# Bored Hotelier > From AI to RevPAR to marketing failures, sustainability myths and mental breakdowns - everything there is to know about running hotels. For those who'd rather learn from other people's mistakes. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### About Bored Hotelier URL: https://boredhotelier.com/about/ Last updated: 2026-07-25T21:53:26.000Z Hotels are beautiful businesses run by people who sometimes forget that. This blog exists for the hoteliers, owners and asset managers who haven't forgotten - and who are quietly losing their minds watching perfectly good properties make perfectly avoidable mistakes. Nearly two decades of notes. Finally writing them down. Because someone has to make hospitality great again. *β€” The Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* ### Privacy Policy URL: https://boredhotelier.com/privacy-policy/ Last updated: 2026-07-25T22:58:16.000Z #### Last updated: July 2026 Welcome to Bored Hotelier. Your privacy matters here β€” unlike at some hotels we know. πŸ˜„ **What data we collect:** When you fill in the Subscribe form we collect your name and email address. That's it. Nothing else. **Why we collect it:** To occasionally send you new posts and updates - but only if you ticked the box. πŸ˜„ **What we don't do:** We don't sell your data. We don't share it with third parties. We don't do anything weird with it. **Your rights:** You can ask us to delete your data anytime. Just send an email to hello((at))boredhotelier.com **Cookies:** This site uses basic cookies for analytics. Nothing personal is tracked or stored. *Questions? Get in touch.* ### Disclaimer URL: https://boredhotelier.com/disclaimer/ Last updated: 2026-07-25T22:59:42.000Z #### Just in case... Everything on Bored Hotelier represents personal opinions and observations based on nearly two decades of experience in the hospitality industry. This is not professional consultancy advice. No hotels, individuals or businesses are named intentionally. Any resemblance to specific properties is coincidental. For professional business advice please seek qualified industry consultants. ## Posts ### Sustainability Has A Budget Line. It's Just Not Where You'd Expect. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/sustainability-has-a-budget-line-its-just-not-where-youd-expect/ Last updated: 2026-09-30T06:00:01.000Z Every hotel has a sustainability strategy now. A page on the website, a few paragraphs in the annual report, a photo of solar panels by the pool, a QR code instead of a laminated menu. Genuinely good things, some of them. But whose budget paid for that? Because there are two very different answers, and they produce two very different hotels. If the money came from marketing or corporate communications, you're looking at the visible stuff. The reusable water bottle with the logo on it. The signage. The annual report photo. Cheap to fund, easy to greenlight, and it earns whoever approved it a slide in the next town hall about "our commitment to the planet." If the money had to come from engineering or capex, you're looking at the stuff nobody photographs. A chiller replacement that actually cuts energy use. Better insulation. A waste system that does more than look tidy in a brochure. These cost real money, take real time, and deliver zero PR value on the day they're approved - the value shows up two years later in a utility bill. It's the same reason [the cheaper, greener suppliers sitting in every hotelier's inbox](https://boredhotelier.com/the-best-sustainability-solutions-are-there-why-cant-hotels-use-them/) rarely make it past procurement. Real change usually means someone has to fight a system built for something else. The visible stuff doesn't ask that of anyone. Guess which one wins when the two compete for the same finite budget. There's a real name for this pattern in ESG research: **symbolic versus substantive action**. [A 2026 academic review of 62 studies on the subject](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/csr.70722?ref=boredhotelier.com) draws the same line - initiatives built for perception with minimal material impact, versus ones involving real investment and structural change. Turns out the reusable water bottle and the chiller replacement aren't just different in cost. They're a documented, studied category apart. This isn't a story about hotels not caring. It's a story about who gets credit deciding what gets funded. The visible initiative has a champion - someone whose job improves the moment it's approved. The invisible one, the one that actually reduces consumption, usually doesn't have anyone whose bonus depends on pushing it through. It just competes against every other capex request on a spreadsheet, and loses to the request with a better story attached. This is the same pattern behind [every sustainability question on an RFP](https://boredhotelier.com/the-sustainability-question-with-four-right-answers/) \- four acceptable answers to choose from, and nobody ever checks which one you picked. The paperwork gets filed either way. The bottle and the chiller both "count" the same on that form. So next time a hotel proudly tells you about its sustainability program, the sharper question isn't "what are they doing." It's "who signed off on the budget, and what did they personally get out of saying yes." *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* #### **Source:** [Symbolic Versus Substantive ESG Practices: A Systematic Review and Integrative Framework](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/csr.70722?ref=boredhotelier.com), *Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management*, 2026 --- ## FAQs **What counts as greenwashing in hotels?* Anything that markets a hotel as sustainable based on the cheapest, most visible fraction of what "sustainable" would actually require. A reusable water bottle and a QR-code menu are real things. They're also the two initiatives a marketing budget can approve without touching the systems that actually consume the energy.* **Is greenwashing illegal?* Increasingly, in some jurisdictions - regulators have started treating vague or unsubstantiated environmental claims as a consumer protection issue, not just a PR embarrassment. But most of what happens in hotel sustainability marketing doesn't need to be illegal to be misleading. It just needs to be technically true and strategically incomplete.* **What is ESG capex?* The sustainability spending that doesn't show up in a press release - chiller replacements, insulation upgrades, waste systems. It comes from an engineering or capital budget instead of a marketing one, competes against every other capex request on the same spreadsheet, and pays off two years later in a utility bill nobody photographs.* **What are hotels actually doing for sustainability?* Depends entirely on which budget you're asking about. The marketing-funded version is signage, bottles, and a paragraph in the annual report. The capex-funded version is the equipment upgrade that actually reduces consumption. A 2026 review of 62 ESG studies has a name for the gap between the two: symbolic versus substantive action - and most hotels are doing more of the first than the second.* ### Free Therapy For All. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/free-therapy-for-all/ Last updated: 2026-09-23T06:00:07.000Z *Companies love announcing free mental health support. Here's what to do with it. Plot twist coming.* Let's get the order of events straight. First, the job. The unreasonable hours, the constant availability, the culture that rewards whoever answers the email at midnight. Then, months or years later, the burnout. Technically, sure - you're the one who broke. But the company built the machine that broke you, then stood back and watched. And now, the plot twist: free psychiatry sessions. Announced company-wide. Shouted from every internal newsletter and LinkedIn post about "we care about our people." Great PR. Genuinely a good headline. Shrinks are expensive in real life - this is a real, useful, expensive resource, handed to you for free. So use it. Not to build enough resilience to survive another year of the thing that broke you. Not to learn better coping mechanisms so you can absorb more of the same pressure without cracking again. Use it for you. Use it to figure out how to come home and actually feel something other than empty. Use it to find the hour you used to have for the gym, or your friends, or a life that isn't measured in shifts. Use it to get curious again about what else exists out there. Use it to sound calm, grounded and confident in an interview - the version of you that isn't running on fumes and adrenaline, the one that actually knows what they want next. Use their free resource to become the upgraded version of yourself. The one that might just walk. They're paying for the sessions. Let them absorb the bill for whatever you decide to do with what you find in there. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* --- **FAQs** **What is an EAP (Employee Assistance Program)?* The formal name for the free counseling benefit most companies offer and most employees never touch. Usually a set number of confidential sessions per year, run through a third party - not HR, not your manager. It's the same benefit this post is talking about, just the term you'd search if you wanted to check what your company actually offers.* **Does my employer know if I use the EAP?* No. EAPs are run by outside providers specifically so your company can't see who used it or why. Employers get anonymized usage numbers - "X% of staff used the service this quarter" β€” never names, never session content. The confidentiality isn't a policy promise. It's the entire structure the benefit is built on.* **Can you recover from burnout while still working the job that caused it?* Slowly, and only if something about the situation actually changes - the hours, the boundaries, or your own relationship to both. Recovery while still employed is possible, but it's not the same as resilience training that gets you back to absorbing the same pressure. One without the other just resets the clock on the same burnout.* ### The Booker That Can't Be Charmed. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-booker-that-cant-be-charmed/ Last updated: 2026-09-16T06:00:35.000Z *IDC says 30% of bookings will be made by AI agents by 2030\. Today, that number is 2%. Both facts matter.* I've written about this shift twice already, from two different angles. First, that [your next guest is asking ChatGPT where to stay](https://boredhotelier.com/your-next-guest-is-asking-chatgpt-where-to-stay-is-your-hotel-in-the-answer/) before they ever land on your website. Then, that [most hotels bought AI and still aren't ready for any of it](https://boredhotelier.com/every-hotel-is-buying-ai-almost-nobody-is-ready-for-it/). Here's the part that connects both, and takes it one step further. [IDC's latest forecast](https://www.idc.com/resource-center/blog/agentic-ai-will-redefine-travel-and-hospitality-in-2026/?ref=boredhotelier.com) says 30% of all travel bookings will be executed by AI agents by 2030 - not researched, not shortlisted. Executed. An agent queries availability, compares rates, applies preferences, and completes the booking. No human clicks anything. This isn't some future concept. Booking.com already shipped agentic AI in October 2025 - Smart Messenger and Auto-Reply, handling partner-to-guest communication with zero human on either side of the exchange. Same infrastructure this forecast is describing. It's just starting on messaging instead of the transaction itself. Here's the counterweight: only around 2% of leisure travelers hand an AI full booking authority today, and only 11% of travel companies are even set up to sell to an agent if one came asking. So this isn't happening yet. But the gap between "2% now" and "30% by 2030" is exactly the kind of gap that gets bridged faster than anyone expects. Sit with what that actually means for a second. Every upsell email, every loyalty tier, every "only 2 rooms left at this rate" banner - all of it was built to work on a human. Humans get FOMO. Humans want to feel like a Platinum member. Humans respond to urgency, scarcity, a friendly tone in a chatbot window. An AI agent booking on someone's behalf wants none of that. It wants the room that matches the brief, at the best available rate, confirmed correctly. It cannot be flattered into an upgrade. Which means the entire psychological toolkit hospitality has spent years building - most of which I've been picking apart in this very blog - simply won't fire on a growing share of future bookings. Not because it stopped working on people. Because the buyer won't be human. This is also why I keep coming back to [GEO, AEO and LLMO](https://boredhotelier.com/geo-aeo-llmo-its-still-just-seo/). If an agent is the one deciding whether your hotel gets shortlisted, being ranked on Google is close to irrelevant. Being accurately, completely understood by whatever model that agent is running on is the entire game. IDC puts it plainly: if your data is incomplete, outdated, or fragmented, you effectively disappear from the agent's decision set. Not ranked lower. Gone. So here's the actual homework, not a five-year plan: can an AI agent, right now, correctly describe your room categories, your cancellation policy, your actual amenities? If you don't know, that's the audit to run before the next "AI strategy" meeting - not a chatbot pilot, not another upsell automation tool aimed at humans who increasingly aren't the ones booking. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* #### **Source:** IDC - [Agentic AI Will Redefine Travel and Hospitality in 2026](https://www.idc.com/resource-center/blog/agentic-ai-will-redefine-travel-and-hospitality-in-2026/?ref=boredhotelier.com) --- ## **FAQs** **What is agentic AI?* AI that doesn't just answer questions or generate suggestions - it takes the next action itself. In travel, that means an agent that queries availability, compares rates against a traveler's stated preferences, and completes the booking, rather than handing a shortlist back to a human to decide.* **Can AI agents really book a hotel?* According to IDC's FutureScape 2026 forecast, up to 30% of all travel bookings are projected to be executed by AI agents by 2030, with the agent completing the search, comparison and booking process autonomously.* **How many travelers currently let AI book on their behalf?* Adoption today is still very low - only around 2% of leisure travelers currently give an AI full booking authority, despite growing use of AI for trip research and planning.* **Will AI replace travel agents?* Travel agents are already being asked this question directly, which makes them a preview of what's coming for hotel reservations teams. The answer is the same in both cases: not a full replacement, but a shrinking share of bookings that ever pass through a human at all - travel agent, front desk, or otherwise. The booking still has to happen somewhere. The question is whether a person is in that loop, or an agent is.* **Do hotel loyalty programs work on AI booking agents?* Not the way they work on people. Loyalty tiers, upsell emails and scarcity banners are built to trigger human psychology - FOMO, status, urgency. An AI agent booking on a traveler's behalf isn't susceptible to any of it. It's optimizing for the best match to a stated brief, not a feeling.* **Are hotels ready for AI agents to book on behalf of guests?* Not yet, largely. Only around 11% of travel companies are currently considered "agent-ready," meaning most hotel data and booking systems aren't structured in a way AI agents can reliably query and transact against.* **How can hotels prepare for AI agents booking on behalf of guests?** *The priority is data accuracy and completeness - room categories, policies, amenities and rates need to be correctly and consistently represented wherever an AI agent might source that information, since incomplete data can mean disappearing from an agent's decision set entirely.* ### Beware Of Company Culture. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/beware-of-company-culture/ Last updated: 2026-09-09T06:00:24.000Z In [Every Hotel Brand Is a Myth](https://boredhotelier.com/every-hotel-brand-is-a-myth), I wrote about the two stories every hotel brand tells - one for guests, one for employees, built to make staff "buy the story and believe in it religiously enough to sell it." I meant that as an observation. I didn't linger on the word *religiously*. I should have. I've watched an employee turn down a better title and meaningfully more money. Not because the math was bad. Because leaving didn't feel like changing a job. It felt like losing a self. That's the tell. Credit where it's due: building a culture people don't want to leave is skilled work. The rituals, the shared language, the awards, the sense of belonging to something bigger than a paycheck. Whoever designs that program is good at their job. You've probably heard the saying: people don't leave jobs, they leave managers. Sometimes. But plenty of people who'd tell you their manager is mediocre still won't leave. Because the manager was never who they were loyal to. The institution was. The sociologist Lewis Coser had a term for organizations built this way: [**greedy institutions**](https://archive.org/details/greedyinstitutio0000cose) \- ones that demand undivided loyalty and hand back belonging available only to the fully committed. He was writing about religious orders and the military. Read the definition again and tell me it doesn't sound like *hospitality*. Here's the real part: **effectiveness isn't evidence of health.** Low turnover, high engagement, staff who call their team "family" - none of that means something is wrong. It doesn't mean something is right, either. It just means it's working, and working isn't the same claim as healthy. Watch long enough and you'll see the shape of it. Someone's best memories are shifts, colleagues, a launch night, a VIP guest - not a wedding, not their kid's first steps. Ask what they did outside work last year and the answer is short, or doesn't exist. Nobody designed that maliciously. It's just what happens when a system is built, competently, to be the most rewarding part of someone's life - because that's what makes people stay and sell the story for free. ## **Plot twist: that playbook was built for a different workforce.** **Try it on Gen Z!** Try "we're a family" on someone who watched their parents get laid off by email after twenty loyal years. Try the culture award on someone who's spent their adolescence watching brands get dissected in real time for the gap between what they say and what they do. They'll take the salary. They'll do the job well. They will not hand over the self. The industry's engagement model assumes people eventually merge with the brand if the story's good enough. A whole generation just showed up and declined to merge. So hospitality has a choice to make. Actually put the money where the mouth is - real pay, real flexibility, real career paths that don't require a personality transplant - or keep printing "Employee of the Week" certificates and wondering why nobody's showing up to collect them. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ --- ## FAQs **How does Gen Z view loyalty to a company?* Differently, and not because they're less capable of commitment. Gen Z watched their parents get laid off by email after decades of service, and they've spent their entire adolescence watching brands get dissected in real time for the gap between what they say and what they do. They'll do the job well. They just won't hand over a self to get it done.* **What does Gen Z really want from a workplace?* Real pay. Real flexibility. A career path that doesn't require adopting the company as a personality. Not a culture award, not a "we're a family" speech, and not an Employee of the Week certificate. The playbook that worked on previous generations - build belonging, get loyalty in return - was never tested against a generation this skeptical of institutions telling them who they are.* **What is a cult at work?* Structurally, it's an organization that demands undivided loyalty and hands back belonging only to the fully committed - the same definition sociologist Lewis Coser used for religious orders and the military. Nobody's suggesting your workplace is literally a cult. But the mechanics - rituals, shared language, identity fusion, a system engineered to be the most rewarding part of someone's life - are structurally the same ones. Whether that's fine, dangerous, or just how business works is worth sitting with.* ### Women Power. One Day a Year. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/women-run-hospitality-men-run-the-meeting/ Last updated: 2026-09-02T06:00:45.000Z *This post has more links and references than anything else on this blog. That is deliberate. Because this is not a topic where opinions are useful - including ours. And it is not a feminist manifesto. It is a data post. The research exists. The numbers have been collected, verified and published by some of the most credible institutions in the industry. Bored Hotelier is simply putting them in one place.* ### **One Day a Year Is Not Empowerment.** Every year, around International Women's Day, the hospitality industry produces a wave of LinkedIn posts. Quotes about empowerment. Photos from panel discussions. Hashtags. A carefully curated list of inspiring female leaders who have broken barriers and shattered ceilings and paved the way for the next generation. And then March 9th arrives. And everything goes back to normal. ### **The Hunger Games on the Way Up.** Women make up [58.6% of the hospitality workforce](https://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article139058.html?ref=boredhotelier.com) and [69% of hospitality management graduates](https://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article139058.html?ref=boredhotelier.com). They influence [82% of travel decisions](https://www.afar.com/magazine/7-women-hotel-gms-changing-hospitality-leadership?ref=boredhotelier.com). They are, by almost every measure, **the engine of this industry**. They hold [7% of its CEO positions](https://www.afar.com/magazine/7-women-hotel-gms-changing-hospitality-leadership?ref=boredhotelier.com). Not 7% fewer than men. 7% total. For every 16 male hospitality CEOs, there is one female one. At major hotel investment conferences - the rooms where capital is allocated, deals are made and the industry's future is decided - there are [4.2 male chiefs for every female chief](https://www.hertelier.com/post/women-hotel-leadership-stalled-2025-penn-state?ref=boredhotelier.com). In hotel investment and development roles, [men outnumber women 7.2 to 1](https://www.hertelier.com/post/women-hotel-leadership-stalled-2025-penn-state?ref=boredhotelier.com). In technology leadership, [6 to 1](https://www.hertelier.com/post/women-hotel-leadership-stalled-2025-penn-state?ref=boredhotelier.com). Women hold roughly one in four C-suite roles in hospitality - but those roles are concentrated overwhelmingly in Human Resources and Sales and Marketing. The functions closest to capital, ownership strategy and enterprise-wide decision-making remain, with very few exceptions, male. According to [Penn State's School of Hospitality Management 2025 Benchmarking Diversity report](https://hhd.psu.edu/sites/default/files/hospitality-management-hm/shm/hospitality-management-hmshm-representationinhotelcompanyleadership2025pdf.pdf?ref=boredhotelier.com) \- the most comprehensive analysis of hotel leadership representation available - women's overall representation in senior hotel leadership has stagnated from 2022 to 2025\. Progress has not just slowed. It has stopped. ### **Apparently Women Need Less Money…** [Women in tourism earn 14.7% less than men on average](https://www.equalityintourism.org/tourisms-gender-pay-gap-problem/?ref=boredhotelier.com), according to the UNWTO. In the United States, [women in hotel and accommodation roles earn approximately 70 cents on the dollar](https://www.hoteldive.com/news/hospitality-industry-gender-pay-gap-is-structural-analysis-finds/815101/?ref=boredhotelier.com) compared to men in the same roles, according to OysterLink's March 2026 analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. [Women bartenders earn $841 per week. Men in the same role earn $1,197](https://www.hrdive.com/news/hospitality-industry-gender-pay-gap-is-structural-analysis-finds/815034/?ref=boredhotelier.com). That is an annual gap of $18,512\. For the same job. Globally, [women earn approximately 83 cents for every dollar earned by men](https://www.equalpaytoday.org/gender-pay-gap-statistics/?ref=boredhotelier.com). At the current rate of progress, [the World Economic Forum estimates it will take 134 years to close the global gender pay gap](https://www.equalpaytoday.org/gender-pay-gap-statistics/?ref=boredhotelier.com) entirely. 