Four Seasons built its luxury brand on service. Isadore Sharp opened the first Four Seasons, a 125-room motor hotel in Toronto, on March 21, 1961, and by the mid-1970s the company had chosen service as its competitive edge. In 1980 it wrote the idea into a credo based on the Golden Rule: treat customers, employees, partners and suppliers as one would wish to be treated.
Four Seasons said in 2019 that employee survey responses placed it on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list for the 22nd year. For brand teams, the case shows what it takes to make service a lasting part of a brand: a stated edge, a written credo and a hiring rule.
How did Four Seasons begin in Toronto in 1961?
Four Seasons began when Isadore Sharp, a young architect and builder working with his contractor father Max Sharp, opened a 125-room motor hotel in downtown Toronto on the first day of spring in 1961. Four Seasons' own history says it took more than five years to convince backers, and that Sharp developed and built the hotel with partners Murray Koffler, Max Sharp, Eddie Creed and Fred Eisen.
The company's history says the hotel showed a more personal style of service from the start. Sharp's company biography is modest about the origins: "There was no vision, there was no grand dream," he says of the first motor hotel.
In 1963 Four Seasons opened its second hotel, Toronto's Inn on the Park, for which Sharp again commissioned architect Peter Dickinson, according to the company history. The company describes it as an urban resort-style hotel above parkland with one of the city's top restaurants.
How did the London hotel define Four Seasons service?
The Inn on the Park London, which opened in 1970 and is now Four Seasons Hotel London at Park Lane, defined Four Seasons service by proving that a luxury hotel could be personal instead of formal. The company's history says a British family with a property near Hyde Park wanted a no-frills alternative to London's grand hotels, and that Sharp proposed a personal, down-to-earth hotel instead.
The history says Sharp pitched the hotel to people who want to be treated like royalty but are put off by the formality of traditional grand hotels. It adds that the hotel was virtually always full despite competing with houses such as the Savoy, and that it became Europe's hotel of the year. Those outcomes are the company's own account.
The company describes the London hotel as small, central and well appointed, with friendly, personalized 24-hour service, opening at the start of the transatlantic jet-travel boom. It also says the hotel pioneered many of the signature services now delivered worldwide.
The Four Seasons business platform rests on four strategic decisions that the company's history says formed its pillars, and three of them concern quality, service and culture. The table summarizes those three as the company's history describes them.
| Year in the history | Decision | What the company says |
|---|
| 1972 | Quality | Focus on being the best in each location, with medium-sized hotels of exceptional quality, instead of being all things to all people |
| 1976 | Service | Make service the edge; true luxury is defined by service, not by architecture or decor |
| 1980 | Culture | Make the operating philosophy explicit as a formal credo founded on the Golden Rule |
On the 1976 decision, the company's 1970 to 1979 history page states: "True luxury is defined not by architecture or décor, but by service." The page says the company decided to make service its distinguishing feature and a competitive advantage as it turned to the US market.
The first pillar limits scale on purpose. A company that commits to medium-sized hotels that are the best in their locations has chosen quality of attention over volume of rooms.
What is the Golden Rule at Four Seasons?
The Golden Rule at Four Seasons is the formal credo adopted in 1980 that treats all others, meaning customers, employees, partners and suppliers, as one would wish to be treated. The company's 1980 to 1989 history says Four Seasons had always had an implicit operating philosophy, and that Sharp made it explicit as the company expanded.
Sharp says in his company biography that he sat down with the company's communications experts and wrote down the fundamentals of the culture. He describes Four Seasons service as an exchange of mutual respect performed with an attitude of kindness.
The Journal des Palaces, republishing a company profile, quotes Sharp saying the Golden Rule guides interactions with guests, business partners and investors, and most of all with colleagues. The inclusion of employees in the rule is the distinctive part, because it makes the way staff are treated part of the service standard.
How does Four Seasons hire for service?
Four Seasons hires for attitude and trains for skill, according to Sharp and to the company's operations chief. In a 2010 Stanford Graduate School of Business article, Sharp says: "Competence we can teach; attitude is ingrained."
The same article quotes Sharp on front-line staff. He says the outcome in the industry depends on doormen, bellmen, waiters and maids, and that when employees are trusted to use common sense they can turn mishaps into new service opportunities.
Christian Clerc, president of worldwide operations at the time of the podcast, describes the same approach in a Great Place to Work podcast summary. The summary says he explains why the leadership pyramid is flipped at Four Seasons, why he hires for attitude and trains for skill, and why employees are rewarded for sharing what goes poorly as much as what goes well.
In the 2019 release announcing the company's 22nd Fortune list placement, Clerc describes service as unscripted and intuitive. The release says the Fortune list is compiled with Great Place to Work from employee survey responses on more than 50 elements of workplace culture.
