For decades, the hospitality industry has relied on consultants to improve performance, refine operations and elevate guest experience. Most of these experts come from within the industry itself – seasoned hoteliers, operators, brand veterans.
And yet, one perspective is still consistently underrepresented: the guest.
Not the guest as a post-stay survey. Not the guest as a review score. But the guest as an active contributor to how a hotel is shaped, experienced and remembered.
Hotels spend significant resources analysing feedback after the stay is already over, when the impression is already formed. But what if that perspective was integrated earlier, more directly, and more meaningfully into how a hotel is shaped?
Understanding the guest requires more than feedback forms. It requires integration.
It means involving individuals who experience hotels as guests, but understand them with the depth of a consultant – shaped by extensive stays across different markets and segments, as well as professional backgrounds beyond hospitality.
While hospitality can be studied and refined in the best hotel schools, the guest experience itself cannot be fully learned in a classroom. It is formed over time, through repeated stays, different contexts and expectations, and a continuous awareness of how hospitality is actually felt.
It is not about replacing traditional consulting, but about bringing the guest perspective into the process earlier, not only after the experience has already taken place.
This can take the form of on-site, guest-centric consulting, workshops built around real guest journeys, and training teams not only on procedures, but on how a guest actually experiences them – particularly at moments where guest experience is being defined or redefined, such as during pre-openings, the launch of new properties, or repositioning from one category to another.
Because in the end, guests do not remember how well a hotel followed its internal guidelines. They remember how it felt.
This belief is what led me to create Hospritality – a consultancy working at the intersection of guest experience, strategy and PR, bringing together professionals who are not only highly experienced guests of luxury hotels, but also experts in their respective fields, to help hotels turn guest experience into strategic decision-making before it happens.
A similar opportunity exists in how hotels work with influencers. The right partners are not only those who reach the right audience and drive visibility, but those who convert into bookings and, at the same time, bring the perspective of experienced guests. When influencers regularly stay in luxury hotels, their observations can go beyond promotion and offer valuable, experience-based feedback. When integrated thoughtfully, this creates value on both sides.