134 years. The industry that runs on women will achieve pay parity somewhere around the year 2160\. Mark your calendars. ### **Tick the Box. Set Her Up to Fail.** **The pressure to demonstrate diversity** becomes intense enough that an appointment is made. A woman is placed in a senior role - not because she is the strongest candidate in a properly run process, but because the optics require it. Because the board needs a woman on it. Because the press release needs to say something. Because someone needs to be able to post the photo on International Women's Day. And then one of two things happens. Either the woman succeeds despite the lack of genuine support, infrastructure or sponsorship - proving something the organisation never quite acknowledges. Or she struggles, and the organisation uses it quietly as evidence that women β€œaren't quite ready” for these roles yet. Both outcomes serve the status quo. Neither serves the individual. This is not empowerment. It is casting! And the industry does a great deal of it. ### **The Chicken and the Egg.** The reason women are underrepresented at the top of the hospitality industry is not that they are less capable. It is that [for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women make the same step](https://lhc-international.com/article/female-leadership-in-hospitality/?ref=boredhotelier.com), according to McKinsey's 2024 Women in the Workplace report. That broken rung at the first level of management has a compounding effect across an entire career. Fewer women reach director level. Fewer reach VP. Fewer reach C-suite. And then the industry looks at the pipeline and says there aren't enough qualified women for the top jobs. There aren't enough qualified women in the top jobs because they weren't given enough of the foundational jobs to develop the experience that leads to the top jobs. ### **Discrimination Without Borders.** The hospitality industry's diversity problem is not limited to gender. [Black leaders hold just over 2% of director-to-CEO roles in hospitality](https://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article139058.html?ref=boredhotelier.com) \- a figure that has actually declined since 2022, despite Black individuals comprising 16.7% of the industry workforce. There is [one Black CEO or President for every 102 executives](https://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article139058.html?ref=boredhotelier.com) at that level. The conversation about LGBTQ+ representation, physical disability and neurodiversity in hospitality leadership is barely happening at all. The industry that prides itself on welcoming everyone through its front door has a great deal of work to do on who it puts in the offices upstairs. ### **Turns Out Diversity Pays. Who Knew.** The business case for diverse leadership is not a feeling. It is documented. [Companies where women hold more than 30% of leadership positions are 25% more likely to achieve above-average profitability](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogersands/2025/04/01/women-hospitality-leaders-gain-ground-but-still-face-obstacles/?ref=boredhotelier.com), according to McKinsey. [Diverse leadership teams make better decisions 87% of the time](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogersands/2025/04/01/women-hospitality-leaders-gain-ground-but-still-face-obstacles/?ref=boredhotelier.com), according to Harvard Business Review. [Only 6 of the top 100 companies globally have achieved a 50/50 gender balance in senior leadership](https://high5test.com/women-in-leadership-statistics/?ref=boredhotelier.com) \- and they are not suffering for it. The question is not whether diverse leadership works. The research settled that. The question is why an industry that knows this, talks about this, posts about this every March, and graduates more women than men from its management programmes - still hasn't fixed it. The answer is simple: the people who benefit most from the current structure are the ones making the decisions about whether to change it. ### **FFS. Be Human.** The goal is not a quota. It is not a diversity slide in an ownership presentation. It is not a panel at a hospitality conference where four women discuss the challenges of being a woman in hospitality while the investment decisions are made by men at the dinner afterwards. The goal is an industry where a woman, a Black professional, an LGBTQ+ individual or a person with a physical disability is promoted because they are **the best person for the role** \- not because someone needs a photo for International Women's Day and not in spite of who they are. Not to score a point. Not to avoid a headline. Because it is simply **the right thing to do** \- and because the data, overwhelmingly, says it is also the profitable thing to do. The industry that runs on women deserves to be run by them too. By the ones who have earned it. Which, given what the pipeline actually contains, is rather a lot of them. If you want to do more than read the numbers, the [Women in Hospitality Leadership Alliance](https://whlalliance.org/?ref=boredhotelier.com) is a real, active consortium of over 30 industry organisations working specifically on this - not a panel, not a hashtag, an actual coalition with a 2,000-plus speaker directory of senior women across the industry. Worth a look, whether you're hiring, speaking, or just tired of seeing the same four names on every panel. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* --- ## FAQs **What's the difference between the glass ceiling and the broken rung?* The glass ceiling describes the barrier women hit near the very top - the C-suite, the boardroom. The broken rung happens much earlier: the first promotion from entry-level to manager, where only 81 women advance for every 100 men. The broken rung matters more, structurally, because it's the leak at the bottom of the pipe. Fix the glass ceiling and you've helped the handful of women who made it that far. Fix the broken rung and you change how many women are even in the running twenty years later.* **Why are there so few women in hotel leadership?* The core problem is what McKinsey calls the "broken rung" - for every 100 men promoted to their first management role, only 81 women make the same step. That gap compounds at every level above it. By the time the industry looks at the pipeline for CEO candidates, the shortage is the direct consequence of decades of unequal promotion decisions below. The pipeline isn't thin because women aren't capable. It's thin because they weren't given the same opportunities to build the experience that leads to the top.* **What can actually be done to promote more women into hospitality leadership?* The data points to one clear lever: fix the broken rung, not the glass ceiling. That means auditing who actually gets the first promotion to manager, not just who's on the C-suite succession plan. It means moving more women into roles with real P&L and asset-management exposure - the functions leadership actually gets built from - rather than concentrating them in HR and Marketing. Mentorship programmes and panel discussions help visibility. They don't fix a promotion pipeline that's broken at entry level.* **How do you get promoted in the hospitality industry as a woman?* The data points to one consistent pattern: proximity to revenue and financial decision-making accelerates promotion faster than almost anything else. Women who move into roles tied to P&L responsibility - commercial, revenue, operations, asset management - advance more consistently than those who stay in functions where women are already well represented, like HR and Sales. Find the roles closest to how the business makes and spends money. That is where decisions get made and where careers get built.* **Do women earn less than men in hospitality?* Yes - significantly. Women in tourism earn 14.7% less than men on average, according to the UNWTO. In the United States, women in hotel roles earn approximately 70 cents on the dollar compared to men in equivalent positions. Women bartenders earn $18,512 less per year than male counterparts doing the same job, according to OysterLink's 2026 analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The gap is smallest in front-line roles and widest in management - where it matters most.* **Is the hospitality industry good for women's careers?* It depends entirely on the organisation. Before joining any hospitality company, look at who actually sits in the C-suite, who runs the investment and development function, and what the gender ratio looks like above director level. The org chart tells you more than the careers page.* **Which hospitality companies have the most women in leadership?* Among the standout examples: Peregrine Hospitality has achieved 62% women on its senior leadership team. Extended Stay America's workforce is 65% female with strong representation at leadership level. Among the major chains, Marriott International has reached 47% women at global VP+ level and 57% among CEO direct reports. These are exceptions - not the industry standard. The industry benchmark covering 1,439 hotel companies tells a different story: women hold roughly one in four C-suite roles, concentrated overwhelmingly in HR and Sales. In investment, development and technology - the functions closest to capital and enterprise decision-making - men outnumber women by more than seven to one.* **Which hotel companies are the most diverse and inclusive?* Among the major chains, Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt and IHG consistently score at or near 100 on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index for LGBTQ+ inclusion. Hilton has been recognised as a top disability-friendly employer. Marriott has reached 47% women at global VP+ level. Wyndham launched BOLD by Wyndham to support Black hotel ownership, and IHG committed over $30 million through its LIFT programme for underrepresented groups in hotel development. Among smaller operators, Peregrine Hospitality stands out with 62% women in senior leadership. However, most of what major chains publish are programme announcements and stated targets. The gap between what companies commit to on a press release and what independent data shows about actual representation is - consistently, across the industry - significant. Intentions and outcomes are not the same thing.* ### Welcome to the Outrage Economy. Only the Paranoid Survive. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/welcome-to-the-outrage-economy-survivor-takes-all/ Last updated: 2026-08-26T06:00:54.000Z In 1996, Andy Grove - the legendary CEO of Intel - published a book called *Only the Paranoid Survive*. He was writing about how industries get blindsided by massive technological shifts and why the companies that make it through are the ones that never stop asking what could go wrong. He was talking about the technology industry in the 1990s. He had no idea how well it would age as advice for marketing teams in 2026. ### The Hall of Shame. In 2017, **Pepsi** spent what is estimated to be several million dollars producing a commercial in which supermodel Kendall Jenner walked away from a photo shoot, joined a street protest, and resolved the tension between demonstrators and police officers by handing one of them a can of Pepsi. The crowd cheered. Everyone smiled. The message, apparently, was that carbonated beverages could fix systemic racial injustice. The ad was pulled within 24 hours. Critics accused the brand of trivialising the Black Lives Matter movement - reducing genuine civil rights protest to a backdrop for selling drinks. Pepsi apologised for "*missing the mark*." The internet had already archived it permanently as one of the most tone-deaf campaigns in the history of consumer marketing. In 2021, **Burger King UK** tweeted *"Women belong in the kitchen"* on International Women's Day. The subsequent tweets - explaining that this was a deliberately provocative opener to announce a culinary scholarship programme for women - never caught up. The first one had already done the damage. A 30% spike in negative brand sentiment in 24 hours. Burger King deleted the tweet and apologised. The scholarship was barely mentioned in the coverage. In 2022, **Balenciaga** released a holiday campaign featuring children posed in bedrooms alongside the brand's products - among them, teddy bears in bondage-inspired harnesses and leather straps. A second campaign, released days later, contained documents referencing a Supreme Court decision on child pornography laws as a prop in the background of a product shoot. The brand claimed both were unintentional. The internet did not accept this. The hashtags ***#burnbalenciaga*** and **#cancelbalenciaga** accumulated over 300 million views on TikTok. Two flagship stores were vandalized. Celebrity brand ambassadors went quiet. Dua Lipa dropped the brand's outfits from her concert tour. Bella Hadid deleted her campaign post. Demna, the creative director, was dropped from the Business of Fashion's Global Voices Award shortlist. The brand fell out of the Lyst Index's top ten for the first time in years. The reputational damage was, in the words of the company itself, the result of "*a series of grievous errors*." In 2023, **Bud Light** sent a personalised can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to mark 365 days of her public transition - part of a broader effort by the brand to evolve beyond its traditional core audience of blue-collar male consumers. The partnership triggered an immediate and organised boycott from that core audience, who experienced the move as a betrayal. Country music stars pulled endorsements. Bars stopped stocking it. Distributors reported unprecedented returns. Market share collapsed from 10.3% to 6.5% - over $300 million in annual lost revenue. The parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev lost $4 billion in market capitalisation in weeks. Two senior marketing executives were placed on indefinite leave. As of early 2025, sales remained roughly 40% below pre-boycott levels. The brand had tried to evolve. Its core audience experienced it as abandonment. Both things were true simultaneously - and the outrage economy didn't wait for anyone to reconcile them. In 2023, **Zara** launched a campaign called "*The Jacket*." Shot in September - before the October 7 Hamas attacks and the subsequent Israeli military response in Gaza - the campaign featured a model posing in what was intended to be a sculptor's studio, surrounded by broken plaster, dismembered mannequins, and figures wrapped in white cloth. By December, when the campaign launched, the images looked nothing like a sculptor's studio to anyone following the news from Gaza. They looked like rubble and body bags. The hashtag **#BoycottZara** trended immediately. Over 260,000 comments flooded Zara's Instagram. Zara pulled the campaign and issued an apology that made things considerably worse: *"Unfortunately, some customers felt offended by these images."* Placing the problem with the audience rather than the brand generated a second wave of outrage that dwarfed the first. In 2024, **Adidas** re-released its SL 72 sneaker - originally worn at the 1972 Munich Olympics - as a nostalgia campaign. The brand chose Bella Hadid, a model of Palestinian origin and a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights, as the face of the campaign. The campaign launched on the anniversary of the Munich massacre, in which eleven Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian militants. Nobody at Adidas appears to have connected these three facts before approving the campaign. The backlash was immediate. Both Adidas and Hadid apologised. Hadid's statement included: *"Adidas should have known, and I should have done more research."* The campaign was pulled. Adidas executives then flew to Mexico - separately - to apologise to Indigenous communities for a sandal design that had appropriated Zapotec huarache craftsmanship without acknowledgment or partnership. Adidas was having a busy year. In 2017, **Dove** posted a Facebook ad showing a Black woman removing her shirt to reveal a white woman underneath. The intention was to communicate transformation. The execution read as something considerably darker. Dove - a brand that had spent a decade building its identity around authentic, inclusive beauty - apologised and removed the ad. The damage to that specific brand equity took years to repair. In 2018, **H&M** featured a Black child wearing a hoodie labelled "*Coolest Monkey in the Jungle*" in a product image on its website. The image was spotted, screenshotted and posted online. Celebrity boycotts followed within hours. Store protests broke out in multiple countries. H&M apologised and pledged to strengthen its internal review process. The question of how the image made it through production, approval and publishing without a single person flagging it remains, as far as anyone knows, unanswered. ### **The Gaza Boycotts. The Outrage Economy Goes Global.** When **McDonald's Israel** announced it had donated thousands of free meals to Israeli military personnel in October 2023, the response was not limited to Israel. It was global, immediate and sustained. Customers who had eaten at McDonald's their entire lives stopped - across the Middle East, Southeast Asia and beyond. Not because their local franchise had anything to do with the decision in Israel. Franchises in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain and Turkey issued statements distancing themselves and collectively pledged $3 million in humanitarian relief. It didn't matter. The logo was the same. McDonald's global sales growth in the Middle East, India and China fell from 16.5% in the same quarter the previous year to 0.7%. **Starbucks** followed a similar trajectory - accelerated when the company sued its own workers' union after it posted "*Solidarity with Palestine*" on X. The Middle East franchisee cut 2,000 staff. The company's stock fell. Its CEO cited "*misperceptions about our position*" as a contributing factor to declining US sales. Starbucks had not taken a position on the war. The perception that it had was enough. The boycotts extended to brands with no direct connection to the conflict at all - listed on social media simply for being American, or for any historical business relationship with Israel. **Coca-Cola**, which had been officially boycotted by the Arab League from 1967 to 1991 for building a bottling plant in Israel, found itself on boycott lists again decades later. Turkey's parliament voted to remove it from government buildings and restaurants. Coke's Turkish distributor reported a 22% drop in sales. These boycotts did not require a marketing failure. They required proximity - real or perceived - to a position the audience had already decided was unacceptable. ### QuitGPT. Now You Love Me, Now You Don't. On 27 February 2026, Anthropic publicly refused a Pentagon deal, declining to strip out restrictions barring its AI from mass domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons systems that could engage targets without human oversight. The Trump administration banned Anthropic from government use the same day. Hours later, OpenAI's Sam Altman posted: *"Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network. In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome."* Users didn't buy it. A boycott movement called QuitGPT gathered over 1.5 million participants within days, organised through cancelled subscriptions, social posts and a dedicated site. On Reddit, a thread titled "Cancel and Delete ChatGPT" became one of r/ChatGPT's most upvoted posts of the year. Within 24 to 48 hours, Claude - Anthropic's own product - climbed to #1 on the US Apple App Store, displacing ChatGPT for the first time in its history. Altman later admitted the timing "looked opportunistic and sloppy." OpenAI had made a business decision. Its users experienced it as a values betrayal. The outrage economy processed it in hours. ### Hotels. You're Next. The hospitality industry has watched all of the above from a comfortable distance, reassured by the belief that hotels are somehow less exposed than consumer brands. They are not. They are simply, so far, luckier. **Marriott** \- the world's largest hotel company - made a public pledge in 2018 to source 100% cage-free eggs across all its global properties by the end of 2025\. The deadline passed. Marriott was less than 50% cage-free globally, had released no updated timeline, and quietly removed any mention of eggs from its public sustainability goals. The response: coordinated global protests outside Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott and Sheraton properties from Philadelphia to Kolkata to SΓ£o Paulo to Jakarta. Activists in bathrobes and chicken costumes. Chalk messages on pavements outside luxury hotels. Field visits to farms allegedly supplying Marriott properties documenting dead birds, eggs surrounded by faeces, fly infestations. Marriott didn't run a bad campaign. It made a promise. And then it quietly stopped talking about it. In the outrage economy, that is sufficient. **Hilton** discovered in January 2026 that the franchise model is no protection against brand-level consequences. A Hampton Inn in Minnesota - independently owned and operated - canceled reservations for Department of Homeland Security agents, citing their immigration enforcement work. DHS posted screenshots of the email exchange on X. Boycott calls flooded social media within hours, with commentators explicitly comparing it to Bud Light and predicting similar long-term brand damage. Hilton was caught in an impossible position: defend the franchise and face a right-wing boycott; defend the government agents and face a left-wing one. Hilton ultimately cut ties with the property entirely. A franchise operator made a political decision. The parent brand wore the consequences nationally. **APA Hotels** in Japan offers the most instructive counterpoint of all. In 2017, the Japanese budget chain placed books written by its CEO in all guest rooms - books that denied the Nanjing Massacre and other wartime atrocities. Chinese tourists called for a boycott. The story went viral across Chinese social media. The Chinese National Tourism Administration issued a formal warning. APA's CEO refused to back down. Her response: *"There has been no impact. Occupancy was strong in both January and February, achieving record-high results."* Chinese guests, she noted, were only 5% of APA's customer base. The boycott faded. The brand survived. Business continued. The APA case is not a success story for denial - it is a lesson in **audience mathematics**. **The outrage economy only destroys brands when the outrage comes from the people the brand actually needs.** APA's core audience didn't care. Bud Light's did. Which is precisely why every hotel brand should be asking, before any campaign, any pledge, any franchise decision, any social post: if this goes wrong - and the outrage economy decides it has - what will be the scale of losses? ### **The Pattern...** 1. The brand had a concept. 2. Someone approved it. 3. Several rounds of review happened. 4. Legal signed off. 5. The campaign launched. 