command and control contrasts the warm, compassionate world of hospitality, yet they share the same reliance on people. For Mark understanding and executing what works to achieve hospitality excellence is a calling; he has been a frequent speaker at conferences.

Practising yoga and meditation for over 40 years, he has been a student of culture, philosophy and every behavioural and psychological methodology. As a highly experienced, psychometric test administrator, he has a lifelong hobby of working out what makes people tick, including himself.

Mark also enjoys pulling apart classic motorcycles and cars, to find out how they work. Although confused by wiring diagrams, when he can rebuild them so that they start and run smoothly his delight is complete. A lifelong athlete, within a family of fitness expertise, Mark’s daily gym work enables him to enjoy extreme mountain biking, and motorcycling.