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This paper presents a marketing perspective that may have considerable relevance within niche markets that are served by hotels positioned at the top end of the market, with distinctive lifestyle products. It considers the extent to which such products can be effectively positioned through semiotic marketing strategies. Emergent strategies are presented in a model of a live market communication system. It is proposed that this represents a reorientation in focus of positioning strategies from product and transaction, to cultural criteria and sensory differentiation. Justification is presented on the basis that while core hotel products and services and their functionality are easily duplicated, semiotics, aesthetics and their lifestyle associations are more difficult to mimic. The application of this reorientation is illustrated through the examples provided as an extraordinary collection of highly individual hotels. These products have been deliberately defined to align to conceptions of self‐image, selling a set of symbolically defined features that are prototypical of a certain lifestyle.

Defines the term “gastrosophy” and focuses on “chef gastrosophers” whose specialist field is professional expertise in gastronomy and hospitality. The position these individuals occupy today has been brought about by a succession of cultural, metaphysical and technological factors. Chef gastrosophers have progressed the aims of gastronomy, by becoming leading figures in contemporary cuisine. They occupy positions at the apex of the modern culinary hierarchy, having demonstrated individualism, entrepreneurship and a willingness to take risks. They set the culinary pace of the hospitality industry, and have invested in the cult of personality, freely utilizing public relations and image creation techniques. Chef gastrosophers have realized that the modern hospitality industry has a dynamic which requires the business proprietor to innovate, to create bold images and identities and to market these. The hospitality they offer is intended to be holistic, where a complete experience, offering fleeting artistic theatre, has been distilled from haute cuisine.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how senior leaders in the hospitality industry use storytelling to disseminate their vision to employees and to illustrate how hermeneutics can be used as a method for the interpretation of qualitative data in hospitality management research.

A purposeful criterion‐based sample design was constructed and after a period of sensitisation to their organisations, 20 phenomenological interviews with high‐level international hospitality industry leaders were conducted. These interviews are analysed using a hermeneutical framework.

Storytelling is being used as a strategic method of communication and is fundamental to leadership in the contemporary commercial hospitality industry; stories are used to strengthen and revitalise current norms and values. Stories penetrate organisations and tap into the emotions of employees in order to inspire action and understanding.

Hermeneutics is applied clearly and concisely and the paper demonstrates how hermeneutics could easily be adapted for other projects. Clear direction for further research is suggested, exploring the efficaciousness of stories from the listeners' rather than narrator's perspective.

This paper does not teach managers how to tell stories, or even make them better storytellers; however, it highlights how storytelling is used by leaders at the apex of the commercial hospitality industry to develop and enhance organisational culture.

Within hospitality management research, storytelling has mostly been ignored both as a management tool and as a form of data collection; similarly hermeneutics as a means of data analysis does not feature in the hospitality management literature.