6. … …And then the internet saw it differently. This is the outrage economy. It does not care what you meant. It does not read the press release explaining the context. It does not wait for the second tweet, the follow-up statement, or the CEO's sincere apology. It takes the thing it sees - the image, the headline, the three-second clip - and it runs. The speed at which outrage travels has no historical precedent. Pepsi's ad was live for less than 24 hours. In that time it had been seen, screenshotted, dissected, mocked, reported on and permanently archived. The apology came too late because there is no such thing as *not too late* anymore. There is only *before it goes viral* and *after*. What makes the outrage economy particularly dangerous is not that brands make mistakes. They always have. It is that the audience has fundamentally changed its relationship with brands. According to Edelman's 2024 Trust Barometer, **84% of consumers say they need to share values with a brand before they will buy from it.** A brand is no longer just a product. It is a statement of identity. And when a brand does something that conflicts with that identity - intentionally or not - the customer doesn't just stop buying. They announce it publicly and recruit others to do the same. ### Intent 0 : Perception 1. Burger King meant to celebrate women. Pepsi meant to align with social movements. Dove meant to show transformation. Adidas meant to celebrate an anniversary. Zara meant to sell a jacket. H&M meant nothing in particular - they just didn't look at the image carefully enough. Marriott meant to transition to cage-free eggs. OpenAI meant to secure a government contract. McDonald's Israel meant to support its military. None of that mattered. The outrage economy does not run a fact-check before it fires. It processes what it sees in the first three seconds, distributes it at a speed no PR team can match, and moves on - leaving the brand to spend months and sometimes years rebuilding what took decades to create. For hospitality brands, the lesson is not to be paralysed by the possibility of getting it wrong. The lesson is to build the kind of internal culture where someone always reviews and questions everything, before the campaign goes live, before the post is published, before the sustainability pledge is announced. ***How will this look to someone who doesn't know what we meant?*** Because the outrage economy never knows what you meant. And it doesn't need to. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* > *P.S. If you're fully outsourcing your marketing to AI and relying solely on its suggestions - you're on a path to the *Hall of Shame* sooner than you think. πŸ˜‰* # FAQs **What is the outrage economy?* The outrage economy refers to the social media-driven cycle where brands, public figures or institutions face rapid, large-scale public backlash - often regardless of intent. The speed at which outrage travels, amplified by screenshots, hashtags and sharing, means a single campaign, post or decision can cause irreversible brand damage within hours. The outrage economy doesn't require malice - it only requires an audience that interprets something negatively and a platform to distribute that interpretation instantly.* **Can a brand recover from a social media boycott?* Sometimes - but rarely quickly and never cheaply. The speed of recovery depends almost entirely on whether the brand's core audience was part of the boycott. APA Hotels in Japan survived a major Chinese-led boycott because Chinese guests were only 5% of their customer base. Bud Light has not recovered - years later, sales remain below pre-boycott levels - because the boycott came from its core audience. Starbucks, McDonald's and Disney have all faced significant sustained revenue impact from boycott campaigns in recent years.* **What is the difference between the outrage economy and cancel culture?* Cancel culture and the outrage economy are related but not identical. Cancel culture typically refers to the withdrawal of support from a public figure or brand following behaviour deemed unacceptable - the audience decides someone is no longer worth their attention or money. The outrage economy is the broader system that makes cancellation possible and profitable: the social media infrastructure, the algorithmic amplification of anger, and the attention economy that rewards outrage with engagement. Cancel culture is the outcome. The outrage economy is the machine that produces it.* **What are other names for the outrage economy or cancel culture?* Several terms describe the same or overlapping phenomena. *Call-out culture* refers specifically to the public naming and shaming of individuals or brands for perceived wrongdoing. *Virtue signalling* describes the performative aspect - the public display of moral outrage as a social signal rather than genuine conviction. *Rage bait* describes content deliberately designed to provoke outrage for engagement. *Brand jacking* refers to when a brand's campaign is hijacked by an unintended narrative. *Reputational contagion* describes how outrage spreads from one brand to adjacent ones - as happened when American brands broadly faced boycotts in Muslim-majority markets during the Gaza conflict regardless of their individual positions. All of these are symptoms of the same underlying dynamic: the internet's ability to amplify, distribute and monetise anger faster than any brand can respond.* **What does PR crisis mean?* A PR crisis is any moment when public perception of a brand shifts fast, negatively, and largely out of the brand's control - a campaign, a decision, a leaked internal email, a single tweet. It doesn't require the brand to have done anything illegal or even genuinely wrong. It only requires enough people deciding, in real time, that something looks bad.* **Is this post full of real examples, or is this all theoretical?* Every example above happened. Pepsi, Burger King, Balenciaga, Bud Light, Zara, Adidas, Dove, H&M, McDonald's, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, OpenAI, Marriott, Hilton, and APA Hotels are all real brands, real campaigns, and real consequences - not hypotheticals built to prove a point.* ### The 1-1-1 Rule. Or How to Stay Sane in Hospitality. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-1-1-1-rule-or-how-to-stay-sane-in-hospitality/ Last updated: 2026-08-19T06:00:10.000Z Ceiling staring. You finish a long shift - or more likely, a long day that bled into a long evening - and you lie down and your brain doesn't. It is already planning tomorrow. It is replaying today. The conversation that went sideways. The guest who left dissatisfied. The email you should have worded differently. The account that hasn't responded. The complaint that came in at 9pm. The rate decision you second-guessed at midnight. This is the hospitality professional's version of insomnia. It doesn't announce itself as stress. It announces itself as productivity. Your brain is working. It just forgot to stop. ### Identity Crisis At some point in a hospitality career - usually gradually - the job stops being something you do and starts being something you are. A service failure stops feeling like an operational gap. It feels like a personal failure. A guest who says they were disappointed with their stay isn't giving feedback to the hotel - they're giving feedback to you about you. An account that declines a meeting request because they're not looking to add new properties isn't making a commercial decision - they're rejecting you. This is the **trap**. And it is a very easy trap to fall into in an industry that runs on personal service, emotional engagement and the genuine belief that what you do matters. It does matter. But you are not the hotel you work for. You cannot be held personally accountable for the experience of every single guest on every single day. The hotel has hundreds of moving parts, dozens of departments, thousands of daily interactions - and you are one person. A good one, presumably. But one. The moment you forget this distinction is the moment the job starts consuming you rather than fulfilling you. ### **My 1-1-1 Rule** Suzy Welch, the American business writer, introduced a framework called the [10/10/10 rule](https://suzywelch.com/books/10-10-10?ref=boredhotelier.com) \- asking whether a decision will matter in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years. The principle is sound: time horizon changes everything. What feels catastrophic in the moment is often irrelevant by next week. There's also the [42% rule](https://www.burnoutbook.net/?ref=boredhotelier.com) \- the idea that roughly 42% of your day should go to rest and recovery. Useful, if you have the luxury of measuring your day in percentages. Most hospitality shifts don't work that way. Mine's built for the version of you standing at reception at 11pm, not the version planning tomorrow's calendar. The version I use in hospitality is tighter. When something is ruining your sleep, your mood or your morning - when you're losing your temper or your perspective over a situation at work - ask three questions: > Will this matter in **1 day**? Will this matter in **1 month**? Will this matter in **1 year**? Most of the time, in most situations, the answer is: *yes β€” no β€” no.* If the last two answers are no - and they usually are - let it go. It will be old news in 48 hours. Something else will happen. Life in a hotel always moves on to the next thing, usually faster than you'd like. The complaint that consumed your Tuesday will be replaced by something entirely different by Thursday. The account that said no this quarter might say yes next year. The guest who left three stars will be forgotten before your next shift briefing. Choose your battles carefully. And learn - genuinely learn, not just intellectually understand - to release the things that won't matter very soon. ### Perpetuum Mobile Rising labour costs. Ownership pressure. Comp set performance. The account that went to a competitor. The review that was unfair. The team member who resigned without warning. The system that went down on a Tuesday afternoon. All of it is real. Some of it deserves your full attention. Most of it, viewed from one month out, was noise. The hoteliers who last - who build long careers without being hollowed out by the job - are not the ones who care less. They are the ones who have learned which things deserve to keep them up at night and which things deserve to be put down before they walk through the front door. That distinction is a skill. It takes time to develop. And it is not taught in hotel schools. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* ### The Best Sustainability Solutions Are There. Why Can't Hotels Use Them? URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-best-sustainability-solutions-are-there-why-cant-hotels-use-them/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:45:42.000Z Every hotel operator's inbox is full of emails from suppliers offering solutions and a Zoom call. Sustainable packaging, refill systems, energy monitoring, waste solutions - real companies, real products, competitive pricing. Usually locally located - so fast, cheap logistics too are an added bonus, plus come on - you'd be supporting a local business. It doesn't get better, does it? Except... Here's what happens next, if you work for a managed property rather than a franchise of some big international chain: NOTHING. Not because the product isn't good. Because you don't get to decide. Everything - and I mean everything - runs through an approved supplier list, set at regional or global procurement level, usually a very long way above the property you actually run. Want to print a brochure? Walk outside, print it yourself for $10\. Except you can't. You have to use the approved vendor, whose quote starts at $19\. Same story for every single thing the hotel buys. It gets worse, if it's another must-have sustainability solution. Try to push for an exception and you'll spend a year of your life on it, and earn yourself a quiet reputation as a "difficult operator" - which is not the kind of reputation that helps a career. And this, my friends, this is the actual reason hotel operations are so expensive. Not inflation. Not the cost of doing business. A near-monopoly situation, where a single approved supplier can charge $10 for a kilo of potatoes that doesn't cost even $1 in a market - and nobody with the authority to change that has any real incentive to do so. Which raises the obvious question. Is it that nobody at the top cares enough to renegotiate, or to widen the approved list and let a bit of competition back in? Or is there a reason - a person, a relationship, a strategy - why the list stays exactly as short as it is? I genuinely don't know. I just know the sustainable, cheaper option may have landed in your inbox again this morning. And you probably still can't buy it. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* --- *P.S. I know - I know. I'll get a lot of angry procurement people into my DMs now, talking to me about legal, insurance, vetted safe suppliers, etc. etc. I am not suggesting to bypass all those processes. I'm suggesting to expand the network, and let a bit of real competition do what it does best - delivering the best deal to hotel operators, instead of letting suppliers get arrogant knowing they're the only option. (Not even the best one, most of the time.)* ### The Sustainability Question With Four Right Answers URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-sustainability-question-with-four-right-answers/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:44:31.000Z Let me set the scene. The RFP lands. Rates, dates, cancellation terms, the usual. Then, near the bottom, a section that wasn't there five years ago: **Sustainability & ESG Compliance.** Do you have a recognized green certification? Give a checkbox. Do you track energy consumption per room-night? Give a checkbox. Do you have a food waste reduction program? Give a checkbox, or a line for "please describe." Some forms are kinder than others. They don't just ask the question - they hand you the acceptable answers. A dropdown. A multiple choice. Pick the option that gets you through the round. I have filled in more of these than I can count. Nobody has ever called to check. Nobody has ever asked for the underlying data behind the box I ticked. Nobody has ever visited the property to confirm the certificate on the wall matches the one in the form. The form gets submitted, the RFP moves to round two, and the sustainability section becomes a permanent, unexamined fact about my hotel - because I said so. If the rebid comes, it's always about the rates or the cancellation policy. Never about the sustainability bit. Because nobody is actually interested in mandating sustainability. Procurement's job is to get the best rate, not to make sure the sustainability box was ticked honestly. And nobody is ever going to check - because what happens if they do? They'd need to hire more people into procurement, just to verify every supplier's claims. They'd need to walk away from the cheaper accommodation supplier whose kitchen still runs on diesel, and pay more for the one with a genuine certification. Now multiply that across every country a global corporate account contracts in. That's millions in additional spend. Not going to happen. So we tick the box, and we ask no questions - so we never have to hear an answer we don't like. That's the approach. That's sustainability in hospitality in a nutshell. Happy RFP season, everyone. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ ### Hotel Budgeting 2027: What to Focus On URL: https://boredhotelier.com/hotel-budgeting-2027-what-to-focus-on/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:45:18.000Z *Global STR figures, region by region, and the ideas worth thinking about before you build the numbers.* We've all stayed at that one hotel. The front desk agent doubles as the operator and the reservations agent. The lady who serves breakfast in the morning transforms into the spa receptionist, or the concierge, by eleven. Housekeepers only clean rooms between 12:00 and 16:00, because they're part-time and paid by the hour. If you run a massive hotel, maybe part of an international chain, you probably thought: *aww, that's so cute.* Well. Depending on which part of the world you're in, you may want to revisit those cherished memories and pick up an idea or two. Beginning of May, [I wrote about budgeting for 2027](https://boredhotelier.com/budgeting-for-2027-heres-how-to-think-about-it/) with a warning built into the title: every forecast on the table had been written before 28 February, two days before the world it was modeling stopped existing. Here's the update. STR [published a fresh global forecast on 29 May](https://www.costar.com/products/str-benchmark/resources/data-insights-blog/global-hotel-market-forecast-assumptions-q2?ref=boredhotelier.com). It assumed the ceasefire declared on 8 April would hold "broadly in place" through the end of summer. It didn't. The ceasefire collapsed on 9 July. By the end of the month the conflict had widened - strikes on US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, missiles fired at Jordan, a Houthi blockade threat on Saudi shipping in the Red Sea, and on 30 July, Egypt got pulled in too. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is running at a fraction of pre-war levels. So yes - another forecast, already overtaken by events. But this one is still worth reading closely, because it's more specific and more useful than anything published before it, even where the headline assumption didn't hold. #### **STR's numbers, region by region.** **Middle East.** Dubai occupancy hitting a ceiling around 40% through summer. Abu Dhabi closer to 60%. Recovery picks up pace from Q4 2026, but full occupancy recovery to 2025 levels isn't expected until 2028 - and ADR recovery lags even further behind that (2029!). Jeddah is the quiet exception, holding up well thanks to distance from the conflict and uninterrupted Umrah and Hajj traffic. Riyadh is the hardest hit, given how much of its demand depends on international corporate travel tied to the giga-projects. **Europe.** +1.4% RevPAR for 2026, downgraded to +0.2% for 2027\. Modest, and getting more modest. **Asia Pacific.** +4.4% RevPAR for 2026, +2.2% for 2027\. The strongest region on the board. **United States.** [+2.8% RevPAR for 2026, +1.6% for 2027](https://www.costar.com/products/str-benchmark/resources/data-insights-blog/us-hotel-forecast-assumptions-q2-2026?ref=boredhotelier.com) \- upgraded on strong early-year demand, World Cup tailwinds and tighter supply growth. Worth noting: even this forecast explicitly names "a longer-than-expected conflict with Iran" as a headwind it's already pricing in. Nobody's far enough away to ignore this. *And if you want more on how STR-adjacent data gets used and misused, I would highly recommend* [*this post*](https://boredhotelier.com/how-rgi-is-killing-your-business/)*.* #### **If you're in the Middle East - a straight answer.** Forget growth against 2025\. Not this year. Not in 2027\. Not even in 2028 by the looks of it. There will very likely be growth against 2026 - 2026 is heading toward being this region's version of 2020, the year nobody benchmarks against again. But 2025 is the number everyone will still be comparing you to when you present your budget, and for the overwhelming majority of hotels, that comparison won't be kind. The exceptions are properties that weren't even open yet in 2025, or that were badly mismanaged that year - anyone else is fighting a number they're not going to beat. #### **Now, some food for thought - not a playbook, just what's worth turning over.** **Catering is your floor right now.** People and corporates are more limited in long-haul travel - cost, insecurity, both. Meetings, award ceremonies, gala dinners, incentive parties - all of it can happen locally if you're positioned to host it. *(Worth revisiting how much of your banquet space is actually earning its keep* [*here*](https://boredhotelier.com/the-ballroom-trap/)*.)* And it doesn't have to stay on property either - outside catering, taking your F&B operation to the client's own venue, is worth pushing harder than usual while corporate travel budgets stay tight. **Even outside the region, know how your guests actually get to you.** If you're in Europe, the US, LatAm or Asia and a meaningful share of your long-haul travelers route through Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Jeddah or Manama, that's your exposure - even if your hotel is nowhere near the conflict. Check it. Build a contingency. Keep an eye on flight price trends into your market, not just your own booking pace. **Where accommodation spend sits in a shrinking travel budget is worth watching.** There's research from [Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics company](https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/travel-spending-in-cities/?ref=boredhotelier.com), suggesting travelers may protect accommodation spend even as they cut elsewhere in the trip - but I'd treat that as a hypothesis to test against your own segment, not a given. If you're running an ultra-luxury property, this probably isn't your problem - that guest isn't trading down. It's the midscale to upper-upscale segment where this question actually matters, and where it's worth checking against your own forward data before you bake anything into ADR assumptions. **Be honest about buying power, segment by segment.** Oil prices feeding through to the broader cost of everything should keep every hotelier a little bit awake at night this budgeting season. Don't build flat ADR growth across every segment - look at who's actually still able to pay more, and who isn't. **The rest of the world isn't just losing out - some of it is coming out ahead.** The Middle East disruption is genuinely bad for the region and for markets that lean on it for connectivity. But people still want holidays. Destination weddings still get planned. Big corporates still want their incentive trips somewhere. Asia has the inventory, the destinations and the infrastructure to absorb a lot of that demand, and the Q2 data already shows it happening - Sanya alone is now forecasting close to 12% RevPAR growth for 2026, partly *because* routes west and through the Middle East are restricted. Europe will catch some of the overflow too, though weather and visa friction limit how much. Expect 2027 travel to look a lot more localized generally - people finding it easier to stay closer to home than to go the distance. **Marketing budgets will do what they always do.** You'll build a number based on projected topline, and you'll spend a different number by year-end, same as every year. Let it flex with the percentage your strategy normally runs on. **Payroll. This is where it gets real.** Owners will want their bottom line protected - obviously. And the cost of running a hotel keeps climbing: electricity, water, fuel-driven price increases across the board, and yes, some of the sustainability initiatives everyone's been asked to fund are adding real operating cost too. If the topline can't absorb all of that and still leave a decent EBITDA, it's payroll that ends up carrying the difference. A few places I'd genuinely start looking: - Hybrid roles, and clustering senior management across properties where it's genuinely feasible. - Outsourcing engineering, housekeeping, or any other department that suits your hotel's specific operation - not a blanket move, just whatever actually makes sense for you. - Outsourcing pieces of marketing too. The tech has moved fast enough that a genuinely strong AI setup can now cover what used to take a graphic designer, a social media manager and a digital marketing manager working separately. Worth pressure-testing whether you still need three people or one person and the right tools. - Actually watching how your teams spend their time before deciding headcount. If five people are handling group and event proposals and contracts, look at what's eating the most hours in that process. If the right technology can absorb it, use the tech and reduce the manpower - or repurpose the people you free up somewhere that still needs a human. - Reevaluating sales manning against your actual forecasted segmentation, not last year's org chart. - Looking at clustering the sales department itself - or if it's already clustered, whether more properties should be added to that cluster. - Considering whether certain higher-cost sales positions in key source markets are better replaced by third-party sales representation companies that already have the relationships there - which also cuts the cost of travel to that source market, not just the headcount cost. - Looking hard at your reservations department too - how much of that volume can genuinely shift to digital self-service channels, and what that means for the size of the team you actually need behind it. - And being properly honest, more honest than usual, about the real ROI on every trade show your team attends every year, against what it actually costs to send them. And if you have outsourced restaurants, retail, salons, car rental desks - check what they're actually paying you against 2025, including anything hidden in the lease. Some operators cover their own utilities. A lot don't. If you're running a revenue-share model with an outsourced F&B outlet specifically, check whether the split is still fair against the real cost of whatever your hotel is contractually providing them - utilities, space, back-of-house support, liquor, all of it. Run it down the P&L properly and compare against the historical numbers, not just the headline percentage. **Start moving spend toward brand.com now, not later.