driving this shift: marketplace changes, brand commoditization and opportunities for ancillary revenue generation.
MARKETPLACE CHANGES From a customer perspective, especially in luxury hotels, research tells us that owning the guests’ entire travel journey( transportation, transfers, rooms, food and beverage, activities, experiences, etc.) is central to creating high-quality and high-value memorable experiences. This is why Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, for example, offers branded local transfers from airports, ports and train stations, as well as access to its private jet. Also, because hotels today have a lot of data on their guests, they can personalize experiences like never before.
From a competitive standpoint, platforms such as Airbnb are doubling down on experiences. In response, hotels are pushing back by developing distinctive, hotel-led experiences of their own.
BRAND COMMODITIZATION With more than 1,000 hotel brands worldwide competing for every room night, brand commoditization has become a defining challenge. To stand out in this“ sea of sameness,” brand leaders are increasingly turning to personalized experiences as a means of differentiation, to help create demand, price and loyalty premium.
ANCILLARY REVENUE OPPORTUNITIES Creating new experience opportunities for in-house guests to spend their money on gives hotels additional sources of ancillary revenue. Guests are happy because this in-house offering puts a stamp of quality on the experience, akin to buying a shore excursion from a cruise brand rather than at the port from a third-party operator. Hotels benefit because such offerings help maximize a critical performance metric: revenue per available guest or RevPAG.
Four of my favorite examples include:
• Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London, which offers guests private shopping hours at Harrods, London’ s iconic department store.
• The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai, which arranges exclusive tours to the top of the Burj Khalifa, the world’ s tallest building.
• The Leela Palace New Delhi, which offers hands-on pastry-making experiences; it once offered my then 16-year-old son— an aspiring hotelier— one.
• At LUX * Resorts in Mauritius I was invited to plant a sapling on the property, one I could nurture into a fully grown tree over subsequent visits.
After 46 years in the hotel business, 36 years teaching at Cornell University, working with more than 15,000 students across over 100 countries, collaborating with global hotel companies and drawing on extensive research, I have distilled what I believe to be a seven-part formula for creating truly engaging and memorable hotel experiences:
• Novel: New matters. Originality counts.
• Quality: The experience should be accretive to the brand— polishing it, not tarnishing it.
• Value: The guest’ s investment of time and money should deliver a meaningful payoff.
• Curated: Every element— location, materials, partners and staff— should be carefully assembled.
• Personalized: Tailored to the guest’ s interests, preferences, attitudes and passions.
• Signature: Distinctive enough to become a brand standard or scalable across the portfolio.
• Proprietary: Protected intellectual property that is difficult to replicate— whether through trademarked experiences or exclusive partnerships( e. g., co-branding the experience with a luxury brand like Mandarin Oriental and Harrods).
Ultimately, hotels that understand this will secure not only a repeating guest, but a memorable story to be carried on for years to come.
May / June 2026 hotelsmag. com 39