14/10/2025
Average salary for a doorman at The Savoy is £32,000.
Let's say the hotel employs 10 full-time doormen.
That's £320,000 per year, just to pay people to open doors.
A large automatic door would cost around £50k.
Even a couple of top-of-the-range doors, including yearly maintenance would come in at LESS than what the hotel currently pays doormen.
So why doesn’t the hotel get rid of the doormen and just have automatic doors?
That'd make total financial sense.
Well, because doormen don't JUST open doors.
They set the stage for the experience.
They make you feel special, welcomed and like you belong.
Not every business decision should be measured by cold, hard numbers.
As much as consultants and marketers might like to think that everything important can be quantified, it just isn’t true.
Sometimes, the magic of a business is buried in the things you can’t measure.
Efficiency is great.
So is cost-cutting.
But if short-term savings come at the expense of how people feel, you’ve lost more than you’ve saved.
In the age of AI, it's great to automate and be as efficient as possible.
But one thing that should never be automated is high-end customer service.
