The Omotenashi Standards Academy
The Omotenashi Standards Academy is a global certification and research body dedicated to defining, teaching, and credentialing Omotenashi as a universal standard of human connection.
TOSA develops and administers standards for Omotenashi practice across industries. Its certifications are designed for individuals and organizations in hospitality, healthcare, finance, education, technology, government, and any human-centric organization or context where genuine connection determines the outcome.
The academic and cultural authority of TOSA is rooted in Japan. TOSA works in partnership with the Japanese government, cultural institutions, universities, and hospitality leaders to ensure its standards are authentic, rigorous, and current.
The certification arm of TOSA is administered through TOSI, The Omotenashi Standards Institute, its independent nonprofit research and credentialing body.
TOSA is built on three pillars: instinct, discipline, and soul. The instinct to care, the discipline to perfect it, and the soul that emerges when the two become inseparable.
The innate impulse toward another person's comfort that cannot be trained, only recognized and cultivated. The reflex to care, to smile, to listen, to be genuine.
Warmth refined through ritual, repetition, and rigor until excellence becomes habit. This is Kaizen: the practice of continuous improvement, applied to the human craft of care.
The soul that emerges when Instinct and Discipline become inseparable. Service so genuine it cannot be distinguished from character.
TOSA assimilates the teachings of Omotenashi from the ryokan, learns from the land of Japan, absorbs its people's culture, and carries that philosophy beyond Japanese borders. What Japan has taught passively for generations, as children grow and learn to be positively empathic members of society, conscious of all manners of human interaction, TOSA teaches deliberately, at scale, to the world. We are teaching Omotenashi as a core attribute of corporate values, applicable to all companies and all people, regardless of industry.
Omotenashi belongs in every boardroom, hospital, classroom, and government office...
Omotenashi is not a hotel standard. It is not a restaurant protocol. It is not a tourism initiative. It is a philosophy of human connection rooted in the merging of one's professional and personal self into a single, genuine expression of care. That philosophy belongs in every boardroom, every hospital, every classroom, every government office, every technology company, and every financial institution where human beings interact with other human beings. The ryokan taught the world what Omotenashi looks like. TOSA teaches the world what it means, and how to live it, in any context, in any industry, in any country.
A certification of character, culture, and conduct applicable to all organizations...
TOSA's mission is to establish Omotenashi as a recognized core attribute of organizational culture, applicable to all companies regardless of industry. Just as organizations adopt values around innovation, integrity, or sustainability, TOSA provides the framework, the curriculum, and the credential for organizations to adopt Omotenashi as a measurable, teachable, and institutionally recognized standard of human connection. This is not a soft skills training program. It is a certification of character, culture, and conduct. Organizations that carry the TOSA standard signal to the world that they hold their people, and their people's interactions, to the highest human standard the world has produced.
Human connection and spirit as the glue that holds every organization together...
Human connection, human interaction, and human spirit are the binding agents that hold every organization together. They are what separates a company people want to work for from one they tolerate. What separates a service people remember from one they forget. Omotenashi is the name for doing all three at their highest level. TOSA makes that name a global standard, and places Japan permanently at its origin.
Human connection, human interaction, and human spirit are the binding agents that hold every organization together. Omotenashi is the name for doing all three at their highest level.
Omotenashi is a Japanese philosophy of hospitality rooted in the merging of one's professional and personal self into a single, genuine expression of care. It is not a service script or a performance standard. It describes a quality of character.
Authentic, unguarded, fully human.
Practiced, present, outward-facing.
So genuine that people feel it without knowing why.
TOSA delivers training, certification, research, and consulting across six service areas. All programs are grounded in TOSA's Omotenashi framework and developed in collaboration with Japanese cultural and academic partners.
Foundation, Professional, and Leadership levels...
Structured Omotenashi training at three levels: Foundation, Professional, and Leadership. Delivered in-person, online, and in blended formats to hospitality and non-hospitality organizations alike.
Individual and institutional credentials with the TOSI seal...
Individual practitioner credentials and Institutional Certification for hotels, restaurants, and service organizations. Certified institutions receive the TOSI seal and directory listing.
Proprietary curriculum licensed to universities and corporate training departments...
TOSA licenses its proprietary curriculum to universities, hospitality schools, and corporate training departments. Primary targets include top-tier hospitality and business programs in the US, Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific.
A pre-vetted pool of Omotenashi-certified hospitality candidates...
TOSA provides corporations with access to a pre-vetted pool of Omotenashi-certified hospitality candidates, selected for character as much as skill.
Strategic engagements with tourism boards, governments, and hospitality operators...
Custom, high-value strategic engagements with tourism boards, government entities, and large hospitality operators. Positioned as bespoke projects rather than commodity training.
Ethnographic study of Omotenashi in Japan, white papers, and framework documents...
Ethnographic study of Omotenashi practices in Japan, benchmarking of international hospitality education systems, and publication of white papers and framework documents that underpin TOSA's certification credibility.
Every great nation owns one idea in the global imagination. Japan's practice of Omotenashi is among the most admired human qualities in the world, and among the least institutionalized. TOSA exists to change that, placing Japan permanently at the center of a global standard for human connection.
Innovation
Precision
Gastronomy
Discretion
Welcome
Hospitality
Founder
Marcel Abi Samra was raised in a diplomatic household where entertaining guests and multi-cultural dignitaries was daily life and hospitality was identity: the door always open, the table always full, every guest treated as family. His instincts were formed long before his career began, and his career has been a process of professionalizing them.
Read moreMarcel has spent his career inside the machinery of hospitality, studying what makes service genuine and what makes it hollow.
Trained in enology in California, he built his career across some of the most demanding hospitality environments in the United States: The Four Seasons Hotel, KNEAD Hospitality and Design, and Truluck's Restaurant Group. Across luxury hotels, restaurant groups, and fine dining operations, he has led teams, opened venues, trained staff, and managed the daily reality of delivering excellence at scale. He knows the industry from the floor up, not the boardroom down. And from the floor, he learned the thing the boardroom rarely sees: genuine connection is the knot that ties all humans together, a metaphorical bow on a gift of hospitality.
That operational depth is matched by an educator's instinct. Marcel leads Wagyu in Hospitality education for The Wagyu Sommelier Group, teaching hospitality professionals how provenance, craft, and storytelling elevate a guest experience. He is currently working with Cornell University to bring a three-day Wagyu in Hospitality course to their Food Science and Hospitality students.
During a research trip to Japan those instincts naturally found a name, already engrained in the Japanese culture: Omotenashi. Japan is a place where time moves differently and hospitality is woven into the architecture of daily life. It is the home of this philosophy - wholehearted hospitality, service so genuine it cannot be distinguished from character. Marcel returned home, searched for the institution teaching this philosophy to the world, and found that none existed.
So he founded it.
TOSA exists to give the global hospitality industry what Marcel spent his career searching for: a teachable, certifiable standard for genuine human connection in service.
Read lessTOSA's Advisory Council is currently being formed. We are assembling a group of leaders from academia, hospitality, cultural institutions, and government who share a commitment to the principles of Omotenashi and its global potential.
Express interest in joining the councilTOSA partners with government institutions, universities, corporations, and cultural bodies in Japan and globally.
TOSA is in its founding phase. We are building partnerships with institutions, educators, hospitality leaders, and cultural organizations. If you are interested in training, certification, curriculum licensing, research collaboration, or partnership, we welcome your inquiry.
Thank you. We will be in touch.