Herve Humler

Herve Humler currently serves as the president and COO of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC, and is known by his employees as a kind leader. Serving as one of the foremost figures in the luxury hotel industry, Humler has used his decades of experience (which dates back to 1983) to help steer the company toward global growth and evolution.

However, he’s done so much more than that. As part of the original executive team that created the hotel more than 30 years ago, Humler has made it his mission to care for the company, his customers and his employees via his sincere dedication. Referring to his employees as “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen,” Humler believes that good customer experience is tied to employee recognition and empowerment. This is why Humler himself is known to train the staff himself and why he gives them the power and trust to fix issues at hand, even giving employees at any level $2,000 per customer to spend to fix any incident.

The significant achievements under his leadership include maintaining The Ritz-Carlton’s top-ranked position for eight out of 10 years in the luxury hotel segment of J. D. Power’s North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index (NAGSI) Study. Notably, the last two years of this also saw the hotel achieving the highest score in the history of the study, as well as becoming the first Founding Partner of IMPACT 2030.

Humler is a French native, a baccalaureate degree holder from the University of Abidjan and a graduate of the Hotel School in Nice, France. He currently lives in Washington D.C. with his wife and two children. He devotes time as an advisory board member at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, where he helps support the next generation of leaders.