PERSPECTIVE
Ode to Joy
THE ONE KPI HOTELS DON’ T MEASURE.
By KRISTIE GOSHOW, CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, LOEWS HOTELS & CO
I
was recently at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., with my teenage daughter watching singer Noah Kahan play the biggest show of his life. An estimated 56,00 people were in attendance: A sea of wrist lights bouncing in the dark like scattered magic dust. Complete strangers sang their hearts out. Their joy became a physical manifestation. You could feel it.
I think about experience for a living: why people choose one brand over another and what earns the next stay. At the Rose Bowl, I had an uncomfortable thought. Many of those concertgoers were likely staying in a hotel. Has the hospitality industry done anything to nourish and foster the kind of joy Kahan was providing?
Hoteliers talk ad nauseam about the experience economy. We measure guest satisfaction against standards“ we” create and congratulate“ ourselves” on the score. But look closely at what surveys capture: competence, tidiness, a smooth check-in. Useful things, yes, but joy can’ t be unearthed in those questions. Likelihoodto-recommend is not elation. Net Promoter Score does not measure awe.
We have not just failed to measure joy. Somewhere along the way, we began choking it.
COVID thinned out talent pipelines and org charts. Costs rose faster than revenues. We trimmed a layer of management here, a warm body at the desk there and declared it efficiency. We cut joy inside the building and then wondered why less of it reached the guest or consumer outside.
There is another truth. The World Health Organization reported last year that one in six people globally is affected by loneliness. Against every assumption, the loneliest
36 hotelsmag. com September 2026