** Third-party commission gets scrutinized every year - but for 2027, it's going to be next level. Building genuine direct conversion doesn't happen overnight. If this is already meant to be part of your 2027 strategy - and it should be - revise it properly, starting today. Not a Q4 task. Not a New Year resolution. #### **Conclusion.** We're practically living in a new world right now, and the hotel operators who come out of this budgeting season in decent shape will treat it that way. The useful exercise isn't tweaking last year's numbers - it's imagining you're opening this hotel for the first time, today, in the world as it actually is now, and redesigning every angle of the business from there. Org charts, departments, channel mix, all of it. Applying old assumptions to a genuinely new set of conditions is unlikely to get a lot of hotels and owners where they need to be in 2027. Remember that small hotel from the beginning - the one receptionist who's also the operator, the duty manager and the reservations agent, the breakfast lady who becomes the spa receptionist by eleven. Nobody's suggesting you actually run a 400-room international property that way. But the instinct behind it - one person, doing more than one job - is worth taking a lot more seriously than "aww, cute" this budgeting season. These are a few threads, not a full plan - just what's genuinely worth turning over while you build your own numbers this season. Take what's useful, leave the rest, and watch the data more than the headlines. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* *P.S. - If budgeting season is genuinely new territory for you, or you just want to refresh the basics before diving into any of the above,* [*Xotels has a solid step-by-step primer*](https://www.xotels.com/en/blog/hotel-budget-plan?ref=boredhotelier.com) *worth a look.* #### **Sources:** STR/CoStar - [Global Hotel Market Forecast Assumptions – Q2 2026](https://www.costar.com/products/str-benchmark/resources/data-insights-blog/global-hotel-market-forecast-assumptions-q2?ref=boredhotelier.com), 29 May 2026 STR/CoStar - [U.S. Hotel Forecast Assumptions – Q2 2026](https://www.costar.com/products/str-benchmark/resources/data-insights-blog/us-hotel-forecast-assumptions-q2-2026?ref=boredhotelier.com) Tourism Economics (an Oxford Economics company) - [Travel Spending in Cities](https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/travel-spending-in-cities/?ref=boredhotelier.com) Xotels - [Hotel Budget Plan Guide](https://www.xotels.com/en/blog/hotel-budget-plan?ref=boredhotelier.com) --- ## **FAQs** **What does STR's Q2 2026 forecast say about Middle East hotel performance?* The May 2026 forecast projected Dubai occupancy capped around 40% through summer, with full recovery to 2025 levels not expected until 2028, and ADR recovery lagging even further behind.* **How is the Iran conflict affecting hotel forecasts outside the Middle East?* Even the US Q2 2026 forecast, which projects RevPAR growth of 2.8% for 2026, explicitly names the conflict as a headwind it's already pricing in - suggesting no region is fully insulated from the disruption.* **Which region is expected to see the strongest hotel performance in 2027?* Asia Pacific, with STR projecting 2.2% RevPAR growth for 2027, the strongest among the regions covered in the Q2 2026 forecast.* **Should Middle East hotels budget for growth against 2025 in their 2027 plans?* According to current forecasts, the overwhelming majority of Middle East hotels are unlikely to match 2025 performance even by 2027 or 2028, making 2026 comparisons more realistic for budgeting purposes.* ### Welcome to Your Room. Please Don't Steal Anything. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/welcome-to-your-room-please-dont-steal-anything/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:42:57.000Z In 2003, [Robert Cialdini](https://www.influenceatwork.com/?ref=boredhotelier.com) ran an experiment in [Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-shaping-us/201909/the-petrified-wood-principle?ref=boredhotelier.com) where visitors were stealing approximately 14 tons of petrified wood per month. Rangers erected signs warning against theft. Cialdini's team tested whether the signs were working. With no sign at all, 2.9% of marked pieces were stolen. With a sign emphasising how many visitors had stolen - theft jumped to 7.9%. Nearly four times higher. The sign designed to prevent theft more than doubled it compared to saying nothing. **Walk into almost any hotel room in the world and count the cards.** *"Should you choose to take this item, a charge of €150 will be applied to your account."* Next to the hairdryer. Next to the iron. Next to the amenity bottles. One card per item. A personalised price list on everything in the room that isn't bolted down. The science - as Richard Shotton explains in *The Choice Factory* \- says every one of those cards is telling your guests that taking things is normal. That everyone does it. That the hotel expects it. Whether that's the message you intended is a different question entirely. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* *Further reading: Richard Shotton,* [*The Choice Factory*](https://harriman-house.com/authors/richard-shotton/the-choice-factory/9780857196095?ref=boredhotelier.com) *(2018) - Bias 3: Negative Social Proof* ### Fine Dining. Minus the Fine. Plus a Toddler. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/fine-dining-minus-the-fine-plus-a-toddler/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:29:07.000Z In April 2025, a child at [Chez Xue](https://chezxue.com/?ref=boredhotelier.com) \- a Chinese restaurant in Foster City, California - picked up a credit card machine and dropped it on the floor. The screen shattered. The parents were charged $327.03. In December 2025, a different child used a dining utensil to carve two designs into a wooden tabletop. The parents were charged $109.38. In January 2026, another child knocked a teacup off a booth seat. The parents were charged $5.47. The owner, You You Xue, posted the policy online. Over one million people read it. The comments were overwhelmingly supportive. Xue explained his position simply: *"This is not an anti-child campaign. The target is parents who don't do their jobs."* He also added: *"Parenting has become so relaxed, and I know if I acted some ways these children are acting, I would have gotten my a-- beat."* And a million strangers on the internet agreed! ### **It's not just him.** Nettie's House of Spaghetti in New Jersey banned children under 10, citing "crazy messes" and servers being knocked over by running children. A restaurant in Georgia added a $50 surcharge to bills for *"adults unable to parent."* A Chick-fil-A in Pennsylvania - a Chick-fil-A!!! - banned unaccompanied under-16s due to noise, property damage and what they diplomatically called "unacceptable behaviours." If Chick-fil-A has lost patience, the situation is serious. ### **A bit of data.** A [2026 survey of 1,000 US adults](https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/many-americans-support-child-free-restaurant-sections-new-survey-finds?ref=boredhotelier.com) found that 75% support adults-only dining options. The most enthusiastic supporters? Parents! The people who have actually met children are the most eager to eat dinner without them. [Lightspeed's 2026 State of Hospitality report](https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/no-kids-more-dogs-family-style-platter-welcome-future-dining?ref=boredhotelier.com) \- covering the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium - found that diners across all seven countries overwhelmingly prefer restaurants where they don't have to worry about children disrupting their meal. (The same report found they don't mind dogs, however.) ### **The parenting culture.** Bored Hotelier is not against children. Some children in restaurants are delightful - curious, quietly eating their food like small civilised humans. This post is not about those children. It is about the shift in parenting culture that has made *the other kind* increasingly common. Children who grew up in the 70s, 80s and 90s understood - through direct and efficient feedback - that running through restaurants was not acceptable. Screaming was not acceptable. Carving artwork into furniture with a fork was certainly not acceptable. That feedback loop has been largely dismantled. What replaced it is visible in restaurants everywhere: children treating the dining room as a playground, parents looking on with the practiced helplessness of people who genuinely believe there is nothing they can do, and waitstaff quietly parenting other people's children while trying to carry three plates of food. You You Xue put it plainly. His staff were being forced to parent children on behalf of their parents. That is not their job. ### **So what about the hotels?** Hotels running fine dining outlets are some of the worst offenders. Often too scared to enforce an age policy. Too worried about the TripAdvisor review from the family with the toddler. Too committed to the idea that a hotel restaurant must welcome everyone because the lobby does. And to be absolutely clear - nobody is suggesting children should go hungry. There is an all-day dining restaurant in every hotel on earth, with its dedicated children's menu, its high chairs, its crayons and its remarkably patient staff. There are excellent options. The eight-course tasting menu with the wine pairing is simply not one of them. The restaurants need to make a choice about their identity - they are either pro-family or pro-experience. Some hotels seem to think they can be both at the same time, in the same room, at the same table. They can't. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* ### The Elevator Screen Is Not a Marketing Channel. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-elevator-screen-is-not-a-marketing-channel/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:33:35.000Z In 1973, two Princeton psychologists sent 40 trainee priests on a walk across campus. Along the route, a confederate of the researchers was slumped in a doorway - head down, groaning, apparently in distress. The question was simple: who would stop to help? The answer had nothing to do with personality, compassion or moral character. It had everything to do with how much of a hurry the priests were in. In the high hurry condition - told they were late and needed to move - only 10% stopped. In the low hurry condition - told they had a few minutes to spare - 63% stopped. Some of the priests who walked straight past the man in distress were on their way to give a talk about the Good Samaritan. It made no difference whatsoever. The **situation**, not the person, determined the behaviour. [Darley and Batson published their findings](https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/Darley-JersualemJericho.pdf?ref=boredhotelier.com) in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1973, in a paper titled *From Jerusalem to Jericho*. Richard Shotton, behavioural science writer and author of [*The Choice Factory*](https://harriman-house.com/authors/richard-shotton/the-choice-factory/9780857196095?ref=boredhotelier.com), uses this experiment to make one of the most important and most ignored points in marketing: brands need to target contexts as much as they target audiences. **The right message to the right person at the wrong moment is money spent on nobody.** The hotel industry spends that money every single day. ### **The High Hurry Hall of Shame.** **The elevator.** Walk into almost any full-service hotel and look at the elevator panel. There is a screen. On the screen, ads rotate - the spa, the restaurant, the rooftop bar, the loyalty programme, the ladies night promotion, the schedule of rugby matches, the beach access offer. The ads rotate every three to four seconds. The average hotel elevator ride lasts between 15 and 30 seconds. The guest is standing with strangers, possibly holding luggage, almost certainly on their phone. They are not reading. They are waiting for the doors to open. [CBS Outdoor and TNS ran an experiment](https://www.getmemedia.com/ideas/research-total-recall-a-study-of-high-dwell-time-advertising/cbs-outdoor.html?ref=boredhotelier.com) \- *Total Recall* \- that measured exactly this. Participants exposed to ads for three seconds versus three minutes showed dramatic differences in recall. Those with longer exposure were six times more likely to recall the ad, four times more likely to remember details, and fourteen times more likely to correctly identify the brand. Three to four seconds per ad. In an elevator. With a person who is distracted, in transit and focused on the floor number. The elevator screen is not a marketing channel - it is a maintenance cost. --- **The radio spot at 7am.** A hotel buys radio advertising. The brief goes out. The creative is produced. The spots air during morning drive time - peak audience, maximum reach. Peak audience. Maximum hurry. The Darley experiment demonstrated that people in a rush narrow their cognitive map - a phrase borrowed from Berkeley psychologist Edward Tolman. They process less. They retain less. They are physically present but mentally elsewhere, focused entirely on the pressing task ahead. The commuter doing 110km/h on the highway at 7:15am is not in a receptive state for a hotel dining experience message. They are thinking about the meeting, the parking, the coffee they forgot to make. Your ad plays. They hear sounds. They retain nothing. The radio station bills your hotel anyway. --- **The in-room compendium nobody opens.** The in-room compendium. Printed. Laminated. Updated quarterly at best, annually at worst. Placed in a drawer or on a desk where it competes with the television remote, the guest's laptop, their phone and the kettle. Some hotels have replaced it with a tablet. The tablet has a home screen. The home screen has a restaurant promotion. The guest picks it up to connect to the WiFi, finds the password, puts it down. The content exists. The context for consuming it does not. --- **The retargeted ad chasing the wrong moment.** Someone browses hotels during their lunch break, gets interrupted, leaves the page. The retargeting pixel fires. Their ad now follows them onto a news site they're skimming at speed during a commute. High hurry. Fragmented attention. The impression registers in the platform's reporting. Nothing lands in the guest's memory. The same person, same evening, relaxed at home, scrolling slowly through Instagram - would have been a completely different conversation. Same budget. Different context. Completely different outcome. ### **Where People Actually Pay Attention.** The Darley experiment didn't just tell us where attention fails. It told us where it succeeds - in the low hurry condition, where people had time, were not under pressure, and were available to what was in front of them. In hospitality, those moments exist. **The pool and the beach.** A guest horizontal on a sun lounger is in the lowest hurry condition that exists in modern life. They have nowhere to be. Their phone is face down. They are, by the standards of the twenty-first century, extraordinarily available. The beach takes this even further. Sand. Sun. Nowhere to be until dinner. The beach guest is operating at a cognitive frequency that most marketing never reaches - unhurried, warm, slightly disconnected from the usual stimulus overload. A beautifully designed drinks menu. A branded flag with the bar's name and today's special. A staff member who wanders past and mentions the sunset session starting at six. The beach is not just an amenity. It is the highest-attention marketing environment on the property. --- **The airplane.** A passenger at 35,000 feet has nowhere to go, and nothing urgent to attend to. They are, by definition, a captive audience in a low-hurry state, with a very slow WiFi, if any. In-flight magazines - which the industry has spent a decade dismissing - have some of the highest ad recall rates of any print medium precisely because the context is right. A hotel advertising in an airline's in-flight magazine to passengers on routes into its city is targeting the right audience at the single most receptive moment of their journey. --- **The airport lounge.** The business traveller in a lounge is waiting. They have cleared security. Their gate is not yet open. They have between 45 minutes and two hours with nothing structurally urgent to do. This is not the airport concourse - the high-hurry zone of sprinting, queuing and navigating. The lounge is a low-hurry environment by design. Hotel advertising in this context - ambient, digital or through partnerships with the lounge operator - reaches a high-value audience at exactly the moment they have the mental bandwidth to receive it. --- **The spa waiting area.** Guests booked in for a treatment arrive early, are handed a robe, and sit in a carefully designed low-stimulation environment specifically engineered to slow them down. They have nothing to do and nowhere to be. A beautifully designed card about the hotel's dining experience, a seasonal menu, an invitation to book a couples' package - placed here, read here, retained here. --- **The in-room arrival moment.** Not the tablet on the desk. Not the card in the compendium. The moment the guest arrives, has put down their bag, kicked off their shoes and is sitting on the bed for the first time, looking at the room. That thirty-second window - before the phone comes out, before the TV goes on - is the highest-attention moment of the entire stay. A single, beautifully designed card. One offer. One experience. One invitation. Not the full compendium. One thing, placed exactly where their eye goes first. --- **The washroom.** Laugh if you want. But the guest standing at a hotel washroom mirror - or sitting in a cubicle with their phone in their pocket and nowhere to go - is in a perfectly captive low-hurry state. Dwell time is guaranteed. Distractions are minimal. A single well-placed card, a witty line about the restaurant downstairs, an elegant promotion for the spa - read every time, by everyone. Some of the most recalled ambient advertising in hospitality happens here. The industry mostly uses this space for handwashing and flushing instructions, though… ## **Digital search - the one channel where the guest invited you in.** Someone typing "luxury hotel New York weekend" or "where to stay in LA" into Google is not rushing anywhere. They are in discovery mode - relaxed, exploratory, open. They invited the hotel into their attention. This is the purest low-hurry context in digital marketing and the one channel where interruption advertising becomes welcome advertising. A Sunday morning Instagram scroll is a different cognitive state from a Tuesday rush-hour feed check. A leisurely evening of travel research is a different state from a lunchtime browse interrupted by a meeting notification. The platform is the same. The hurry level is not. And the hurry level is what determines whether your ad becomes a booking or a scroll. ## **The Question of Conversion.** [Shotton's core argument](https://harriman-house.com/authors/richard-shotton/the-choice-factory/9780857196095?ref=boredhotelier.com) is that brands consistently underestimate the importance of context because it flatters our ego to believe that the right message, the right creative, the right audience is what drives behaviour. Admitting that context matters more is admitting that the expensive creative brief was only half the job. Hotel marketing budgets are built around channels and reach. How many impressions. How many eyeballs. How many room nights in the attribution window. Almost none of them ask: what state of mind is the person in when they encounter this message? Are they in a rush? Are they distracted? Have we bought an audience that is physically present but mentally elsewhere? The elevator screen reaches every guest in the building. It converts almost none of them. The poolside card reaches one guest. Who has nothing else to do. Who is warm, relaxed and already enjoying the hotel. Who is, in Shotton's terms, in the lowest possible hurry condition. The maths is not complicated. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* *Further reading: Richard Shotton,* [*The Choice Factory*](https://harriman-house.com/authors/richard-shotton/the-choice-factory/9780857196095?ref=boredhotelier.com) *(2018) β€” Bias 1: The Fundamental Attribution Error* # FAQs **Does hotel elevator advertising actually work?* Rarely. The average elevator ride lasts 15 to 30 seconds. Ads rotate every three to four seconds. Guests are distracted, in transit and focused on the floor number. CBS Outdoor's Total Recall study found that ads seen for three seconds versus three minutes produced dramatically different recall - six times lower brand recognition at the shorter exposure. The elevator screen reaches every guest in the building and converts almost none of them.* **What is the best place to advertise inside a hotel?* The highest-attention environments on any hotel property are the ones where guests have nowhere to be and nothing urgent to do - the pool, the beach, the spa waiting area, the washroom and the in-room arrival moment. These low-hurry contexts produce significantly higher recall and conversion than high-traffic, high-distraction locations like elevator lobbies and corridors.* **Why is in-flight advertising effective?* A passenger at cruising altitude has nowhere to go and nothing structurally urgent to do. They are in a defined low-hurry state with limited competing stimuli and a slow WiFi, if any. In-flight magazines consistently produce among the highest ad recall rates of any print medium for exactly this reason. A hotel advertising to passengers on inbound routes to its city is reaching the right audience at the single most receptive moment of their journey.* ### The Right to Disconnect in the Industry That Never Does. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-right-to-disconnect-in-the-industry-that-never-does/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:35:05.000Z There is a moment every hospitality professional in the Middle East or Asia will recognise. You receive an email from a colleague in another office, another country, another time zone: *"I will be out of the office from the 17th to the 7th. I will have no access to email or phone during this period. Please be mindful of time zone differences when scheduling meetings. For urgent matters - and please consider carefully whether your matter is truly urgent - contact my colleague Karen."* You read it. You respect it. You close the email. And then your phone buzzes. ### **The world has discovered the right to disconnect.