Let’s face it, burnout in boutique hospitality has become a quiet epidemic. And worse? It’s often glorified.
For two years, I wore two hats that don’t play nicely together: operator and head of marketing. If you’ve ever done that combo, you know exactly what I mean. You’re responsible for the guest experience in real time… while also being the person who has to create demand for that experience tomorrow.
I told myself the story we all tell: “This is just the season.”
Then: “This is just what leadership looks like.”
Then: “I’ll rest when things stabilize.”
Except… things don’t stabilize in hospitality. They cycle. And if you don’t build a system for rest, the business will happily consume whatever you’re willing to give.
By the time I walked away, I was functioning in burnout and didn’t even realize it. I wasn’t collapsing on the floor. I was still producing. Still showing up. Still solving problems.
I just wasn’t okay.
A few months before I could admit I was burning out, I had a totally separate wake-up call—one that looked like a “work moment,” but really wasn’t about work at all.
In an earlier post, I wrote about a leadership meeting that cracked something open in me. I felt what I thought was rejection from my team, and my body reacted like it was reliving something much older. It catapulted me back to a pain I hadn’t fully processed: being “orphaned” by my family after a major trauma about six years prior.
In that moment, I realized something uncomfortable but freeing—I’d been unknowingly using work to chase the belonging I lost. So when I felt rejected at work, it didn’t just sting professionally. It hit an old wound.
That’s when my friend Iris, and someone I’d been working with for a while—saw what I couldn’t see yet.
That week, she encouraged me to take her burnout scan, and the results were eye-opening. It wasn’t just confirming I was exhausted—it helped connect the dots. It showed me how hard I’d been pushing, and why I’d been willing to carry that level of intensity for so long.
Because the scan didn’t say, “You’re dramatic.”
It said, “You’re pushing harder than your nervous system can sustain.”
Here’s the part that still gets me: Iris identified burnout in boutique hospitality in me before I was willing to name it.
I was calling it “pressure.”
She was calling it what it was: burnout.
I was proud that I could handle a lot.
She was paying attention to what it was costing me.
And that’s one of the most dangerous things about burnout—especially for high-performing operators. It doesn’t always look like falling apart.
Sometimes it looks like:
Shorter patience.
Less creativity.
More brain fog.
A constant low-grade hum of irritation you can’t shake.
When Iris walked me through the markers, it was like someone turned on the lights in a room I’d been living in with the curtains closed.
At night, my brain ran inventory: staffing gaps, guest issues, marketing campaigns, revenue targets, vendor problems, next weekend’s arrivals. I’d wake up tired and tell myself I was just “in a busy stretch.” But sleep disruption is one of the classic signs your body is running on stress chemistry instead of recovery. And I was.
I’ve always been sharp. Fast. Decisive. Burnout made me feel like I was thinking through cotton. Simple tasks took longer. Decisions felt heavier. And I compensated by working more hours, which is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
I’d be in a meeting and realize I hadn’t absorbed the last two minutes. I’d reread emails and still miss details. I wasn’t lazy—I was overloaded.
Tiny hiccups felt personal. A slow reply. A minor mistake. A request that should’ve been simple. When your nervous system is already maxed out, you don’t have extra capacity for “normal.”
This is the one to pay attention to. I started fantasizing about running away from everything. Not because I didn’t love my life—because my system was begging for relief. This is the one that should really tell you something needs to be fixed.
When burnout hits, it doesn’t just affect your mood, it hits your brand.
Guest experience suffers.
Response times slow.
Creativity tanks.
Revenue becomes reactive instead of strategic.
And the numbers back up how common this is, especially for people running the show.
SCORE reports that 33% of small business owners work more than 50 hours per week (and 25% work more than 60).
Forbes has also cited data showing many small business owners work 50+ hours weekly.
If you’re in boutique hospitality, “owner-led” often means “everything-led.” Operations, staffing, guest messaging, maintenance, marketing, social, partnerships—sometimes all before lunch.
Gallup has found that about two-thirds of full-time workers report experiencing burnout at least sometimes.
That matters because burnout in boutique hospitality doesn’t politely stay in one lane—it bleeds into leadership, service, and decision-making.
A Food & Wine piece discussing an Axonify hospitality study reported that 47% of U.S. restaurant managers said they’d experienced burnout (and nearly 70% said team members had voiced burnout). Different segment of hospitality, same nervous system problem: constant urgency, constant people-needs, constant unpredictability.
I didn’t “recover” from burnout through a bubble bath and a better planner.
I recovered through structure.
A few months of structured sessions with Iris helped me:
see the pattern,
understand what was underneath it, and
rebuild the way I worked so I wasn’t fueling the same cycle.
Iris has a phrase I’ve heard her say many times: “When your energy shifts, everything shifts.”
I didn’t fully understand it until I felt it.
Here’s the truth I wish someone had drilled into me during my time at ReTreet.
You can’t lead a premium guest experience from a depleted body.
Modern operators aren’t opting out of hard work. They’re opting out of unsustainable work.
If your business can’t function without you constantly catching dropped balls, it’s not a business, it’s a pressure cooker.
Start here:
Create repeatable checklists for daily/weekly ops
Standardize guest messaging templates
Build a simple marketing calendar (up to 90 days out)
Sleep and breaks aren’t “soft.” They’re performance tools.
Harvard Business Review has written about how insufficient rest can undermine judgment and leadership behavior.
And research summarized by Shawn Achor (The Happiness Advantage) is often cited for the idea that a positive brain can be significantly more productive than a stressed one (commonly quoted as 31%).
Translation: if you want better decisions, you need a better baseline.
Boundaries aren’t about being less available. They’re about being more effective.
Try:
Office hours for non-urgent guest/admin communication
Autoresponders that set expectations clearly
A “no same-day non-emergency changes” rule (internally)
Because once my nervous system came out of survival mode, I didn’t just feel better, I started making better decisions. I showed up differently. I stopped operating like everything was an emergency.
And yes, opportunities started flowing again.
If burnout in boutique hospitality is creeping in, don’t wait for a wall.
Where are you doing $10/hour tasks as the $100/hour leader?
Not ten. One.
Examples:
Delegate guest messaging follow-ups
Outsource social scheduling
Automate review requests
Batch marketing content once a week
If rest is optional, it won’t happen. Make it operational.
You can’t build what you’re not here to lead. I used to think burnout was the price of being “all in.”
Now I know it’s a threat to everything I care about: my health, my family, my leadership, and the longevity of the brands I help build.
I used to think burnout was the price of being “all in.” Now I know it’s a threat to everything I care about: my health, my family, my leadership, and the longevity of the brands I help build.
Burnout in boutique hospitality doesn’t always announce itself dramatically. Sometimes it shows up quietly, while you’re still producing, until one day you realize you’ve been surviving your own success.
If any part of this felt uncomfortably familiar, take that as information—not shame.
And if you need someone to help you see what you can’t see yet, I’ll say what I learned the hard way:
That outside perspective can change everything.