Competency models are useful tools for human resource managers and educators to identify and develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for future industry leaders (Chung-Herrera et al., 2003; Kay and Russette, 2000; Testa and Sipe, 2012; Sisson and Adams, 2013). Developing competence in employees is related to employees’ professional confidence and job satisfaction (Ko, 2012) and business performance (Blayney, 2009). As such, increasing number of studies examined both generic leadership competencies (e.g., Chung-Herrera et al., 2003; Testa and Sipe, 2012) and job-specific competencies (e.g., Ko, 2015; Koenigsfeld et al., 2012) for hospitality managers. Despite these notable works, previous studies focused on developing competency models for a single (hierarchical) level of managers, without comparing the relative importance of frontline managers and director- level managers’ competencies or prioritizing these competencies. The existing universalism approach implies that there is a single best set of equally important competencies for all managers (cf. Chung-Herrera et al., 2003; Koenigsfeld et al., 2012), which limits the potential for practitioners to develop the right set of people with the utmost important competencies (Antonacopoulou and FitzGerald, 1996; Huselid and Becker, 2011; Lepak and Snell, 1999). To better utilize limited resources, hospitality organizations need to understand whose competencies are more important. They also need to know which competencies have the highest priority with the assumption that priority of competencies may differ for frontline and director-level managers. Addressing these issues can also help hospitality educators to differentiate their undergraduate and master programs by aligning curricula with critical competencies for jobs- undergraduate programs prepare students to become successful frontline managers whereas master programs often focus on developing students to become successful director-level managers (Raybould and Wilkins, 2005). Thus, we aim to compare the relative importance of frontline and director-level managers’ competencies, as well as investigate the priority of these competencies for frontline and director-level managers, respectively. To address the issues raised above, it is essential to have an updated model of hospitality leadership competency. Recent development of competency models has focused on specific jobs, such as golf club managers, food and beverage researchers, and training managers (e.g., Bharwani and Jauhari, 2013; Ko, 2015; Koenigsfeld et al., 2012; Wong and Lee, 2017). While these job-specific models are useful for specific jobs, these cannot be easily applied to the general hospitality industry (Koenigsfeld et al., 2012; Zagar et al., 1983).