** France legislated it in 2017\. Portugal made it illegal for employers to contact workers outside working hours at all. Belgium followed. Germany didn't wait for a law - Volkswagen stopped its email servers from sending to employee phones between 6pm and 7am. Daimler introduced software called "Mail on Holiday" that automatically deletes incoming emails while staff are on vacation and informs the sender that the email is gone and will not be read. Gone. Deleted. France, Ireland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Greece and Australia now have formal right to disconnect legislation or enterprise agreements. The conversation is active in India, the Philippines and the UK. What began as a French labour policy in 2017 is becoming a global standard. And the research supports it. The German and French worker, despite - or perhaps because of - their firmly bounded working hours, is among the most productive in the developed world per hour worked. Rest works. Disconnection works. The right to disconnect is real, legitimate and increasingly global. And yet. ### **Hospitality is not a bank.** I have worked in this industry for two decades. I have never once looked at my phone at 11pm and thought: this is wrong. I have never received a message at an hour that most people would consider antisocial and felt violated. I have never set an out of office and fully meant it. Not because the industry demands it of me. Because the industry attracted me precisely because it doesn't work like a bank. A hotel does not close at six. A guest does not have a crisis at convenient hours. A rate decision does not wait for Monday morning. The nature of hospitality - genuinely, structurally, irreducibly - is that it operates continuously. The front desk does not disconnect. The night manager does not disconnect. The GM does not disconnect. And the commercial, operational and leadership layers that support all of them are most effective when they share that orientation. This is not a complaint. It is a description of the job. There are excellent careers in industries that end at 18:00\. Hospitality, at its best, is simply not one of them. ### **The chicken and the egg.** In the Middle East and across much of Asia, the always-on culture is not just internal. It is the market. Clients send WhatsApp messages at 10pm on a Friday expecting a response. Not hoping for one - expecting one. And if one doesn't arrive, the Monday morning conversation sometimes includes a complaint that you were unreachable. Meanwhile, the competitor replied at 10:15pm. Is it always-on culture? Or always-on markets that create always-on professionals? Probably both. Which is exactly what makes it impossible to resolve with a piece of legislation. In Europe it is understood - culturally and increasingly legally - that contacting someone outside working hours will not get you a response. More importantly, it will get you a reputation. For being inconsiderate. For not knowing how things work. The social contract around professional contact is so established that violating it reflects badly on the sender, not the recipient. In Dubai, Mumbai or Tokyo, the same message sent at the same hour carries no such stigma. It is simply how business is done. ### **The man who built the Burj Khalifa has an out of office policy too. It's just not the one you'd expect.** Mohamed Alabbar - founder of Emaar, the man who built the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Mall - said it publicly and without apology: *"Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard, and this is why I like to hire Indians - because they answer the phone even at one o'clock in the morning."* Anyone who has ever worked within his orbit knows this is not a soundbite. It is an operating principle. There is no out of office email policy within Alabbar's companies. There is no "please be mindful of time zone differences." There is simply an expectation that if you are part of building something extraordinary, you show up for it - at whatever hour that requires. ### **Two worldviews. One industry.** The German colleague who auto-deletes vacation emails is not lazy. They are operating within a cultural and legal framework that values recovery and believes a rested professional is a better professional. They are probably right, within their context. The Abu Dhabi, New Delhi or Osaka colleague who answers the WhatsApp at 11pm is not a victim of exploitation. They are operating within a framework that finds meaning in the work itself - that does not experience the boundary between professional and personal time as a loss, but as a feature of a career they chose deliberately. Both are hoteliers. Both are right. And they work in the same global industry, for the same global brands, against the same global benchmarks. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* ### RevPAR Is Up. Margins Are Down. Bonus Received. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/revpar-is-up-margins-are-down-bonus-received/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:31:00.000Z Your hotel had a strong year. RevPAR up. Occupancy up. The STAR report looked good. The owner was pleased. Someone put together a slide deck with upward-pointing arrows and presented it at the quarterly review. And then the P&L arrived. Labour costs up 20% since 2019\. OTA commissions quietly consuming 15-20% of every third-party booking. Operating margins compressing despite record top-line revenue. The gap between what the hotel earned and what it kept getting wider, quietly, consistently, while everyone celebrated the RevPAR number. This is not bad luck. It is the logical consequence of optimising the wrong metric for thirty years. ### **RevPAR was never designed to measure profitability.** It was designed to measure revenue efficiency - how effectively a hotel fills its rooms and at what rate. When STR introduced it approximately 25 years ago, it solved a genuine problem: how do you compare hotels of different sizes fairly? RevPAR answered that. Simple, uniform, measurable. It revolutionised how the industry benchmarked performance. We've covered the structural problems with RevPAR and who owns the benchmarking infrastructure that built it [here](https://boredhotelier.com/the-company-that-tells-hotels-how-theyre-doing-has-never-run-a-hotel/). We've covered what a better space-based metric looks like [here](https://boredhotelier.com/revpam-the-metric-your-hotel-should-have-been-using-yesterday/). This post is about something different. This post is about the number RevPAR cannot see. ### **The flow-through problem.** When RevPAR grows through occupancy - filling more rooms, pushing volume - approximately 30% of that incremental revenue reaches the bottom line. The rest is consumed by the cost of servicing those additional guests. Housekeeping. Front desk. Laundry. Maintenance. F&B support. The physical cost of having more people in the building. When RevPAR grows through rate - the same or fewer guests paying more - profit flow-through approaches 60%. The labour is already deployed. The hotel is already open. The incremental revenue drops almost directly to GOP. RevPAR treats both scenarios identically. A hotel that grew RevPAR $10 through occupancy and a hotel that grew RevPAR $10 through rate look identical on the STAR report. Their P&Ls are not identical. Not even close. The industry has spent thirty years incentivising commercial leaders and their GMs to push occupancy. Bonus structures, brand reporting, ownership presentations - all built around RevPAR, which rewards filling rooms regardless of what it costs to fill them. The result is an industry that has been systematically choosing the less profitable path to revenue growth and calling it a win. ### **The OTA cost RevPAR makes invisible.** A room sold through Booking.com at $200 records as $200 RevPAR. A room sold direct at $200 records as $200 RevPAR. The Booking.com booking nets the hotel approximately $160-170 after commission. The direct booking nets $200\. RevPAR sees no difference. The P&L sees $30-40. *To be fair - direct bookings carry their own cost. Loyalty programme points, marketing spend, technology fees, metasearch bids. The direct channel is not free. It is simply significantly cheaper than the OTA alternative, and the cost structure is one the hotel controls rather than one a third party dictates. That distinction matters enormously at scale. More on the true cost of direct - and what loyalty programmes actually cost the business - in a separate post.* At scale - across thousands of room nights, across an entire year - the composition of RevPAR is the difference between a healthy margin and a structural profit problem. A hotel growing RevPAR through expensive OTA channel mix is not the same business as a hotel growing RevPAR through direct bookings and rate optimisation. They are completely different financial propositions wearing the same metric. As covered in the [RGI post](https://boredhotelier.com/how-rgi-is-killing-your-business/) \- your direct booking ratio is one of the most honest signals of long-term financial health your hotel produces. RevPAR ignores it entirely. ### **The labour number that should change how owners think about occupancy.** US hotels paid $123 billion in wages, salaries and benefits in 2024\. A 20% increase from 2019 - and not because of inflation alone. It is a structural repricing of hospitality labour driven by acute shortages, union activity and wage negotiations in major markets. Unionised properties now carry labour at 43% of revenue. Non-unionised at 33.5%. That nine-and-a-half point gap has widened over the past five years. And here is the number that belongs in every ownership presentation but rarely appears in one: peak hotel profitability is not achieved at maximum occupancy. The data shows optimal profit margins at 65-70% occupancy. Beyond that threshold, the cost of servicing additional guests exceeds the marginal revenue they generate. RevPAR rewards 85% occupancy over 68% occupancy every single time, regardless of what that additional 17 points of occupancy actually costs. ### **The metrics that see what RevPAR misses.** - **GOPPAR β€” Gross Operating Profit Per Available Room.** RevPAR's essential complement. A hotel generating $150 RevPAR with $80 GOPPAR is financially healthier than one with $160 RevPAR and $70 GOPPAR. RevPAR alone suggests the opposite. GOPPAR accounts for all operating expenses - labour, utilities, distribution costs, technology, maintenance - and measures the absolute profit available per room before capital costs and taxes. - **CPOR β€” Cost Per Occupied Room.** Total operating costs divided by occupied rooms. What does it actually cost to have a guest in the building? If CPOR rises 10% while RevPAR rises 3%, the hotel is losing margin. CPOR makes that impossible to miss. - **GOP Index.** The same benchmarking logic as RGI - applied to profitability rather than revenue. A hotel can have a RevPAR Index of 105 and a GOP Index of 98\. Outperforming the comp set on revenue. Underperforming on profit. The industry benchmarks revenue obsessively. Profit benchmarking against a comp set is almost entirely absent from the Monday morning conversation. - **TRevPAR β€” Total Revenue Per Available Room.** For full-service hotels, rooms revenue is only part of the picture. F&B, spa, parking, events - for many properties 40-50% of total revenue. *(*[*The Ballroom Trap*](https://boredhotelier.com/the-ballroom-trap/) *explores exactly how much of that is being left on the table.)* Optimising room RevPAR at the expense of ancillary revenue is a margin-destroying decision the metric actively encourages. TRevPAR captures the full guest spend. RevPAR sees only the room. ### **The incentive problem.** The reason the metric hasn't changed is not ignorance. It is **incentives.** Commercial leaders and their GMs are bonus-linked to RevPAR. Brand reporting frameworks are built around RevPAR. Analysts value hotel assets on RevPAR multiples. Ownership presentations lead with RevPAR. The entire ecosystem rewards one number β€” and the people inside it are rational enough to optimise for the number they're measured on. Changing the metric means changing what gets rewarded. That requires an owner who asks better questions, a GM willing to present a more complex dashboard, and a commercial team whose bonus is tied to GOP rather than RevPAR. None of those things happen automatically. They happen when enough people in enough rooms decide that the Monday morning RevPAR conversation is no longer sufficient. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* # FAQs **What is GOPPAR in hotels?* Gross Operating Profit Per Available Room β€” the profit equivalent of RevPAR. Where RevPAR measures how much revenue a hotel generates per available room, GOPPAR measures how much of that revenue survives after operating expenses. A hotel with higher RevPAR than its competitor can simultaneously have lower GOPPAR if its cost structure is less efficient. GOPPAR is calculated as total revenue minus operating expenses, divided by available rooms.* **What is CPOR in hotels?* Cost Per Occupied Room β€” the total operating cost of the hotel divided by the number of occupied rooms. It answers the question RevPAR never asks: what does it actually cost to service a guest? Industry benchmarks vary significantly by property type, but a mid-scale hotel typically targets $40-65 per occupied room. When CPOR rises faster than rate, margin erodes regardless of what RevPAR is doing.* **Is RevPAR a good measure of hotel profitability?* It is a reasonable measure of revenue efficiency but a poor measure of profitability. RevPAR captures how effectively a hotel fills rooms and at what rate β€” it says nothing about what it cost to achieve that result. Two hotels with identical RevPAR can have dramatically different profit margins depending on their labour costs, distribution channel mix, and ancillary revenue performance. GOPPAR is the more complete picture.* **What is GOP Index in hotel benchmarking?* The GOP Index benchmarks a hotel's gross operating profit against its competitive set β€” the profit equivalent of the RevPAR Index. A hotel can outperform its comp set on RevPAR Index while underperforming on GOP Index, meaning it is winning on revenue and losing on profitability simultaneously. GOP Index benchmarking is significantly less common than RevPAR benchmarking, which is precisely why profit compression often goes undetected until it shows up in the annual accounts.* ### GM of the Year. Sponsored by Whoever Bought the Table. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/gm-of-the-year-sponsored-by-whoever-bought-the-table/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:29:58.000Z Every year, without fail, the hospitality industry produces a fresh crop of award winners. *GM of the Year. Director of Sales of the Year. Commercial Leader of the Year. Rising Star. Lifetime Achievement. Outstanding Contribution to Something Vaguely Defined…* The trophies are heavy. The Gala Dinners are expensive. The acceptance speeches are humble. And the winners β€” with remarkable consistency β€” are the people whose hotels paid for the table. Let's be honest about how this works. A magazine or a website with a logo and a tagline decides it is time to recognise β€œexcellence in hospitality”. Nominations open. A fee appears β€” sometimes disclosed, sometimes buried in the small print, sometimes revealed only after the shortlist is announced. A Gala Dinner is organised. Tables cost thousands. Sometimes tens of thousands. The currency varies. The mechanism doesn't. Who wins? The hotels that bought the tables.The individuals whose properties invested in the evening. Not always. But enough that the pattern is impossible to ignore once you've seen it. And who is paying? Not the individual. The owner. It is, at its core, a very elegant PR machine. Funded by the industry it claims to celebrate. What exactly is the criteria? Who decides that this particular Director of Sales is the best commercial leader in the country this year? What data did the judging panel review? What access did they have to STR reports, GOP performance, total revenue growth, team retention rates, or any of the actual numbers that would tell you whether someone is genuinely good at their job? A magazine and a panel of editors cannot evaluate hotel performance without access to confidential financial data β€” and they don't have it. What they have is a nomination form, a fee, and whatever the nominee chose to write about themselves. The judging panel itself is worth examining. Who got on it? What are their credentials? What have they built, run, or turned around? In many cases the answer is: they are well-connected, well-liked, and available. Which is not nothing. But it is also not a qualification. Here is what I know from decades in this industry. **The best leaders I have ever worked with, observed, or learned from were not on any shortlist.** They were too busy running their hotels. They didn't have a publicist. They didn't have a budget line for industry awards. They had results β€” real ones, in the numbers, in the culture of their teams, in the loyalty of their guests β€” and those results existed regardless of whether anyone outside the property ever noticed. And I have watched leaders who drove properties into financial holes, burned through teams, created environments of fear and verbal abuse, and missed every commercial target they were set β€” collect awards with the confidence of people who genuinely believe they deserve them. Because they paid for the table. And nobody in the room was going to say otherwise. The fake LinkedIn pages deserve their own paragraph. You know the ones… Auto-generated. No editorial input. No verification. No knowledge of who these people are or what they've actually done. Just an algorithm that scrapes a profile, generates an "*outstanding achievement*" post, tags the individual, and harvests the likes and comments from an industry that is apparently very willing to congratulate itself publicly. *Congratulations to \[Name\] on being recognised as a Top Hospitality Leader to Watch in 2026!* Recognised by whom? Watched by whom? For what? It doesn't matter. The dopamine hit is real. The follower count goes up. The individual reposts it. Their network applauds. And the page gains another few hundred followers from people who are quietly hoping they'll be next. What a time to be alive. Maybe one day this industry will have awards that actually mean something. Recognised for driving a genuine commercial turnaround under difficult market conditions β€” with the numbers to prove it. Recognised for building a team culture with retention rates that put the industry average to shame. Recognised for a sustainability initiative that changed how the property operates, not just how it looks in a brochure. Recognised for a creative marketing strategy that moved the needle on direct bookings instead of just winning a design award for the campaign visual. Free to enter. Blind judged. Based on verified data. No tables. No fees. No Gala Dinner where the trophy goes to whoever had the biggest marketing budget. Maybe one day. Until then β€” congratulations to this year's winners… *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* ## The One & Only FAQ **Are hospitality industry awards legitimate? Are hospitality awards pay to win?* Some are. Many are not β€” at least not in the way the trophies imply. A significant number of hospitality awards operate on a model where nomination fees, Gala Dinner table purchases, or sponsorship packages form the commercial foundation of the event. This doesn't automatically mean the winners are undeserving, but it does mean the selection process is rarely as independent as the branding suggests. Without access to verified financial performance data, team retention figures or independently audited results, no judging panel can objectively determine who the best industry leader in a country actually is in any given year. The most decorated professionals in this industry are not always the most effective ones. And the most effective ones are often too busy running their hotels to notice they weren't nominated. πŸ˜‰* ### The Sustainable Hotel. Front of House, Anyway. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-sustainable-hotel/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:35:37.000Z The recyclable straw arrived in your cocktail with a small card explaining the hotel's commitment to the environment. The card was laminated… Hospitality has been on a sustainability journey for the better part of a decade. And in the areas guests actually encounter, real progress has been made. Refillable amenity dispensers have replaced single-use shampoo bottles. Recyclable straws. Compostable cups. Linen reuse programmes. Locally sourced menus. Motion-sensor lighting. Smart HVAC systems that stop the building from being cooled to 19 degrees at full blast while guests are at the pool. Temperature controls that prevent the chiller bill from going through the roof β€” though not every hotel has figured that part out yet. Some hotels have gone further. [Clean the World](https://cleantheworld.org/?ref=boredhotelier.com) β€” operating with 8,599 hotel partners worldwide and processing nearly 1.5 million hotel rooms daily β€” collects partially used soap bars and plastic amenity bottles from guest rooms, recycles them and distributes them to communities in need across 127 countries. To date they have collected over 19 million pounds of soap, diverted more than 15.6 million pounds of waste from landfills and reduced the industry's carbon footprint by nearly 12 million kgCO2e. Other properties collect soap offcuts on property, remelt them and reform them into new bars shaped as small animals or local motifs β€” hygienic, zero-waste, and more memorable than anything a supplier catalogue ever produced. Companies like [Feelgoodz Hospitality](https://www.feelgoodzhospitality.com/?ref=boredhotelier.com) are rethinking the guest amenity category from the ground up. Their in-room slippers and spa slides are sustainably sourced and artisan-crafted β€” made from materials including recycled rice husks, natural rubber tapped directly from trees, and repurposed plastic from grocery bags and bottle wrappers. The products are designed to be taken home rather than thrown away, keeping disposable slippers out of landfills entirely. Their spa range offers a reusable backbar option alongside a take-home amenity β€” the same item serving two purposes. Beyond the product itself, Feelgoodz works with Cham Pa weaving communities in Vietnam, preserving heritage craft traditions as part of their supply chain. They are a Forbes Travel Guide preferred vendor, with clients including The Ritz-Carlton, 1 Hotels, Maybourne and Conrad. It is a good example of what happens when a supplier builds sustainability into the product rather than attaching it as a label afterwards. Some hotels have eliminated purchased bottled water entirely β€” filtering, purifying and bottling on site, served in reusable glass with the hotel's name on them. In India, even luxury properties are routing treated grey water from showers and sinks directly into toilet cisterns, dramatically reducing municipal water demand. Guests occasionally notice the flush water appears slightly discoloured. That is the system working exactly as designed. Water consumption, carbon emissions and energy use are tracked and reported by most major chains β€” submitted to governments, certification bodies like [Green Key](https://www.greenkey.global/?ref=boredhotelier.com), and management companies as a matter of standard operating practice. The data exists. The measurement is real. **Genuine innovation is happening. It is worth finding and copying.** But walk past the lobby. ### The back of house hasn't changed. The finance office looks exactly like it did in 2003\. Towers of paper. Lever arch folders in every colour of the rainbow. Purchase orders travelling through the building on foot because nobody ever implemented the digital approval system. Month-end packs printed in triplicate. Contracts in physical files because that's how it's always been done. The same hotel that removed single-use plastics from its rooms orders produce wrapped in enough cling film to cover a football pitch. The hotel with refillable dispensers in every bathroom runs its kitchen on diesel at peak hours. The sustainability report covers the front of house. The back of house is a different document entirely… The most ambitious operations are converting kitchen food waste into energy through on-site anaerobic biogas digesters, feeding it back into the building's supply. [Hotel De Zeeuwse Stromen](https://www.zeeuwsestromen.nl/en/sustainability?ref=boredhotelier.com) in the Netherlands heats its guest rooms with energy generated from its own restaurant waste. From one kilogram of food waste, the system produces approximately 0.4 cubic metres of biogas. This technology is operational across Europe, Asia and increasingly the Middle East. Almost nobody outside those properties knows it exists. ### Now let's talk about the money. **Doing the right thing costs more.