Forbes Travel Guide has appointed Anne Stingle as Vice President of Partner Services, strengthening its partner-facing leadership team across key North American luxury hospitality markets.
In her new role, Stingle will support Forbes Travel Guide’s global partners across the Northeast and Southeast United States, as well as Eastern Canada. The appointment places her in a role focused on partner relationships, commercial engagement and the continued support of luxury hospitality brands working with Forbes Travel Guide’s standards, ratings and partner services platform.
Stingle brings more than 20 years of experience across luxury hospitality sales, marketing, brand positioning and strategic partnerships. Her background spans independent luxury hotels, lifestyle hospitality, agency advisory work and senior commercial roles across several high-profile New York properties.
Most recently, Stingle held leadership roles with Braintrust Agency, Rebel Hotel Company, THE WELL and Triumph Hotels. She has also served as Area Director of Sales for Baccarat Hotel & Residences New York and 1 Hotel Central Park at SH Group, and as Director of Sales during the repositioning of the Loews Regency New York.
Her earlier career includes positions with The London Hotels, The Pierre, A Taj Hotel, New York, The Peninsula New York and several Westin properties under Starwood Hotels and Resorts. That career path gives her direct exposure to the luxury hotel environments Forbes Travel Guide serves: properties where service detail, guest recognition, reputation and commercial performance are closely connected.
The appointment is notable because Partner Services is a strategically important function for Forbes Travel Guide. The organisation is best known for its independent global rating system for luxury hotels, restaurants, spas and ocean cruise ships, but its partner ecosystem also gives hospitality companies access to standards, insights, training, community and support around service excellence.
Forbes Travel Guide’s model places particular emphasis on service. Its Star Rating process assesses both facility and service, but the company publicly states that service is central because the experience of a hotel, restaurant or spa is ultimately shaped by how it makes guests feel. For luxury hotels, that makes the relationship between standards, training, commercial positioning and daily operations especially important.
In that context, Stingle’s hotel-side background matters. Partner Services is not simply a relationship management role. It requires the ability to understand how luxury properties think about reputation, revenue, owner expectations, guest experience and competitive positioning. A hotel partner may be focused on ratings performance, brand standards, service culture, leadership alignment, training or market visibility. The role requires fluency across those priorities.
Her experience at properties such as Baccarat Hotel & Residences New York, 1 Hotel Central Park, Loews Regency New York and The London NYC gives her direct exposure to the demands of the upper-luxury and lifestyle segments. These are environments where sales and marketing leaders must protect brand positioning while also delivering commercial results across corporate, leisure, entertainment, group and high-value transient segments.
The move also comes at a time when luxury hospitality brands are under pressure to demonstrate service consistency across more complex guest expectations. Travellers are more informed, more experience-driven and more likely to compare luxury properties across multiple reputation signals. Ratings, reviews, advisor relationships, social visibility and direct guest feedback all shape perception. Forbes Travel Guide sits within that ecosystem as one of the industry’s most recognised independent standards platforms.
Stingle’s appointment therefore supports Forbes Travel Guide’s ability to work with partners in a way that is commercially literate as well as standards-led. Her experience in sales, marketing, brand development and strategic growth should help her engage with hotel leaders who are trying to connect service performance with market reputation and business results.
The regional scope of the role is also significant. The Northeast and Southeast United States include several of the country’s most competitive luxury hospitality markets, including New York, Boston, Washington, Miami, Palm Beach, Charleston and resort destinations across the wider region. Eastern Canada adds another important layer, with luxury hotels operating in markets shaped by urban business travel, leisure demand, seasonal tourism and international inbound travel.
For partner hotels in these markets, the challenge is rarely just visibility. It is differentiation. Many luxury properties already offer strong design, dining and amenities. The harder task is sustaining service behaviours that feel consistent, personalised and emotionally intelligent across every guest interaction. Forbes Travel Guide’s standards and partner programmes are built around that challenge.
Stingle holds a degree in communications from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. That communications foundation aligns with a career built around relationship management, commercial storytelling and luxury brand positioning.
Her appointment also reflects the continued professionalisation of partner and client leadership roles within hospitality standards organisations. As luxury brands expand and service expectations rise, the companies that support them need leaders who understand both the operational realities of hotels and the commercial pressures facing owners and operators.
For Forbes Travel Guide, Stingle brings more than two decades of relevant hotel and hospitality advisory experience into a partner services role covering major North American markets. For hotel partners, her appointment adds a leader with direct experience in luxury sales, repositioning, brand development and property-level commercial strategy.
The appointment signals a practical point about luxury hospitality today: standards matter, but so does the ability to help hotels translate those standards into performance. Stingle’s role will sit at that intersection, supporting partners as they work to strengthen service, reputation and long-term market position.
