Gordon Donkin

Fletcher UK has managed a primary experiential survey benchmarking the welcome at London's top 100 five-star hotels, and the results now form The Welcome Index 2026. To understand why the welcome matters so much, it helps to start with the global picture.

Over the last month, highly motivated competitors from all over the world arrived in North America to compete for arguably the most coveted sports prize of all, the FIFA World Cup. It is not hard to see the metaphor between competing at the top level in a global sport and other types of organisation seeking to "win" by creating long-term growth and exploiting new global markets.

In this volatile and increasingly uncertain world, there has never been a better time to stress-test the intelligence capabilities of any organisation, irrespective of market sector and size. Most companies discovered their supply chain vulnerabilities the hard way — through disruption. The same pattern is now playing out with geopolitical risk. The window to get ahead of it is closing fast.