** Not slightly more. Structurally, persistently, unavoidably more β€” and anyone saying otherwise is probably trying to sell you something. A glass water bottle costs approximately two-three times more than a plastic one. A compostable takeaway container costs double the plastic equivalent. An on-property water filtration and bottling plant requires capital investment most hotels will never fully recover through avoided purchasing costs. A biogas digester β€” properly installed, properly maintained β€” looks reasonable on a ten-year projection and feels very different when it breaks down in year three and the replacement part takes six weeks to arrive. LED lighting genuinely pays back within a few years. Smart HVAC controls reduce chiller bills meaningfully. Those ones work on the numbers. Most of the rest don't β€” at least not on any timeline an owner finds comfortable. And then there is the software. The digital document management system that eliminates the paper approval chain costs more in annual licensing than the paper it replaces. The e-signature platform β€” thousands of dollars a year in retainer fees for functionality that, on pure cost analysis, is more expensive than printing, signing and scanning. Every tool in the sustainable operations stack carries a vendor, a contract, a renewal, a support fee and a dependency… It will almost always cost more to operate a genuinely sustainable hotel than to ignore it. Not because sustainability is inefficient, but because the current pricing of unsustainable alternatives doesn't include the cost of what they actually do. #### Plastic is cheap because the Ocean isn't invoicing anyone. Diesel is cheap because the Atmosphere isn't sending a bill. ### The straw is not the problem. Sustainability in hospitality will remain a front-of-house aesthetic β€” something that happens in the spaces guests photograph β€” until the industry decides to look honestly at everything behind it. The finance office. The kitchen. The purchasing decisions. The back corridors where the real operating cost of doing the right thing quietly accumulates. And until someone is willing to stand in front of an owner and say: this is going to cost more, for a long time, and we should do it anyway. Because this is the **Right Thing To Do**. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **What are the best sustainability practices for hotels?* The World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance and Green Key both publish practical frameworks β€” but the data consistently points to energy as the highest-impact starting point. Energy accounts for roughly 60% of a hotel's carbon footprint and the same share of utility spend. Smart HVAC systems alone can reduce runtime by up to 45%. Beyond energy: water management, food waste reduction, eliminating single-use plastics and sourcing locally. The gap for most properties isn't knowledge β€” it's consistent application across the entire operation, not just the areas guests see. The* [*World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance*](https://sustainablehospitalityalliance.org/?ref=boredhotelier.com) *and* [*Green Key*](https://www.greenkey.global/?ref=boredhotelier.com) *are the two most credible industry references.* **Do guests actually book hotels because of sustainability?* Increasingly, yes β€” the gap between stated intention and actual behaviour is closing faster than the industry expected. Booking.com's 2025 Travel and Sustainability Report found that one in three travellers across every generation β€” Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and Boomers β€” plans to stay at a sustainability-certified property in 2026\. In 2025 alone, 100 million room nights were booked at third-party certified sustainable properties through Booking.com. Corporate travel is moving even faster β€” companies including Google, Microsoft and Amazon now require suppliers to document and report carbon reduction progress as a condition of preferred vendor status.* **What is the ROI of hotel sustainability investments?* It varies enormously by initiative. Smart energy management systems typically deliver payback periods of three to ten months for a 150-room property, with energy cost reductions of 20–35%. Solar installations run six to nine years to break even. On-property water filtration and biogas systems sit at the longer, less predictable end of the range.* [*LEED-certified*](https://www.usgbc.org/leed?ref=boredhotelier.com) *hotels report RevPAR advantages of 5–7% above non-certified competitors β€” suggesting that sustainability certification has a measurable revenue impact beyond cost savings. The full picture, however, includes ongoing maintenance, vendor contracts and licensing fees that rarely feature in the original investment case.* [*HRS's 2024 State of Sustainability report*](https://www.hotelmanagement.net/business-strategy/profit-meets-planet-sustainabilitys-roi?ref=boredhotelier.com) *found that the most energy-efficient hotels actually offered ADRs 17% lower than their least efficient counterparts β€” which complicates the premium pricing argument considerably.* **What is Green Key certification and is it worth it for hotels?* Green Key is one of the most widely recognised international sustainability certifications for hospitality, operating across 65 countries. Certification requires documented measurement and reporting across energy, water, waste, food and staff engagement β€” not just stated commitments. Hotels with Green Key or equivalent certifications are being surfaced as preferred results on Booking.com, and corporate travel programmes increasingly use certification as a booking filter. The business case has strengthened significantly: 67% of global travellers now prefer accommodations with recognised sustainability labels, according to Booking.com's 2025 data.* ### GEO. AEO. LLMO. It's Still Just SEO. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/geo-aeo-llmo-its-still-just-seo/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:29:31.000Z The hospitality industry has a remarkable talent for buying the same thing twice. Twenty years ago, a generation of hotel marketing teams paid consultants to decode Google's algorithm. They were sold keyword strategies, backlink packages, metadata audits and content calendars - all promising first page rankings if you just trusted the process and signed the retainer. Some of it worked. Most of it was foundational digital hygiene dressed up in proprietary language and invoiced at a premium. Now meet the new acronyms. **GEO** \- Generative Engine Optimisation. **AEO** \- Answer Engine Optimisation. **LLMO** \- Large Language Model Optimisation. Each one promising to unlock your hotel's visibility in the age of AI search. Each one sold by someone with a deck, a framework and a monthly fee. Google just published an [official guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide?ref=boredhotelier.com) on how to optimise for generative AI search. It is worth reading in full. The headline finding, buried inside careful language but impossible to miss if you're paying attention, is this: *optimising for generative AI search is optimising for the search experience - and thus still SEO.* Same index. Same ranking systems. Same quality signals that have always mattered. The acronyms are new. The work isn't. ### **What Google actually said β€” and what it means for hotels.** [Google's guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide?ref=boredhotelier.com) confirms that its AI features - AI Overviews, AI Mode - use a technique called retrieval-augmented generation (**RAG**). In plain English: the AI pulls from Google's existing Search index, ranked by the same systems your team has been optimising against for years, and uses that content to generate responses. There is no separate AI index to crack. There is no special markup to add. There is no secret GEO framework that bypasses the fundamentals. Google also explicitly debunked several tactics currently being sold to hoteliers: *β€” You don't need to chunk your content into AI-friendly bite-sized blocks.* *β€” You don't need to rewrite your copy in a special "AI voice."* *β€” You don't need an llms.txt file or any other machine-readable AI file.* *β€” You don't need to chase inauthentic mentions across the web.* *β€” Structured data is useful for rich results in regular Search, but is not required for AI visibility and will not move the needle on ChatGPT or Perplexity on its own.* If a vendor has been pitching any of the above as the key to your hotel's AI visibility - save your budget. ### **What actually matters.** Google's guidance points to one overriding principle: create unique, non-commodity content that real people find genuinely useful. For hotels, that means content that no competitor can copy - because it comes from actual experience, actual knowledge, and an actual point of view. A "Top 10 Things to Do in London" page assembled from common knowledge is commodity content. A concierge's genuine insider guide to the neighbourhood your hotel sits in - specific, opinionated, useful - is not. AI systems are designed to surface the latter and ignore the former. Beyond content, the fundamentals are the same ones covered in detail in [Your Next Guest Is Asking ChatGPT Where to Stay. Is Your Hotel in the Answer?](https://boredhotelier.com/your-next-guest-is-asking-chatgpt-where-to-stay-is-your-hotel-in-the-answer/): **Your information must be consistent everywhere.** Hotel name, address, room count, amenities - identical across your website, Google Business Profile, Booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor. AI cross-verifies. Contradictions destroy confidence. **Your descriptions must be written in human language.** Not marketing copy. Not brochure language from 2015\. The way a knowledgeable colleague would describe your hotel to someone who genuinely needed to know. **Your reviews must be actively managed.** Volume, recency, rating consistency across platforms, and thoughtful responses to every piece of feedback - positive and negative. AI treats your review profile as a trust signal. **Your press releases, if you write them, must contain actual facts.** As covered in [Finally Someone Is Reading Your Press Releases. It's AI.](https://boredhotelier.com/finally-someone-is-reading-your-press-releases-its-ai/) \- corroborated facts distributed across credible, publicly crawlable sources are exactly what AI uses to build confidence in a recommendation. None of this is new. None of it requires a GEO consultant. All of it requires discipline, consistency and the willingness to do unglamorous work well. ### **The ONE thing that is genuinely new.** The stakes. With Google Search, a weak digital presence meant a lower ranking. There was still a page two. There were still ads. There were still ways to reach guests even if your organic position was poor. With AI search, there is one answer. Your hotel is either in it or it isn't. The cost of getting the fundamentals wrong has never been higher - which is exactly why the consultants selling new acronyms are having such a good year. The hotels that will win AI search visibility are not the ones that buy the most sophisticated GEO package. They are the ones that built the strongest digital foundation - clean data, consistent information, genuine content, actively managed reputation - and kept building it before anyone told them to. If that sounds familiar, it's because it is. You've heard this story before. The only thing that changes is the acronym on the invoice. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **What is the difference between GEO, AEO and SEO for hotels?* Less than the people selling GEO and AEO packages would like you to think. Google has officially confirmed that its generative AI features pull from the same Search index, ranked by the same quality systems, as regular Google Search. GEO and AEO are marketing terms for what is still fundamentally SEO - the same content quality, consistency and authority signals that have always mattered.* **How do I optimise my hotel for AI search?* Start with what Google confirmed actually works: consistent information across every platform your hotel appears on, unique content written for real people rather than algorithms, an actively managed review profile, and descriptions in plain language that match how travelers actually search. There is no shortcut specific to AI. The foundation is the foundation.* **Do I need a special AI optimisation strategy for my hotel website?* No. Google has explicitly debunked the idea that generative AI search requires separate tactics - no content chunking, no llms.txt files, no special markup, no AI-specific rewriting. If your hotel's digital presence is built on strong SEO fundamentals, you already have the foundation AI search needs. If it isn't, no AI-specific tactic will compensate for it.* ### A Psychologist Walked Into a Hotel. Nobody Listened. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/a-psychologist-walked-into-a-hotel-nobody-listened/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:27:31.000Z TripAdvisor data shows that 53% of travellers won't book a hotel that has no reviews at all. Not bad reviews. No reviews. Zero. Meanwhile, 72% of travellers read at least 6 to 12 reviews before making a booking decision. And a single unanswered negative review β€” surrounded by dozens of positive ones β€” measurably reduces trust. Most hoteliers know this. Here is what fewer people talk about. Guests don't read reviews to make decisions. **They read reviews to confirm decisions they've already made emotionally.** The research is clear on this. By the time someone is scrolling through your TripAdvisor page, they have usually already chosen you. They are looking for permission. They are looking for other people who made the same choice and survived β€” preferably thrived. This is social proof. ### **The study that hotels forgot.** In 2008, psychologists Noah Goldstein, Robert Cialdini and Vladas Griskevicius published a [study](https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/35/3/472/1856257?redirectedFrom=fulltext&ref=boredhotelier.com) in the Journal of Consumer Research. The setting was a hotel. The subject was towels. At the time, most hotels had already introduced towel reuse programmes. The standard bathroom card appealed to environmental responsibility β€” save water, save energy, help the planet. Guests participated at a baseline rate that nobody found particularly inspiring. What struck the researchers, however, was something else entirely: not a single hotel card they encountered actually told guests what other guests were doing. The social norm β€” that the vast majority of guests already reused their towels β€” was sitting there, unused, while hotels kept printing cards about the environment. So they ran two experiments. Over 80 days, across 190 rooms, tracking 1,058 instances of potential towel reuse. And then a second experiment β€” 1,595 instances across 53 days in the same hotel. Seven different messages in total. The guests had no idea they were part of a study. ### **Experiment 1\. Two messages.** The standard card read: > β€œHELP SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT. > You can show your respect for nature and help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.” β€” Result: 35.1% of guests reused their towels. --- The new card read: > β€œJOIN YOUR FELLOW GUESTS IN HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT. > Almost 75% of guests who are asked to participate in our new resource savings program do help by using their towels more than once. You can join your fellow guests in this program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.” β€” Result: 44.1% of guests reused their towels. Same hotel. Same rooms. Same guests. Nine percentage points higher β€” from changing the message on a card. ### **Experiment 2\. Five messages.** The researchers wanted to go further. If telling guests what other guests do works - does it matter which guests you reference? They tested five variations, each pointing to a different reference group. The standard environmental card again: > β€œHELP SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT. > You can show your respect for nature and help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.” β€” Result: 37.2% --- The guest identity card β€” hotel-wide: > β€œJOIN YOUR FELLOW GUESTS IN HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT. > In a study conducted in Fall 2003, 75% of the guests participated in our new resource savings program by using their towels more than once. You can join your fellow guests in this program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.” β€” Result: 44.0% --- The citizen identity card: > β€œJOIN YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS IN HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT. > In a study conducted in Fall 2003, 75% of the guests participated in our new resource savings program by using their towels more than once. You can join your fellow citizens in this program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.” β€” Result: 43.5% --- The gender identity card: > β€œJOIN THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO ARE HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT. > In a study conducted in Fall 2003, 76% of the women and 74% of the men participated in our new resource savings program by using their towels more than once. You can join the other men and women in this program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.” β€” Result: 40.9% --- And then **the one that changed everything**: > β€œJOIN YOUR FELLOW GUESTS IN HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT. > In a study conducted in Fall 2003, 75% of the guests who stayed in this room (#313) participated in our new resource savings program by using their towels more than once. You can join your fellow guests in this program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.” β€” Result: **49.3%** Not guests in general. Not fellow citizens. Not men and women broadly. Guests who stayed in this specific room. Before you. In this exact spot where you are standing right now. Here is the detail that makes this finding genuinely remarkable. Before the experiment, the researchers tested how personally meaningful each of these group identities felt to participants. Being a citizen scored highly. Gender identity scored highly. Being a hotel guest scored low. And being a guest in a particular room scored lowest of all - the least important, least meaningful group identity of the five tested. ## Experiment 2: Results **Proximity beats personal importance. Where you are matters more than who you are.** The closer the social proof, the stronger the pull β€” even when the group it references means almost nothing to you personally. The study was published in one of the most cited journals in consumer research. It was discussed at conferences. Cialdini referenced it in his follow-up book *Yes! β€” 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive.* It made the rounds in marketing and academic circles. *And then hotels went back to printing the same environmental card they had always printed.* ## **What would your hotel look like if it ran on science?** Imagine walking through a hotel where someone had actually read a couple of the researches. At the bar, a small sign: *"2,340 Aperol Spritzes served this season."* At the breakfast buffet: *"Our eggs benedict β€” the most ordered dish at this buffet for the third year running."* On the room service menu: *"Our most ordered dish after 10pm."* At check-in: *"You booked a standard room. We actually still have two sea view rooms available tonight β€” they're our most requested upgrade. Would you like to secure yours?"* At the spa: *"Our most popular treatment this week has been fully booked since Monday β€” however, we have two slots remaining today."* None of this requires a technology overhaul. None of it requires a consultant, a rebrand or a capital budget. It requires a team in a room, a whiteboard, and a willingness to ask one question: **where are we leaving social proof to chance when we could be designing it deliberately?** This research has been available since 2008\. The towel card is still the same. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* **Source and a great read*: Goldstein, N. J., Cialdini, R. B., & Griskevicius, V. (2008). A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(3), 472–482\.* [*Link*](https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/35/3/472/1856257?redirectedFrom=fulltext&ref=boredhotelier.com) ## Frequently Asked Questions **How do I use social proof to increase hotel revenue?* Start with what you already know β€” your most ordered dish, most requested upgrade, most booked treatment. Frame those as social signals rather than sales pitches. A guest who hears "this is what most guests in your situation choose" makes a different decision than a guest who hears "would you like to upgrade."* **Why do hotel guests read reviews before booking?* Research suggests guests aren't actually using reviews to make decisions β€” they're using them to validate decisions they've already made emotionally. By the time someone is reading your TripAdvisor page, they've usually already chosen you. They're looking for confirmation, not information.* **What are provincial norms in consumer psychology?* Provincial norms are the behaviours of people who share your immediate situation or setting β€” as opposed to broader social groups. Cialdini's research found that people conform more strongly to provincial norms than to the norms of groups they personally identify with more, including gender and citizenship.* ### Every Hotel Brand Is a Myth. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/every-hotel-brand-is-a-myth/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:28:41.000Z In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari - I'm sure a lot of you have heard of it - presents a deceptively simple idea. Sociological research suggests that the maximum natural size of a group held together by personal relationships and gossip is around 150 people. Below that threshold, organisations run on trust, familiarity and rumour. Above it, something else is needed. What is that something else? Shared myth. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common stories. Not facts. Not org charts. Stories. Harari uses Peugeot as his example. What transformed a family metalworking business into one of the world's largest car manufacturers wasn't machinery or capital. It was a legal story - told by lawyers, ratified by the French state, believed by millions. Once everyone agreed to behave as if Peugeot the company existed, it did. > β€œTelling effective stories is not easy. The difficulty lies not in telling the story, but in convincing everyone else to believe it.” β€” Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari Modern hospitality companies - and not only them, really, absolutely everything surrounding us - have storytelling as their biggest strength and their biggest weakness. Say you have several thousands of hotels worldwide. You need a story to create a sense of belonging for your employees - to make them buy your story and believe in it religiously enough to sell it to customers. You need another story to sell to guests - to engage them, make them feel like they are part of something big, exclusive and important. These stories run in parallel. And they consist of millions of micro-stories done right. For a hotel brand, the customer-facing micro-stories are the social media strategy, the look and feel of the brand, the tone of voice, the UX of the website, the interactions at every guest touchpoint and so many more. Every day, hundreds of micro-stories are made. Companies who get these micro-stories right - at least 99% of the time - achieve true success. Companies who keep changing their CEOs, are too busy restructuring, keep changing direction, don't pay enough attention to the people who work with them, don't invest in their stories - don't last. And it goes back to ancient human psychology. If you want to succeed, you need to either invent a new religion or tell a great story people will believe in. Further read - [Sapiens](https://www.ynharari.com/book/sapiens/?ref=boredhotelier.com). It's not exactly about hospitality. But it's a great read anyway. