Horst Schulze

Horst Schulze is a founding member of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, which he joined in 1983 as vice president of operations and went on to lead as president and chief operating officer from 1988. He wrote the operating and service standards the company became known for, including the credo and the employee promise still quoted as reference points across the service industries.

Under his leadership The Ritz-Carlton won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1992 and again in 1999, and remains the only hotel company to have won it at all, let alone twice. He was responsible for roughly two billion dollars of worldwide operations, and served as vice chairman of the company in 2001 and 2002.

His argument is that excellence is a decision rather than a temperament, and that it is made at the point of hiring and orientation rather than in a training module later. The Ritz-Carlton standards he built are unusual in that they define what an employee may do without asking permission, which is the operational half of service culture that most organizations leave undefined.

He is the author of Excellence Wins, published in 2019, which sets out that approach for readers outside hospitality. In 2022 Auburn University named its school of hospitality management after him. He serves as expert in residence at the organizational strategy firm Arch and Tower.

He is booked most often by organizations that want to raise a service standard rather than launch a service initiative, and by leadership audiences who want the operating detail behind a well-known brand rather than the brand story itself.