We all recall the dapper hotel general manager who shook hands with an endless stream of guests as he welcomed them to his particular piece of paradise. He knew many by name and they in turn warmed to his compliments, promising to return. That was how the hospitality business earned its brand plaudits, through face recognition and esoteric knowledge of a favourite drink or pet peeve acquired over a late night beer.

That cheerful, easy-to-spot, lobby-cruising GM is seemingly dead, interred by the very company that hired him to be its spokesman. And the person who now carries his weighty mantle is as hard to spot as the Phantom of the Opera, and equally disturbed, as he paces and frets in the bowels of some vast building focused not on guests but investors and spreadsheets and cost-cutting.