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* ### Finally Someone Is Reading Your Press Releases. It's AI. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/finally-someone-is-reading-your-press-releases-its-ai/ Last updated: 2026-08-08T08:04:36.000Z The hotel press release is one of the most reliably unread documents in the history of business communication. Journalists delete them. Guests have never seen one. Travel editors receive approximately four hundred of them per week and open approximately three. The format hasn't changed meaningfully since someone decided that *"nestled in the heart of the city"* was an acceptable way to describe a building's location. And yet every hotel publishes them. Religiously. Quarterly at minimum. Sometimes for things like the appointment of a new assistant pastry chef. Here is the twist. AI might actually be reading them. ### **Why AI reads what Google stopped caring about.** Google lost interest in press releases years ago. Too many. Too similar. Too stuffed with keywords nobody actually searches for. The signal became noise and Google tuned it out. AI search tools work differently. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot don't just crawl your website. They look for signals across the entire open web: mentions, citations, references in authoritative publications, consistent factual information appearing across multiple sources. They are trying to build a picture of what your hotel actually is, who it serves and why it matters. A press release distributed to a high authority open web publication β€” one that is publicly crawlable, permanently indexed and picked up by multiple outlets β€” creates exactly the kind of signal AI is looking for. Not because AI finds press releases interesting. Because AI finds corroborated facts interesting. And a press release that lands on ten credible sites saying the same factual thing about your hotel is ten data points pointing in the same direction. That is how AI builds confidence in a recommendation. ### **The problem is what your press releases are actually saying.** Go and read your last three hotel press releases. Right now. Before you brief your marketing team on the next one. Here is what you will probably find. *"\[Hotel Name\] is thrilled to announce the appointment of \[Name\] as the new Director of \[Department\]. \[Name\] brings a wealth of experience from a distinguished career across leading luxury properties and is passionate about delivering exceptional guest experiences that exceed expectations."* Or possibly: *"\[Hotel Name\], a luxury retreat nestled in the heart of \[City\], is delighted to unveil its newly refurbished \[Outlet Name\], offering guests an unparalleled dining experience in an atmosphere of refined elegance."* Now ask yourself: if a traveler typed *"best hotel for business travelers in \[City\]"* into ChatGPT β€” would any of that text help AI connect your hotel to that query? It would not. Because it says nothing specific about anything. It contains no facts that distinguish your hotel from any other hotel on earth. It is written in a language that exists only inside the hospitality industry β€” understood by nobody outside it and increasingly ignored by the machines inside it. ### **What AI actually needs from your press release.** Cogwheel Marketing published a useful breakdown of exactly this problem β€” how to write hotel press releases that work for AI discoverability rather than against it. Worth reading alongside this. The practical principles are straightforward. **Front-load the facts.** Your hotel's name, location and specific differentiators should be in the first two sentences. Not your feelings about the appointment. Not an adjective. Facts. **Write for a search query not a committee.** *"Hotel X is a 347-room business hotel in \[City\] with 2,000 square metres of meeting space and direct airport connectivity"* is infinitely more useful to AI than *"a beacon of excellence for the discerning business traveller."* One of those sentences answers a question someone might actually ask. The other one answers nothing. **Be specific about who you serve.** *"Meeting planners choose this hotel because"* and *"families travelling with children choose this hotel because"* and *"couples celebrating anniversaries choose this hotel because"* β€” these phrases connect your property to actual search intent. AI is trying to match queries to answers. Help it. **Use language that lasts.** AI systems don't handle time well. A press release about your summer promotion becomes meaningless noise within weeks. A press release that describes your hotel's permanent capabilities β€” what it is, who it serves, why it's different β€” remains a useful data point indefinitely. **Distribute it somewhere that actually gets indexed.** A press release that lives behind a paywall or on a wire feed that isn't publicly crawled does nothing for AI visibility. Services like PR Newswire, PRWeb and EIN Presswire offer publicly accessible permanent URLs. That permanence matters β€” AI needs to be able to find and verify the information repeatedly across multiple sources. ### **The deeper problem.** Most hotel press releases are written for one audience: the person who approved them. They use language that sounds impressive in a quarterly review. They mention things that matter internally β€” a renovation, an appointment, an award β€” without translating those things into anything a guest or an AI system would find useful. The question *"what would a traveler actually need to know about this?"* is almost never asked during the drafting process. Which is why your hotel's AI discoverability problem isn't really a technology problem. It's a communication problem that has been quietly getting worse for twenty years and is now suddenly consequential in a new way. AI is reading your press releases. For the first time in a very long time, someone is. The question is whether they say anything worth reading. *This post is a follow-up to* [*Your Next Guest Is Asking ChatGPT Where to Stay - Is Your Hotel in the Answer?*](https://boredhotelier.com/your-next-guest-is-asking-chatgpt-where-to-stay-is-your-hotel-in-the-answer/) *\- a step by step guide to improving your hotel's AI search visibility.* *Further reading:* [*Does a Hotel Press Release Impact AI Discoverability?*](https://cogwheelmarketing.com/does-a-hotel-press-release-impact-ai-discoverability/?ref=boredhotelier.com)*β€” Cogwheel Marketing* *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* # **Frequently Asked Questions** **How do I write a hotel press release?* Keep it specific and fact-led. Name your hotel, location, and what makes it different in the first two sentences. Write for a search query, not a boardroom. Avoid adjectives that could describe any hotel on earth - AI and journalists alike will ignore them.* **Do hotels still need press releases?* More than ever - just not for the reasons you think. Google stopped caring years ago. But AI search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini are actively reading them to build recommendations. A well-distributed, fact-rich press release is now an AI discoverability tool.* **Where should I distribute my hotel press release?* Use services with permanent, publicly crawlable URLs - PR Newswire, PRWeb and EIN Presswire are the ones worth considering. If AI can't find and index it, it doesn't exist.* **Does a hotel press release help with SEO?* Less so for Google than it used to. But for AI search visibility - yes, significantly. Consistent facts about your property appearing across multiple credible sources is exactly how AI builds confidence in recommending your hotel. Further reading:* [*GEO. AEO. LLMO. It's still just SEO.*](https://boredhotelier.com/geo-aeo-llmo-its-still-just-seo/) *The acronyms changed. The work didn't.* ### RevPAM. The Metric Your Hotel Should Have Been Using Yesterday URL: https://boredhotelier.com/revpam-the-metric-your-hotel-should-have-been-using-yesterday/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T17:57:13.000Z Your hotel is not just a collection of rooms. It's a restaurant. A spa. A ballroom. A rooftop bar. A gym. A lobby that people walk through a hundred times a day generating nothing. RevPAR measures one thing - how hard your rooms are working. *(And RevPAR has* [*deeper structural problems*](https://boredhotelier.com/revpar-is-up-margins-are-down-bonus-received/) *beyond what it misses on space.)* It ignores everything else. And in most full service hotels, rooms represent less than 60% of total revenue potential. RevPAM - Revenue Per Available Metre - fixes that. It asks one simple question about every single space in your hotel: *How hard is this square metre working?* ## **The Formula** Simple. **RevPAM = Total Revenue Γ· Total Square Metres** You can apply it to the entire hotel. But it's far more useful - and far more revealing - when applied space by space. ## **Let's Run the Numbers.** Here's a fictional full service hotel in Barcelona. Four spaces. Four very different stories. **The Restaurant** 180 square metres. Generates €22,000 in revenue over a month. RevPAM = €22,000 Γ· 180 = **€122 per square metre** Solid. The restaurant is earning its footprint. **The Ballroom** 600 square metres. Hosts three events in a month generating €15,000 total. RevPAM = €15,000 Γ· 600 = **€25 per square metre** The largest space in the hotel. The lowest return per square metre. Sitting empty 27 days of the month while the sales team waits for the perfect group. Sound familiar? *(The ballroom problem deserves its own conversation.* [*We gave it one.*](https://boredhotelier.com/the-ballroom-trap/)*)* **The Spa** 120 square metres. Generates €18,000 in a month. RevPAM = €18,000 Γ· 120 = **€150 per square metre** Your spa is outperforming your restaurant per square metre. Does your GM know that? Does your owner? **The Rooftop Bar** 80 square metres. Generates €32,000 in peak summer month. RevPAM = €32,000 Γ· 80 = **€400 per square metre** Your smallest revenue space. Your highest performing asset per square metre. By a significant margin. **The Gym** 180 square metres. Complimentary for all guests. Generates €0. RevPAM = €0 Γ· 180 = **€0 per square metre** 180 square metres of prime hotel real estate. Zero revenue. Every single day. ## **What Do These Numbers Tell You?** The rooftop bar - your smallest space - generates sixteen times more revenue per square metre than the ballroom. The gym - almost as large as the restaurant - generates nothing. The ballroom - your largest and most expensive space to operate - generates less per square metre than any other revenue producing area in the hotel. These are not surprising findings. They are findings that exist in almost every full service hotel that has never run these numbers. ## **How To Start Measuring It Today** You don't need new software. You don't need a consultant. You need a spreadsheet and thirty minutes. **Step 1** \- List every space in your hotel that generates revenue. Restaurant, bar, spa, meeting rooms, event space, retail, parking, pool area. **Step 2** \- Add one space that generates zero revenue. The gym is usually the most instructive starting point. **Step 3** \- Pull last month's revenue for each space from your P&L. **Step 4** \- Get the square meterage of each space from your floor plan or facilities management team. **Step 5** \- Divide. That's it. RevPAM = Revenue Γ· Square Metres. **Step 6** \- Present it at your next revenue meeting alongside RevPAR. Watch the conversation change. ## **The Bigger Question** If RevPAM is this simple to calculate - and this revealing when you do - why isn't it standard practice? Why isn't it in the STAR report alongside RevPAR, ADR and occupancy? Why did the industry's own benchmarking platform recommend revenue per square foot as a metric in 2012 and still not implement it thirteen years later? Those are questions worth asking… *We asked them here -* [*The Company That Tells Hotels How They're Doing Has Never Run a Hotel.*](https://boredhotelier.com/the-company-that-tells-hotels-how-theyre-doing-has-never-run-a-hotel/) *The formula is free. The spreadsheet takes thirty minutes. The conversation it starts is long overdue.* *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* *Further reading:* [*Why RGI is the most misused metric in the hotel industry*](https://boredhotelier.com/how-rgi-is-killing-your-business/) *\- and what to measure instead. And about the RevPAM and total revenue management:* [*SiteMinder*](https://www.siteminder.com/r/revpam/?ref=boredhotelier.com) # **Frequently Asked Question** ***What is the best way to improve hotel performance?*** *Start by measuring the right things. Most hotels track RevPAR, ADR and occupancy religiously - and ignore everything else. But rooms revenue is only part of the picture. A full service hotel that measures every space - restaurant, spa, meeting rooms, bar, event space - using Revenue Per Available Metre gets a fundamentally different and more accurate picture of where money is being made, where it's being left on the table and where space is simply being wasted.* *Once you know your RevPAM by space, the opportunities become obvious. The ballroom generating €25 per square metre while the rooftop bar generates €400 tells you something no occupancy report ever will. The gym sitting at €0 per square metre every day asks a question your owner has probably never thought to ask.* *Measure the full asset. Not just the rooms. That's where hotel performance improvement actually starts.* ### Budgeting for 2027. Here's How to Think About It. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/budgeting-for-2027-heres-how-to-think-about-it/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:28:17.000Z **Update, August 2026:** *I've published a follow-up with the latest STR figures - Middle East, Europe, Asia Pacific and the US - plus fresh thinking for 2027 budgeting season:* [*Hotel Budgeting 2027: What to Focus On*](https://boredhotelier.com/hotel-budgeting-2027-what-to-focus-on/)*.* Budgeting season arrives the same time every year. The spreadsheets open, the owner calls, and someone in the room presents a forecast with more confidence than the situation warrants. This year is different. Every 2027 projection published by the major research houses - STR/CoStar, Oxford Economics, JLL, HVS - was modelled before February 28th 2026\. The conflict that erupted that day rendered most of those numbers obsolete within hours. The baseline everyone was planning from no longer exists. So what do you actually budget for 2027? The honest answer is that nobody knows with certainty. But the data gives you enough to build three credible scenarios - and the leading indicators to tell you which one you're in as the year develops. ### **What the forecasts said before everything changed.** In February 2026, STR and Tourism Economics published their latest global hotel forecast. For the four key Middle East markets they track - Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Jeddah and Riyadh - they projected average RevPAR growth of 4.2% in 2026, a substantial upgrade from earlier projections. Expectations for 2027 were more anchored at +1.9%. Two days after that forecast was published, the conflict started. *(Source: STR/CoStar Global Hotel Market Forecast, February 2026)* *Further reading:* [*why the industry's primary benchmarking metric is owned by a real estate company*](https://boredhotelier.com/the-company-that-tells-hotels-how-theyre-doing-has-never-run-a-hotel/) *\- and what that means for how you read your STAR report.* *And* [*RevPAR is up. Margins are down.*](https://boredhotelier.com/revpar-is-up-margins-are-down-bonus-received/)[ *Bonus received*](https://boredhotelier.com/revpar-is-up-margins-are-down-bonus-received/)*, - about the metric and the incentive structure around it.* *And* [*why RGI may be the most misused metric in the hotel industry*](https://boredhotelier.com/how-rgi-is-killing-your-business/) *\- and what to measure instead.* ### **What actually happened.** The immediate operational impact was severe and rapid. Within 48 hours of the initial strikes, hotel booking cancellations were running at 60% across key GCC markets. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimated the broader Middle East region was losing approximately $600 million per day in visitor spending at the peak of disruption. The aviation picture compounded this significantly. According to Tourism Economics' April 2026 briefing on fuel prices and air passenger demand, crude oil surged 64% in March as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz cut off 20-25% of global energy supply. Jet fuel crack spreads hit an all-time record of $80 per barrel - effectively doubling the cost of jet fuel in weeks. Air fares globally are expected to rise 5-10% as a result. The transit dimension matters here and is often underestimated. Around one fifth of Europe-Asia passengers and 10% of North America-Asia passengers typically transit through GCC hubs. Airspace closures did not just affect GCC-bound travelers - they disrupted global routing for millions of passengers who were simply passing through. Air passenger demand for the Middle East as a whole is now projected to fall 40.9% in 2026 compared to pre-war forecasts. For GCC specifically, Tourism Economics' most recent analysis - published 6 May 2026 - projects a 30% decline in inbound arrivals for the full year. This is more severe than the 11-27% range modelled in March, reflecting the persistence of the disruption and the slow pace of confidence recovery even after the partial ceasefire. *(Sources: Tourism Economics Research Briefing - Iran War's Impact on Fuel Prices and Air Passenger Demand, April 2026; Tourism Economics Travel Industry Monitor Middle East Special Analysis, May 2026)* ### **The consumer picture beyond the conflict.** The conflict is the dominant story for GCC and Middle East hotels. But there is a structural consumer challenge that predates it and will shape 2027 regardless of how quickly regional travel confidence recovers. According to Tourism Economics' Q1 2026 Travel Industry Monitor - a quarterly survey of 191 tourism professionals globally - 71% of experts expect consumers to spend an increasing proportion of income on living costs in 2026, directly reducing what is available for travel. Retail spend within travel budgets is projected to decline sharply. However (and this matters for hotel revenue planning) accommodation and transport are the two categories where consumers are expected to spend more proportionally within their overall travel budgets. When people do travel in this environment, they allocate more to the stay itself and less to ancillary spending. The same report identifies the key opportunity for tourism recovery in 2026 and into 2027: leisure events, cited by 56% of industry professionals as the standout growth driver. Affordability and value positioning follows at 41%. The implication for budgeting is clear. Properties with strong leisure positioning will recover faster than those dependent on corporate and MICE demand, which historically is the last segment to return after geopolitical shocks. *(Source: Tourism Economics Travel Industry Monitor Q1 2026, March 2026)* ### **The most important insight for GCC hotels specifically.** Here is the finding from Tourism Economics' May 2026 Middle East analysis that matters most for how you think about budgeting and how you position assumptions to owners. Recovery in GCC is not primarily a capacity problem or a price problem. It is a confidence problem. When Middle East tourism professionals were asked why inbound tourism would remain weak, 94% cited safety concerns - nearly double the global average of 49%. Global experts focus on price effects and connectivity when explaining tourism weakness. Regional experts focus on **perception and trust**. This distinction has direct implications for your budget assumptions and for how you communicate with stakeholders. Restoring flight schedules does not automatically restore demand. Lowering room rates does not automatically restore bookings. What restores demand is a sustained period of **visible stability** \- followed by traveler confidence recovering - followed by booking pace normalising. In that order. Each step takes time and cannot be accelerated purely through commercial tactics. This means that for GCC hotels specifically, the recovery timeline is not primarily driven by operational factors - it is driven by perception. Watch government travel advisories from key source markets as closely as you watch your own booking pace. They are your leading indicator. *(Source: Tourism Economics Travel Industry Monitor Middle East Special Analysis, May 2026)* ## **Three scenarios for your 2027 budget.** Given the uncertainty, the most defensible approach is to build three scenarios - conservative, base case and optimistic - with clear triggers that tell you which one is playing out as the year develops. Present all three to your owner. Agree in advance which trigger points would move you from one scenario to another. **Scenario 1 - Conservative** *Traveler confidence recovers slowly. International arrivals to GCC remain significantly below 2025 levels through most of 2027.* - Budget occupancy at 60-65% of 2025 actuals - ADR flat to below 2025 levels - protect rate where possible but expect pressure - Revenue mix shifts toward domestic and regional GCC demand - Corporate and MICE budgeted at 50-60% of 2025 actuals - these segments lag leisure recovery - Ancillary and retail revenue budgeted conservatively - consumer spending caution compounds regional sentiment issues - Cost structure reviewed aggressively - this scenario requires lean operations and genuine flexibility This scenario applies if: Western government travel advisories remain elevated beyond Q3 2026, airline capacity restoration is slower than expected, and forward booking pace is tracking below 60% of 2025 by September 2026. **Scenario 2 - Base Case** *Recovery is underway by Q4 2026\. International arrivals begin returning in Q1 2027 but remain cautious.* - Budget occupancy at 70-75% of 2025 actuals - ADR recovering but not at peak 2025 levels - budget 80-90% of 2025 ADR - International leisure returning - corporate and MICE lagging but showing signs of recovery - Events and leisure programming driving incremental demand - Ancillary revenue recovering in line with occupancy - Domestic and regional GCC demand holding as a floor This scenario applies if: Major source markets downgrade travel advisories by Q3 2026, airline forward schedules show meaningful restoration by September, and forward booking pace tracks at 70-80% of 2025 levels. **Scenario 3 - Optimistic** *Full recovery by mid-2027\. Pent-up demand and a strong events calendar drive performance.* - Budget occupancy at 90-100% of 2025 actuals - ADR approaching or matching 2025 levels - Corporate and MICE recovering strongly - group pipeline rebuilding - Pent-up leisure demand generating above-normal booking pace in key source markets - Ancillary revenue at or approaching 2025 actuals This scenario applies if: Travel advisories are fully downgraded by Q3 2026, airline capacity is substantially restored, and forward booking pace tracks at 90%+ of 2025 by October 2026. ### **Should you budget to 2025 levels? Or to 2021 levels?