They began July 24th. A series of Instagram posts by the actor Bryan Cranston. These were neither about the mezcal his name is attached to, nor his acting exploits. The dispatches were all about vacation. It turns out, Cranston is not bad and he sure isn’t broke.
Instead, he appeared jovial, sharing with his 5.5 million followers a trip he was on through Western Canada, celebrating 35 years of marriage with his wife, Robin. “Come along for a little arm- chair traveling,” he wrote, and so he did, detailing the cities, the national parks, the restaurants, the train rides, the lakes and the wildlife—even quipping that he went mostly unrecognizable, beyond the occasional: “Has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like Bryan Cranston?”
Within the four separate posts cataloging the journey, one name kept popping up: Fairmont. There was Cranston giving
the thumbs up outside the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle and four scrolls later a pic of the Fairmont Pacific Rim in Vancouver, where, in “the beautiful room,” a personalized chocolate treat and bottle of champagne awaited. An ensuing post detailed a train trip to Jasper, Canada, which ended with a stay at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, where, in one image, a robed Cranston enjoys a morning coffee outside his cabin.
From there, it was onto the turquoise Lake Louise within Banff National Park in Alberta, and a stay at the Fairmont Château Lake Louise, which, in a post, Cranston referred to as a “must stay” because it’s the only hotel on the lake, a photo he posted depicting just that. A last communiqué, dated August 12th, carried with it a photo of the Fairmont Banff Springs and an earnest coda: “I want to thank the management and staff of Fairmont Hotels. I chose them because their hotels are right in the heart
of everywhere we wanted to stay. They are so kind and accommodating; it really made our stay memorable.”
Fewer endorsements are better than a celebrity endorsement. Especially if it’s unsolicited and comes from one of Hollywood’s most celebrated actors. Hotels and hotel companies rarely, if ever, comment on or namecheck guests—famous or otherwise. It’s no surprise, then, when Omer Acar, the CEO of Raffles and Fairmont, two luxury brands under France’s Accor, declines to directly comment on Cranston’s Canadian escapade, but like any savvy leader, he understands the influence, the suasion, the truth unvarnished of social media.
“It is very important, but genuine posts are what I care most about,” he said. “Because this is not an advertising campaign, but real people following other real people, who are experiencing your hotels.” It doesn’t hurt when the real person is a six-time Emmy winner and protagonist of what is considered one of the greatest dramas of all time. Acar gets it: “It’s great to inspire someone to want to visit, but they have to arrive to the same experience they saw in the pretty pictures and video online,” he said. “Consistency, genuineness and sincerity, these are what mean the most to me and what are most important to us as a luxury hotel operator.”
Luckily for the Turkish-born Acar, he has a wealth of luxury history from which to draw on from both brands. Fairmont
Hotels and Resorts has a storied heritage, now with almost 90 hotels across 30 countries. It has literally played a role in
the arc of pop history. Room 1742 at Montreal’s Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth, née The Queen Elizabeth, was the location for John Lennon and Yoko Ono recording “Give Peace a Chance” during their 1969 anti-war Bed-In. The Plaza in New York hosted author Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball, which still carries the moniker of “Party of the Century.”
PAST TO PRESENT
Fairmont’s legacy stretches back to the late 19th century and Canada when grand railway hotels, like Banff Springs, like the Elizabeth, like Toronto’s Fairmont Royal York, like Quebec’s Fairmont Le Château, began sprouting up. Fairmont San Francisco became the first U.S. hotel to bear the Fairmont name, the building having survived the 1906 earthquake.
“The key is not resting on the past, but building upon it,” Acar said. “If you only talk about and celebrate the past, then you become a museum.” But Fairmont’s railway history still serves as its north star, as Acar explained. “Fairmont’s greatest strength is being a connector— our hotels are at the epicenter of every destination.”
Location and positioning are at the nucleus of Fairmont’s new hotel signings and development. Notable recent openings include Cape Grace, A Fairmont Managed Hotel, which reopened in May after nine months of renovation to what was South Africa’s celebrated Cape Grace hotel, situated on the V&A Waterfront and synonymous with the city.
Later this year features openings of Fairmont Breakers Long Beach, a restoration of the landmark Breakers Hotels, and the 600-room Fairmont Mumbai, which will be the brand’s second hotel in the country.
