Hotelier Perspectives

In an industry focused on amenities, scaling down can be shockingly innovative. Especially when you remove almost everything and get the basics exactly right.

Hospitality has always been about how people feel, but over the last decade or so, the industry tried to improve that feeling through structure alone. Better systems. Better standards. Better efficiency. The assumption was that if everything worked smoothly enough, the emotional experience would naturally follow. And what we are seeing now suggests the opposite.

Luxury hotel marketing has become increasingly sophisticated — better creative, more channels, smarter automation — yet growth remains fragile. Direct bookings plateau. Customer acquisition costs rise. Dependency on intermediaries deepens.

For centuries, hospitality has been rooted in a simple but powerful principle: make people feel welcome, valued, and understood. From a handwritten note waiting in the guestroom to a concierge remembering a favorite table at dinner, the industry has long relied on human connection as its defining strength. But today, the way hotels deliver that sense of personalization is quickly and permanently evolving.

Over the past few years, like to 3 to 5 years, conversations about generational differences in the workplace have grown noticeably more charged. What once felt like manageable tension has turned into open and public frustration, with leaders and teams often speaking past one another instead of engaging productively. These challenges are frequently attributed to differences in values, work ethic, or even expectations, yet that explanation overlooks what I consistently see on the ground: a leadership education that has not kept in pace with the workforce that is now expected to lead.

It’s been the recent talk of the industry. We’ve been sensing it for a while, and now it’s getting clearer: AI is slowly but surely disrupting online travel discovery, search and possibly booking. Markus Busch recently broke this down in one of the better hotel industry pieces I’ve read lately. And Thomas Reiner has an excellent take as well. Here’s my take (which is a slightly more detailed version of the post I shared).

As hotels navigate continued pressure on rooms revenue, F&B has firmly stepped into the spotlight as one of the most powerful drivers of ancillary income. For F&B leaders, the opportunity to maximise spend while streamlining operations has never been more compelling. Mobile ordering in particular has seen a marked acceleration in its adoption and impact in recent years as operators look to do more with leaner teams while enhancing the guest experience.

In 2025, hospitality experienced its first true channel shift in consumer behavior since the introduction of smartphones. AI-driven booking channels and large language models (LLMs) moved from experimentation to influence, reshaping how travelers discover, evaluate, and choose hotels. This was not simply a new distribution channel, it was a fundamental evolution in how brand information is read, trusted, and acted upon.

The 2026 Guest Experience Benchmark reveals a hotel industry that continues to mature under pressure. Despite record tourist arrivals in several regions, guest satisfaction continued to rise. This matters because volume growth often strains service delivery. Yet the data shows that hotels are coping better than ever.

Luxury resorts do not suffer from a lack of marketing sophistication. Many operate with advanced technology stacks, experienced teams, and more data than at any point in their history.