Five Women Built a Five-Star Hotel. Here’s What It Taught Them.

Five women. Five years. And a different way to lead.

When Pan Pacific London opened its doors in September 2021, it had more to prove than most new five-star hotels.

Pan Pacific Hotels Group had never operated a hotel in Europe. Its name, well established across Asia, Australia and North America, was far less familiar to London travellers. And rather than joining the cluster of grand hotels around Mayfair and Knightsbridge, it planted its flag opposite Liverpool Street station in the heart of the City.

Oh, and it opened during a pandemic.

Five years later, the gamble looks rather different. Pan Pacific London achieved Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star status within months of opening and has retained it ever since, joined Virtuoso, and this year won the Best Employer Award at the Cateys, the prestigious UK hospitality awards often described as the industry’s Oscars.

Behind that rise is a predominantly female executive team, five of whom have been there through much of the journey: General Manager Anne Golden, Director of Sales Kate Ruddick, Director of Revenue Claire Gilbertson, Director of Marketing Communications Michelle Whittemore and Director of Finance Jennifer Chu.

The photograph above has become part of the hotel’s story too. Taken in November 2019, it was the first image used to represent Pan Pacific London, introducing the original pre-opening leadership team before there was even a hotel to photograph. The fact that all five leaders pictured were women made the image a talking point in its own right (which says a lot about our industry right there!). When Pan Pacific London finally opened in September 2021, they brought the same chair out onto the Plaza and recreated the shot.

They built a hotel. But five years on, it is equally interesting to hear how building it shaped them.

Lesson 1: Being underestimated can be an advantage

Golden remembers arriving at Pan Pacific and calling the leaders of London’s established luxury hotels to tell them about her new job. She expected curiosity. Only one called her back.

“I thought, they don’t care. We are a proper underdog,” she tells hertelier. Instead of feeling discouraged, she loved it.

“The hairs on my arms stood up thinking, Oh my God, what if we could make this work?”

The challenge was precisely what attracted her. Pan Pacific was opening its first European hotel in an area few associated with luxury hospitality, with little brand recognition in London.

Golden believed she had one important advantage: “I knew I could assemble a really talented team.”

Pan Pacific made another crucial decision. Rather than transferring experienced employees from across its global portfolio, it wanted a team that understood London. They didn’t need to be British, Golden says, but they did need to know the city.

That combination of local knowledge and low expectations gave the team room to move.

“We were completely under the radar,” she says.

They were underdogs, but Golden was clear about how she wanted them to compete.

“We were going to do it in a really kind, humble way,” she says. “A very feminine way. We were just going to get on with it.”

It’s an interesting choice of words in an industry where leadership has traditionally been associated with confidence, visibility and command. Golden’s version was quieter: assemble great people, trust them, do the work and let the results speak.

Only weeks after opening, she contacted Forbes Travel Guide to ask if the hotel could be considered for an inspection. Her reasoning was simple: what did they have to lose?

The hotel went on to achieve Five-Star status within its first few months.

Being underestimated gives you room to surprise people.

Lesson 2: Believe before you have proof

For Ruddick, one of the biggest lessons of the past five years has been self-belief.

“I’ve had to push through moments of doubt, both my own and from others,” she says. “Looking back at what we’ve achieved, I’ve realised that determination, consistency and believing in the bigger picture can take you a long way.”

External validation eventually followed. Ruddick says the day Pan Pacific London was accepted into Virtuoso is the one she would most like to relive.

“It represented years of hard work, relationship building and belief in what we were creating,” she says. “After everything we had done to establish the hotel in the luxury market, it felt like a real moment of validation, proof that our hard work had paid off.”

External recognition is one measure. Guest behaviour is another. Pan Pacific London’s guest satisfaction score has risen to 93%, while almost half of its guests are now repeat visitors. For a hotel that opened only five years ago with little brand recognition in Europe, those numbers suggest something deeper than a successful launch: people love the service and experience.

There is an important distinction here. Believing in what you’re building doesn’t mean external validation doesn’t matter. You have to keep going long enough to earn it.