A pipeline of 34 hotels includes openings in Prague, Tokyo and a resort on Spain’s Costa del Sol. Recent signings include New Orleans and Dubai—the “right places,” as Acar put it.
STRUCTURED FOR SUCCESS
Acar was undeniably the right choice by Accor Chairman and CEO Sébastien Bazin to lead both storied brands. First announced in mid-2020, Accor began to restructure its organization, a sensible move based on the numerous brands and regions Accor operates in. Its decision to spin out a Luxury and Lifestyle division and a Premium, Midscale and Economy division and attaching different leaders to helm specific brands and regions has, in Acar’s opinion, paid off. Acar started with Raffles and Orient Express under his purview before taking on Fairmont in lieu of Orient Express in January 2024. Now he leads two legacy brands, each more than a century old.
In Acar’s estimation, the organizational reshuffle was imperative and necessary for future success. “It was absolutely critical in shoring up our ability to give dedicated attention to each brand,” he said, while calling Bazin a visionary and attributing Fairmont’s robust pipeline to the organizational changes.
In a short time, Acar has asserted himself at Accor with aplomb, the result of years of work experience in the luxury hotel segment. His career, like many, started at the lower echelons of operations, but always within the luxury space, which rubbed off on him and, thus far, has informed his attitude and service drive. A hospitality education in Switzerland led him to his first job at the famed Hotel Halekulani, as an assistant restaurant manager, a hotel and position that he credits to this day in shaping his hostelry mentality. “There, I learned what personalized service really meant—focusing on the highest levels of detail,” he said.
His star rose from there. He was eight years with a lodestar in luxury hospitality, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, where at his pinnacle he was director of food & beverage at the Four Seasons Resort Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt. “I figured out that one of the key pillars of luxury is creating unparalleled experiences for guests, with many points of personalization,” he remarked on his time and education with the luxury brand.
It’s as quixotic a quip as it is actual. Christmastime at the Four Seasons in Maui is an expectedly high-demand period. Acar remembers families wanting to dine at a certain time at a particular seaside restaurant, which created delays in service and a bottleneck in the kitchen. Acar took an analog approach to remedy the situation. “I went to the store and picked up a stack of radios,” he said. The following day staff began taking orders from families on the beach, leaving each with a radio. They would then be called to the restaurant on the radio when their food was ready. “We were turning tables three times faster, there was no waiting, the food was already on the table when they arrived and the kitchen was happy,” he said.
Or in Sharm El Sheikh, when a VIP guest wanted to catch a fish in the Red Sea. Only there was a catch, the gentleman suffered from seasickness. The challenge: How to make sure that the fish bit in less than 20 minutes. A bit devious, Acar positioned underwater divers catching live fish. Once the boat arrived at the designated fishing point, and he threw his fishing line in, the divers put the live fish on the hook. “He was so happy and never knew the lengths we went to make this dream possible,” Acar said.
WINNING THE RAFFLE
Making people happy and leading by example have carried Acar forward through his career. Post Four Seasons found him as general manager of arguably the most famous hotel in the world: Ritz Paris. There five years, he hopped from the 1st arrondissement to the 8th, becoming GM of Le Royal Monceau Raffles Paris, his first interaction with the brand that he would ultimately end up leading. As much as Fairmont has a Canadian heritage, Raffles’ roots trace back to Asia Pacific, in Singapore, where the original Raffles Hotel opened in 1887. (The hotel is recognized as the birthplace of the Singapore sling cocktail.)
In the span of 137 years, Raffles has taken on different iterations and ownership. In 2005, Colony Capital bought Raffles Holdings for $1 billion from the Singapore government and a year later Raffles and Swissôtel joined Fairmont Hotels in a newly formed holding called FRHI Hotels & Resorts. In 2015, Accor struck a deal to acquire FRHI Hotels & Resorts for more than $2.5 billion.
Beyond their different heritages, Fairmont and Raffles are distinct in their luxury delivery. Raffles hotels have been compared to jewel boxes, smaller room counts, with opulent amenities and extravagances, like butler service. And while the North America crowd is familiar with the Fairmont name, for a long stretch, Raffles was dormant in the region.
