The "best of the best" places are also managed by feel and not data. There's even some kind of rationalization for that: at a sufficiently high management level

The "best of the best" places are also managed by feel and not data. There's even some kind of rationalization for that: at a sufficiently high management level, they have to make a decision every 30 seconds on average. That's mostly gut-driven by necessity... Thing is, that normally works out, but large shifts like the "new normal" during the pandemic can take a while for the gut to pick up, and so the default is to get back to the known-good state...