Hospitality News Magazine quotes a Four Seasons general manager in Beirut saying that personality and attitude are key to moving a candidate to the second stage of the interview process.
How did Four Seasons carry service into residences and spas?
Four Seasons carried service into residences and spas by extending the same hotel service to new formats. The company's history says Branded Private Residences were introduced in 1985 at Four Seasons Hotel Boston, and that in 1986 it opened a hotel with a full-service spa, which the history calls unheard of in North America.
Four Seasons Magazine places the 1986 spa and the addition of golf at Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas. The magazine quotes a Four Seasons executive saying the company was a trailblazer in branded residences and that almost every new property now has a residential component.
The 1980s history also describes a business model change. The company divested less-strategic properties and began to transform itself from a hotel owner-operator into a management company, and it started managing hotels in mixed-use developments, a new concept at the time.
What are the key dates in Four Seasons history?
The key dates in Four Seasons history run from the first Toronto hotel in 1961 to a portfolio of 63 properties in 29 countries by 2004. The table lists each date with the source that supports it.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|
| March 21, 1961 | First Four Seasons opens in downtown Toronto, a 125-room motor hotel | Four Seasons history; Jacksonville Daily Record |
| 1963 | Inn on the Park Toronto opens | Four Seasons history |
| 1970 | Inn on the Park London opens | Four Seasons history |
| 1976 | First US management contract, The Clift in San Francisco | Four Seasons history |
| 1979 | First Four Seasons-branded US hotel opens in Washington, DC | Four Seasons history |
| 1980 | Formal credo based on the Golden Rule | Four Seasons history |
| 1985 | Branded Private Residences introduced in Boston | Four Seasons history |
| 1986 | Hotel with a full-service spa opens | Four Seasons history |
| 1989 | Company reaches 10,000 employees | Four Seasons history |
| 1992 | First hotel in Asia opens in Tokyo | Jacksonville Daily Record |
| 2000 | First hotel in the Middle East, Four Seasons Hotel Cairo at The First Residence | Jacksonville Daily Record |
| 2002 | Four Seasons Hotel Shanghai marks entry into China | Jacksonville Daily Record |
| 2004 | 63 properties in 29 countries | Case study abstract, IBS Case Development Centre |
The company's 1979 Washington hotel was featured in the introduction to Tom Peters' book In Search of Excellence, according to Four Seasons' history, which credits the hotel's service. This article gives no current property count because company and press counts vary by date; the company's own site lists the current portfolio.
Why it works: the company's own history repeats the 1976 decision as one of its four pillars, so every later extension can be checked against it. Step for a brand team: write the edge in one sentence and test every new product against it.
Why write the culture down?
Written values keep service consistent as a company grows. The company says it made its operating philosophy explicit in 1980 because it was expanding.
Why it works: the history says Sharp knew shared values were essential to the service culture he wanted, and the credo names employees as well as guests. Step for a brand team: write the credo before the brand reaches its tenth property, and name every group it covers.
Why hire for attitude and train for skill?
Hiring for attitude puts the hard-to-teach trait first. Sharp told Stanford that competence can be taught and attitude is ingrained, and Clerc described the same rule in a Great Place to Work podcast.
Why it works: the founder, the operations chief and a Beirut general manager each describe the same screen, and the manager describes it as the gate to the second interview stage. Step for a brand team: define the attitudes you screen for and put them first in the interview process.
Why set a size rule?
A size rule protects personal attention. The company's first pillar commits to medium-sized hotels of exceptional quality that are the best in each location.
Why it works: the history ties the London hotel's success to a small, central, personalized hotel, and the first pillar repeats that scale as policy. Step for a brand team: set a size policy before choosing the next location.
Why carry service into new formats?
New formats work when the service rule travels with them. The company introduced branded residences in 1985 and a full-service spa hotel in 1986, within a few years of writing its credo in 1980.
Why it works: each extension uses the hotel's service as the through-line instead of a new promise. Step for a brand team: list which service behaviors carry into a new format before it launches.
The action for a hospitality team is to write four items: the service edge, the credo, the hiring screen and the size rule. If those four exist, every new hotel, residence or amenity can be tested against them before it carries the name.
This article draws on Four Seasons' company history pages and Isadore Sharp's company biography, alongside the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Great Place to Work, Hospitality Net, Hospitality News Magazine, Four Seasons Magazine, the Jacksonville Daily Record, Falstaff, Journal des Palaces and an IBS Case Development Centre abstract. Company statements are the company's own account, and figures reflect those sources at their publication dates.
For wider context on the sector, read Cipriani brand history, how AI engines choose hospitality brands, the luxury hospitality visibility study and 5W's hospitality PR strategies.