That changed in 2023 with the opening of Raffles Boston, Raffles’ only hotel in North America. The bulk of the 23-hotel portfolio is Europe, Middle East and Asia with notable recent openings including Raffles London at The OWO, located in what was the Old War Office building. This year, Raffles Jaipur opened and Raffles Sentosa Singapore and Raffles Jeddah are slated to open toward the end of the year. The recently announced Raffles Tokyo is scheduled for a 2028 opening and will occupy 46 floors of the city’s iconic World Trade Center building in the Hamamatsuchō district.
Properties like London, Raffles Makkah and, naturally, Raffles Singapore fit the brand mold, Acar said. “We know our guests want to be at the most elegant address, so location is paramount for development.” At Accor, Raffles is known as “the birthplace of stories and legends”—but what happens at a Raffles hotel doesn’t have to stay at a Raffles hotel. “We love a hotel where history echoes back at us,” Acar said.
Without offering specifics, Acar did volunteer that “exotic destinations,” like in South America and the Caribbean, figured into future growth for Raffles, along with ski resort areas in North America and Europe. “We have tremendous opportunity when it comes to growth, but we are very focused on doing it thoughtfully. A Raffles logo will only go on a hotel if it is truly the right fit for the brand,” he said.
The capital markets dictate a lot of this, and one way Accor is tackling it is through diversifying its real estate approach through branded residential development alongside the hotel, a component that makes a project much more attractive to an investor. Last year, Accor launched Accor One Living, a platform focused on the design and operation of mixed-use development options. Fairmont currently has 22 residential projects in the pipeline.
One of the hotter development trends that is also a byproduct of the choppy capital markets and higher cost of capital is conversions; taking over a cash-flowing asset, flipping it to another flag and adding light (in some cases heavier) CapEx. An example of this is Fairmont Golden Prague in the city’s Old Town. The hotel dates to 1974 and operated as an InterContinental hotel up until 2020 when Fairmont took over as manager. It was subsequently closed for a major renovation with a targeted reopening in early 2025.
DUTY OF CARE
If growth is the remit for a hotel company, then staff and service are the essential components that allow for expansion. At the luxury level, peerless, intuitive, bespoke customer service are bedrock traits. Sure, employees can be trained in them, but these qualities are to a high degree innate, inherent and emerge naturally.
Acar said it also comes down to a simple action that is rarely mastered: listening. He describes the power of it in one instance—an encounter between a Raffles customer and a staff member, as shared to him by the guest. Raffles properties make chauffeur-driven limousines available for airport transfers. Not surprisingly, the radio is often on and tuned to a music station. On this occasion, the guest commented to his wife how the song being played on the radio was by one of his favorite artists. It was merely an offhanded, throwaway comment to pass the time. The couple checked into the hotel and proceeded with their stay. That evening, upon returning to their room after dinner, a record by the artist had been placed on a table.
“The guest couldn’t believe it, couldn’t understand how they knew he liked that musician,” Acar said. “He didn’t even remember the comment from the car—stunned by the attention to detail.”
It’s not always roses. Things don’t always go as planned, even at luxury hotels that strive for perfection. “Luxury is defined by how you recover when things go wrong,” Acar said. In this way, the listening trait gives way to observation. “Our guests speak to us in so many ways, not all verbal,” Acar said, stressing the idea of reading guests, picking up on non-verbal cues and not waiting for the negative complaint to come because, as Acar said, it may never materialize.
Consider room service. It’s oftentimes seen as a transaction: a guest places an order and the food arrives later. But take a closer look. “If a guest orders pasta and upon clearing the tray most of the pasta has not been touched, be curious as to why,” Acar said. “It’s a chance to make it better. Read your guests and learn from every interaction.”
That level of attentiveness, at the highest echelons of luxury hospitality, is what sets hotels apart. It’s not the furniture
and decor, the food or the flowers, those are table stakes at the luxury level. Creating an indelible, intangible experience is the difference between an okay stay and an extraordinary stay that creates a repeat, loyal guest. Put another way, it’s fighting for every inch, to paraphrase Al Pacino’s character in “Any Given Sunday.”
Perhaps it is also the stuff that dreams are made of. “Delivering our guests things that they didn’t even know to dream of. That’s the sweet spot,” Acar said. “And that’s exactly why I enjoy luxury hospitality.”