Lesson 3: You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room

For all the hotel’s success, Golden’s biggest personal revelation is surprisingly simple.

She has learned how often she gets things wrong. “The unexpected part is that in communicating this fact to people across all levels in the hotel has helped create an honesty around how we operate as a team,” she says.

When we spoke, she went further. “I guarantee you, I’m never the smartest person in the room, and I’m really comfortable with that,” she told me. “I am often wrong. I’m okay with that as well because then I learn.”

“I guarantee you, I’m never the smartest person in the room, and I’m really comfortable with that,” she told me. “I am often wrong. I’m okay with that as well because then I learn.” –– Anne Golden

That willingness to be wrong has consequences beyond Golden herself. She believes it makes other people less afraid to make decisions.

“We don’t have analysis paralysis here as much as other properties I’ve worked in,” she says.

The other women describe different versions of the same evolution. Gilbertson discovered she was more resilient and adaptable than she realised. Chu has become more comfortable with uncertainty and more willing to trust her instincts. Whittemore discovered that her passion for the hotel hasn’t faded after five years. If anything, she says, it has grown.

The unexpected lesson is that confidence doesn’t come from certainty.

Lesson 4: Belonging requires more than putting people on a team

Golden supplied one of the most thoughtful lines from all five women’s reflections: “Membership of a team doesn’t necessarily mean you feel that you belong.”

Five years ago, she says, she underestimated how much work creating an inclusive culture would take.

“I now know you have to work a lot harder and think a lot more deeply to create an inclusive culture.”

There is some evidence that the work is paying off. Pan Pacific London now employs 248 people and recorded 44 internal promotions in 2025, with 224 career progressions since opening in 2021. Employee turnover fell from 46.2% in 2023 to 30% in 2025.

Those results helped earn the hotel this year’s Best Employer Catey. But Golden’s definition of culture is less about awards or statistics than how people are treated day to day.

She talks about allowing people to make mistakes, knowing about their families and interests, having conversations that have nothing to do with work, and accepting that people will sometimes disagree with her.

“If all we do with the team is talk about work, it just tells them that I have no interest in them except for the fact that they work there,” she says.

Belonging, in Golden’s view, also means caring about where people go next.

She recently sat down with a female supervisor who had been offered an opportunity at another luxury hotel. Rather than persuading her to stay, Golden told her she thought she should take it, then helped her think about how to present herself on LinkedIn when she announced the move.

“We give a lot of advice that actually doesn’t help us,” she says.

And some people come back. Golden tells me former employees have returned after leaving for opportunities elsewhere.

But she doesn’t see development as successful only when people stay. Sometimes lifting as you climb means opening the door and encouraging someone to walk through it.

Lesson 5: Great leadership is knowing when people need pushing and when they need protecting

One of Golden’s most interesting leadership ideas came up when we talked about feedback. She isn’t advocating avoiding difficult conversations. Far from it. When things go wrong, she wants the team to ask what could have been done differently and learn from it.

But she has become more thoughtful about timing. “Protecting people’s inner peace is very underrated,” she says.

“Protecting people’s inner peace is very underrated”

Sometimes, she argues, good leadership means recognising when another piece of criticism will help someone perform better and when it will simply add pressure to someone already struggling.

“Do we all have to be critiqued within an inch of our lives?” she asks.

It is a surprisingly human idea in an industry obsessed with standards, scores and constant improvement: knowing your people well enough to understand what they need from you at that moment.

Exterior of the Pan Pacific London

Five years ago, Pan Pacific London had to prove an unfamiliar brand could become a serious player in European luxury, that a five-star hotel didn’t need a Mayfair postcode, and that a team assembled in extraordinary circumstances could build something lasting.

They did all three.

But listening to these five women, the real story isn’t simply how they put Pan Pacific London on the map. It’s how they chose to lead while doing it.

Believe before anyone else does. Use being underestimated to your advantage. Admit when you’re wrong. Build teams where people belong. Open doors for the next generation. Know when people need pushing and when they need protecting.

Golden put it more simply.

“We can’t change the world,” she says. “But we can change our little bit of it.”

Five years in, that may be Pan Pacific London’s biggest achievement.