GM of the Year. Sponsored by Whoever Bought the Table.
Every year, without fail, the hospitality industry produces a fresh crop of award winners.
GM of the Year. Director of Sales of the Year. Commercial Leader of the Year. Rising Star. Lifetime Achievement. Outstanding Contribution to Something Vaguely Defined…
The trophies are heavy. The Gala Dinners are expensive. The acceptance speeches are humble. And the winners — with remarkable consistency — are the people whose hotels paid for the table.
Let's be honest about how this works.
A magazine or a website with a logo and a tagline decides it is time to recognise “excellence in hospitality”. Nominations open. A fee appears — sometimes disclosed, sometimes buried in the small print, sometimes revealed only after the shortlist is announced. A Gala Dinner is organised. Tables cost thousands. Sometimes tens of thousands. The currency varies. The mechanism doesn't.
Who wins?
The hotels that bought the tables. The individuals whose properties invested in the evening. Not always. But enough that the pattern is impossible to ignore once you've seen it.
And who is paying? Not the individual. The owner.
It is, at its core, a very elegant PR machine. Funded by the industry it claims to celebrate.
What exactly is the criteria?
Who decides that this particular Director of Sales is the best commercial leader in the country this year? What data did the judging panel review? What access did they have to STR reports, GOP performance, total revenue growth, team retention rates, or any of the actual numbers that would tell you whether someone is genuinely good at their job?
A magazine and a panel of editors cannot evaluate hotel performance without access to confidential financial data — and they don't have it. What they have is a nomination form, a fee, and whatever the nominee chose to write about themselves.
The judging panel itself is worth examining. Who got on it? What are their credentials? What have they built, run, or turned around? In many cases the answer is: they are well-connected, well-liked, and available. Which is not nothing. But it is also not a qualification.
Here is what I know from decades in this industry.
The best leaders I have ever worked with, observed, or learned from were not on any shortlist. They were too busy running their hotels. They didn't have a publicist. They didn't have a budget line for industry awards. They had results — real ones, in the numbers, in the culture of their teams, in the loyalty of their guests — and those results existed regardless of whether anyone outside the property ever noticed.
And I have watched leaders who drove properties into financial holes, burned through teams, created environments of fear and verbal abuse, and missed every commercial target they were set — collect awards with the confidence of people who genuinely believe they deserve them.
Because they paid for the table. And nobody in the room was going to say otherwise.
The fake LinkedIn pages deserve their own paragraph.
You know the ones… Auto-generated. No editorial input. No verification. No knowledge of who these people are or what they've actually done. Just an algorithm that scrapes a profile, generates an "outstanding achievement" post, tags the individual, and harvests the likes and comments from an industry that is apparently very willing to congratulate itself publicly.
Congratulations to [Name] on being recognised as a Top Hospitality Leader to Watch in 2026!
Recognised by whom? Watched by whom? For what?
It doesn't matter. The dopamine hit is real. The follower count goes up. The individual reposts it. Their network applauds. And the page gains another few hundred followers from people who are quietly hoping they'll be next.
What a time to be alive.
Maybe one day this industry will have awards that actually mean something.
Recognised for driving a genuine commercial turnaround under difficult market conditions — with the numbers to prove it. Recognised for building a team culture with retention rates that put the industry average to shame. Recognised for a sustainability initiative that changed how the property operates, not just how it looks in a brochure. Recognised for a creative marketing strategy that moved the needle on direct bookings instead of just winning a design award for the campaign visual.
Free to enter. Blind judged. Based on verified data. No tables. No fees. No Gala Dinner where the trophy goes to whoever had the biggest marketing budget.
Maybe one day.
Until then — congratulations to this year's winners…
xoxo, Bored Hotelier 😉
The One & Only FAQ
Are hospitality industry awards legitimate? Are hospitality awards pay to win? Some are. Many are not — at least not in the way the trophies imply. A significant number of hospitality awards operate on a model where nomination fees, Gala Dinner table purchases, or sponsorship packages form the commercial foundation of the event. This doesn't automatically mean the winners are undeserving, but it does mean the selection process is rarely as independent as the branding suggests. Without access to verified financial performance data, team retention figures or independently audited results, no judging panel can objectively determine who the best industry leader in a country actually is in any given year. The most decorated professionals in this industry are not always the most effective ones. And the most effective ones are often too busy running their hotels to notice they weren't nominated. 😉