** The answer depends entirely on your market, your segment and your source market mix. A GCC property that derives 80% of its revenue from international long-haul leisure travelers faces a very different 2027 than a property serving domestic business travelers. A hotel in Makkah or Madinah - where religious demand provides structural insulation from geopolitical shocks - faces a fundamentally different recovery trajectory than a luxury resort in Dubai dependent on European leisure. Before you open the budget spreadsheet - know which category your hotel actually falls into. Be honest about it. The Tourism Economics Middle East analysis makes clear that properties most exposed to international air connectivity are most exposed to the confidence shock - and will be last to recover. ### **How to position this to owners and stakeholders.** This is arguably as important as building the right numbers. Owners who saw 2025 performance - possibly record performance in some GCC markets - will struggle to accept a 2027 budget that looks conservative. The temptation is to present optimistic numbers and then explain underperformance later. Resist it. A better approach: Present three scenarios explicitly, as above. Show the owner the data behind each. Name the triggers that would move the hotel from one scenario to another. This does three things: it demonstrates rigorous thinking rather than guesswork, it gives the owner agency in understanding how the situation develops, and it protects the commercial team from being judged against targets that were built on assumptions nobody controls. The key message for stakeholders is this: the fundamentals of these markets have not changed. **Tourism Economics' Middle East analysis shows long-term tourism growth confidence in the region at +95% - compared to +65% globally.** The region's own tourism professionals, the people closest to the disruption, are more optimistic about the five-year outlook than the global industry average. They view current conditions as temporary. 2027 is a recovery year. Not a lost year. Budget it as one. ### **What to monitor before you finalise your numbers.** The following are your leading indicators. Track them monthly - not quarterly. Your budget assumptions should be living documents that update as these signals develop through H2 2026. **Government travel advisories.** UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), US State Department and German AuswΓ€rtiges Amt advisories are the trigger for leisure recovery from long-haul markets. When major source market governments downgrade from "advise against travel" or "exercise high degree of caution", leisure bookings from those markets typically follow within 6-8 weeks. This is your most important leading indicator for international leisure recovery. **Airline forward schedules.** Passengers follow flights. Before international demand recovers, airline capacity must recover. Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways and flydubai forward schedule announcements are your proxy for aviation confidence. Watch seat capacity announcements into your market weekly from July 2026 onward. **Your own forward booking pace.** The most reliable indicator is your own data. Track weekly booking pace against 2025 actuals by source market and segment. When your forward pace for Q1 2027 starts tracking above 70% of 2025 - you are moving toward Scenario 2\. Above 90% - Scenario 3 becomes plausible. **Corporate RFP volume and rate levels.** The volume and rate levels of corporate RFP submissions in Q3-Q4 2026 will tell you everything about corporate travel recovery for 2027\. If major account submissions are down significantly in volume, budget corporate at Scenario 1 levels regardless of what the leisure data shows. Corporate travel is the last to recover and the most sensitive to sustained geopolitical uncertainty. **Oil prices and jet fuel costs.** Tourism Economics' April briefing identified the Strait of Hormuz situation as the primary driver of jet fuel price increases - and therefore air fare increases - which directly suppress travel demand. Monitor Brent crude weekly. A sustained return toward pre-conflict levels signals improving aviation economics and reducing price barriers for travelers. ### **Conclusion.** The most important thing you can do right now is not build a more sophisticated forecast. It is to decide - clearly and deliberately - which scenario you are planning for, document your assumptions transparently, and define the triggers that would cause you to revise. A budget built on honest assumptions with clear revision triggers is more valuable than a precise forecast built on assumptions that no longer exist. The pre-conflict forecasts were built on a world that changed on February 28th. Your 2027 budget should be built on the world as it actually is - with a clear-eyed view of what recovery looks like, what drives it, and what you will be watching to know when it arrives. The fundamentals of this industry and this region are intact. The professionals closest to the disruption believe that more strongly than anyone. Budget for recovery. Plan for resilience. And keep watching the data. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* ### **Sources:** Oxford Economics - Travel Industry Monitor Q1 2026 (Global), April 2026 [https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/travel-industry-monitor-q1-2026/](https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/travel-industry-monitor-q1-2026/?ref=boredhotelier.com) STR/CoStar β€” Global Hotel Market Forecast Assumptions, February 2026 [https://www.costar.com/products/str-benchmark/resources/data-insights-blog/global-hotel-market-forecast-assumptions](https://www.costar.com/products/str-benchmark/resources/data-insights-blog/global-hotel-market-forecast-assumptions?ref=boredhotelier.com) Oxford Economics β€” Tourism Impacts in Middle East from Iran War, May 2026 [https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/tourism-impacts-in-middle-east-from-iran-war/](https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/tourism-impacts-in-middle-east-from-iran-war/?ref=boredhotelier.com) Oxford Economics β€” Impact of the Iran War on GCC Economies, April 2026 [https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/impact-of-the-iran-war-on-gcc-economies/](https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/impact-of-the-iran-war-on-gcc-economies/?ref=boredhotelier.com) HVS β€” Shock, Divergence and Recovery: The Impact of the 2026 US-Iran Conflict on GCC Hospitality, May 2026 [https://www.hospitalitynet.org/opinion/4132271/shock-divergence-and-recovery-the-impact-of-the-2026-usiran-conflict-on-gcc-hospitality](https://www.hospitalitynet.org/opinion/4132271/shock-divergence-and-recovery-the-impact-of-the-2026-usiran-conflict-on-gcc-hospitality?ref=boredhotelier.com) ## Frequently Asked Questions **What should I budget for 2027 if my hotel is in the GCC?* Build three scenarios - conservative, base case and optimistic - rather than one number. Your starting point depends entirely on your segment and source market mix. As a framework: conservative budgets occupancy at 60-65% of 2025 actuals; base case at 70-75%; optimistic approaching 2025 levels. Budget corporate and MICE conservatively in all three - these segments recover last. Define the triggers that would move you between scenarios before you present to ownership.* **What should I forecast for 2026 if my hotel is in the GCC?* H1 2026 is largely already determined - focus on cost management and maximising domestic and regional demand. H2 2026 is a recovery period paced by traveler confidence, not operational capacity. Tourism Economics projects a 30% decline in GCC inbound arrivals for the full year. Your forward booking pace for Q4 2026 is your most reliable predictor of 2027 - track it weekly against 2025 actuals. That data is worth more than any macro forecast right now.* **How will hotel websites need to change in 2027?* The shift is already happening. AI search tools pull directly from your website to build recommendations - which means vague, adjective-heavy hotel descriptions written for brochures are actively working against you. By 2027, hotel websites need to answer specific guest questions directly, use plain conversational language rather than marketing copy, load fast on mobile, and contain FAQ content that mirrors how travelers actually search. The hotels that built this foundation in 2025 and 2026 will hold a significant search advantage going into 2027 and beyond. The ones that didn't will find themselves paying whoever did to reach guests who were already looking for them.* ### The Phone Eats First. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-phone-eats-first/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:34:38.000Z There is a moment in every fine dining experience that has quietly become universal. The dish arrives. It is beautiful. It has been thought about, sourced, tested, refined and plated with the kind of precision that most industries reserve for engineering. The server places it in front of you with a brief explanation of what you're about to eat. And before the first bite β€” sometimes before the server has even finished speaking β€” the phone comes out. ### **The chefs are divided. Loudly.** Michel Roux of The Waterside Inn β€” three Michelin stars, one of only a handful of restaurants in England to hold them β€” had seen enough. He put up a sign at the door. No photos, please. *"I'm really getting so upset about people taking pictures,"* he told The Telegraph. *"What about the flavours? A picture on a phone cannot possibly capture the flavours."* Gordon Ramsay read this and went to Twitter immediately. *"How bloody pompous. It's a compliment to the chef that customers want to take pictures of dishes they've paid for."* He called Roux an *"old fart who's forgotten to move on"* and pointed out that even the Michelin Guide's own social media team posts photos of their dining experiences. *"Customers vote with their feet β€” pictures create huge followers and excite potential business."* Both men have three Michelin stars. Both are completely right. Both are completely wrong. ### **The case against the phone.** Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz β€” two Michelin stars, consistently ranked among the world's best restaurants β€” has a different concern. It's not the photography itself. It's what Instagram is doing to menus. He argues that social media's new gastronomic codes are creating a growing uniformity in restaurants around the world β€” dishes designed to look extraordinary in a square frame, regardless of whether they taste extraordinary on a palate. When every restaurant on every continent is chasing the same aesthetic, something essential gets lost. The James Beard Foundation surveyed its award-recognised chefs on this exact point. One of them put it plainly: *"These days it feels like as chefs we're expected to make food that's not only delicious but also Instagrammable. It takes the focus away from the flavour and intention of the dish. I'd rather guests put their phones down and really taste what's in front of you."* The argument is simple. Fine dining is a sensory experience. Smell. Texture. Temperature. The way a sauce changes as it sits. The way a wine opens up after fifteen minutes. None of this appears in a photograph. None of it gets 847 likes. ### **The case for the phone.** The Michelin Guide's own inspectors β€” the people who decide which restaurants get stars β€” published their 2026 trend report noting that the best dining experiences now reward cultural clarity and authorship. The restaurants generating the most conversation are doing so because guests are sharing them. A photograph taken by a genuinely delighted guest is the most credible marketing that exists. It cannot be bought. It cannot be faked. It reaches exactly the right audience β€” people who follow food lovers β€” at exactly the right moment β€” when someone they trust is endorsing an experience. The economics are straightforward. A Michelin-starred tasting menu costs hundreds of dollars per person. The marketing value of a guest with 50,000 followers sharing a photograph of your signature dish β€” with genuine emotion behind it β€” is incalculable. And it's free. Gordon Ramsay's point stands: imagine asking Ed Sheeran fans not to photograph the concert. ### **The honest question for the industry.** Fine dining restaurants spend extraordinary amounts of time, money and creative energy designing an experience. The lighting. The music. The pacing. The way a dish is presented and explained. Every element is considered. And then we hand the guest a phone and wonder why their attention is somewhere else. The question isn't whether Instagram is good or bad for fine dining. It clearly drives reservations, builds reputations and creates communities around restaurants that would otherwise struggle to reach new audiences. **The question is whether fine dining is designing for the guest in the room β€” or the audience watching from outside it.** **Those are two very different restaurants.** *Which one are you running?* *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **Should fine dining restaurants ban phone photography?* Probably not β€” but the more interesting question is why guests are photographing in the first place. A guest capturing a genuine memory is doing something fundamentally different from a guest assembling content for an audience. The dish is the same. The intention isn't. Most restaurants haven't figured out how to tell the difference β€” let alone design an experience that makes guests want to put the phone down voluntarily.* **Does Instagram help or hurt fine dining restaurants?* Both. Instagram drives reservations, builds reputation and creates communities around restaurants that would otherwise take years to reach new audiences. It also incentivises dishes designed to photograph beautifully rather than taste extraordinarily. When every restaurant chases the same aesthetic, menus start to look the same everywhere. The tool is neutral. What the industry does with it isn't.* **Why do chefs hate food photography?* Not all of them do. Gordon Ramsay called chefs who ban photos "bloody pompous" and argued that a guest photographing their meal is paying the chef a compliment. Michel Roux banned photography entirely at his three-Michelin-star restaurant, arguing a phone cannot capture flavour. The chefs who object aren't usually objecting to photography itself β€” they're objecting to the moment when documenting a meal replaces experiencing one.* **Does food photography affect the dining experience?* It depends entirely on how it's done. A quick photograph taken out of genuine delight adds nothing negative to the experience and potentially everything positive β€” for the restaurant's reach and the guest's memory. Flash photography, standing on chairs, rearranging plates and photographing while the server is explaining the dish are different matters entirely. The etiquette hasn't caught up with the technology.* ### The Most Underestimated Professionals on the Planet URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-most-underestimated-professionals-on-the-planet/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:34:12.000Z Every time there's a crisis - pandemic, geopolitical instability, economic slowdown - hospitality is the first industry to shed jobs. And the professionals who lose them face a wall of rejection from every other industry because their CV says "hotel." But think about what a hotel professional actually is: A receptionist isn't someone who says hi and bye. They operate complex property management systems, handle financial transactions, navigate security protocols, manage guest privacy compliance, resolve conflicts under pressure, upsell products, handle medical emergencies and do all of it with a smile at 3am. And when a war starts - or missiles fly overhead - they are the first person a terrified guest runs to. No training manual prepares you for that moment. No corporate protocol covers the look in someone's eyes when they don't know if their family is safe. But the receptionist handles it. Calmly. Professionally. Because that's what hoteliers do. They hold it together so everyone else can fall apart. A Food & Beverage manager coordinating 15 restaurants, in-room dining and banquets for 4,000 people a day isn't a restaurant manager. They're a logistics expert, a people manager, a financial controller, a crisis manager and a customer experience director simultaneously. A sales manager who manages a portfolio of corporate accounts across multiple markets isn't just a salesperson. They're a relationship manager, a data analyst, a revenue strategist and a negotiator. **These skills transfer everywhere.** Finance. Retail. Real estate. Tech. Healthcare. Aviation. The world just hasn't figured that out yet. xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰ # **Frequently Asked Questions** **Can hospitality professionals work outside the hotel industry?* Absolutely. The skills developed in hotel careers β€” client management, financial accountability, crisis response, team leadership, systems operations and customer experience β€” are highly transferable. Industries actively looking for these skills include financial services, retail, real estate, healthcare, aviation, technology and luxury brands. The challenge is rarely capability. It's knowing how to present a hotel career in language other industries understand.* **How do I switch careers from hospitality to another industry?* Start by translating your hotel experience into universal business language. Instead of "managed hotel reception" write "led a 24/7 customer operations team handling financial transactions, compliance, conflict resolution and crisis management." Instead of "F&B manager" write "operations manager responsible for multi-unit food service delivery across 15 outlets serving up to 4,000 covers daily." The experience is impressive. The CV just needs to speak a different language.* **How do I rewrite my hotel CV for jobs outside hospitality?* Remove hotel specific jargon and replace it with universal business terminology. Quantify everything β€” number of staff managed, revenue controlled, covers served, accounts handled, systems operated. Lead with transferable skills β€” leadership, operations, client management, financial accountability, crisis management. Remove the word "guest" and replace it with "client" or "customer." Your experience is more impressive than you think. Most hiring managers just need help seeing it.* **What jobs can a hotel receptionist apply for outside hospitality?* More than most people realise. Customer success roles in tech companies, client services in financial institutions, operations coordinator positions, executive assistant roles, compliance and privacy officer positions, retail management, healthcare front office management and airline customer service are all realistic transitions. The systems, protocols and pressure management skills of a hotel receptionist are genuinely rare and valuable outside the industry.* **What industries hire former hotel managers?* Real estate β€” property and facilities management, client relations. Financial services β€” relationship management, private banking support. Retail β€” operations management, customer experience. Aviation β€” ground operations, lounge management, customer service leadership. Technology β€” customer success, account management, operations. Luxury brands β€” client experience, retail management. Healthcare β€” patient services, hospital operations. The list is longer than most hoteliers realise.* **Why won't other industries hire hospitality professionals?* Mostly ignorance. Hiring managers outside hospitality rarely understand the complexity, pressure and skill level required to work in a hotel environment. The bias is real but it's based on assumption not evidence. The solution is a CV and cover letter that translates hotel experience into language the hiring manager recognises β€” and interviews that reframe your story around universal business achievements rather than hotel specific responsibilities.* ### The Company That Tells Hotels How They're Doing Has Never Run a Hotel. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-company-that-tells-hotels-how-theyre-doing-has-never-run-a-hotel/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:33:13.000Z Every Monday morning, somewhere in the world, a GM is nervously pulling up the STAR report. The owner is on the call. The comp set nobody questions. The metric that decides whether you're winning or losing. All of it owned by CoStar. A commercial real estate company. Not a hospitality company. A real estate data business whose core clients are property investors, lenders and developers. **Here's what's interesting.** CoStar measures office buildings by rent per square foot. Industrial properties by lease rates per square foot. Retail by price per square foot. Every asset class normalised for space. Every comparison built around how hard every square meter of that asset is working. For hotels they use RevPAR. Revenue per available room. Regardless of whether that room is 20 square meters or 90\. Regardless of whether it's a standard room or a villa. A real estate company that measures everything else by the square foot gave hotels a metric that ignores space entirely. **The part that's hard to explain.** In 2012 - seven years before CoStar acquired STR - an [article](https://www.costar.com/article/1590088777/optimizing-total-revenue-management?ref=boredhotelier.com) published on STR's own platform recommended revenue per square foot as a hotel performance metric. Written by industry professionals. Endorsed by an advisory board including executives from IHG, Hyatt, Wyndham and Fairmont. That was fourteen years ago. The STAR report still runs on RevPAR, ADR and occupancy. STR recommended their own evolution in 2012. You can't say they didn't know. *Make of that what you will.* *xoxo, Bored Hotelier πŸ˜‰* *Curious about what better hotel benchmarking actually looks like? Further reading for you:* [*Why RGI is the most misused metric in the hotel industry*](https://boredhotelier.com/how-rgi-is-killing-your-business/) *\- and what to measure instead.* [*RevPAM. The Metric Your Hotel Should Have Been Using Yesterday*](https://boredhotelier.com/revpam-the-metric-your-hotel-should-have-been-using-yesterday/) *\- the space-based metric CoStar applies to every other asset class.* [*RevPAR Is Up. Margins Are Down. Bonus Received.*](https://boredhotelier.com/revpar-is-up-margins-are-down-bonus-received/) *\- on why the metric itself is structurally broken beyond the benchmarking problem.* ### **Frequently Asked Questions** **Is RGI a good metric for measuring hotel performance?* RGI tells you one thing - how your RevPAR compares to a group of competitor hotels. That's useful context but a dangerously incomplete picture. A hotel can outperform a flawed comp set and still be losing money. A hotel can have RGI below 100 and be running a far more profitable operation than its competitors. Used in isolation RGI tells you how you're doing relative to others - not whether you're actually doing well. That's a very different question.* **Who owns STR?* STR (originally founded as Smith Travel Research in 1985) was acquired by CoStar Group in 2019 for $450 million. It now operates as part of CoStar's benchmarking division under the brand name Benchmark.* **Who owns CoStar?* CoStar Group is a publicly traded company listed on NASDAQ under the ticker CSGP. It was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Its core business is commercial real estate data, analytics and online marketplaces - serving property investors, lenders, brokers and developers across office, retail, industrial and multifamily sectors. Hotels, through STR, represent one part of a much larger real estate data empire.* **How much is CoStar worth?* As of April 2026 CoStar Group has a market capitalisation of approximately $16.5 billion and annual revenue of around $3.25 billion. They paid $450 million for STR in 2019\. Make of those numbers what you will. πŸ˜„* ### Every Hotel Is Buying AI. Almost Nobody Is Ready For It. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/every-hotel-is-buying-ai-almost-nobody-is-ready-for-it/ Last updated: 2026-08-08T08:03:43.000Z There's a phrase in computing that's been around since the 1960s. **Garbage in, garbage out.** Feed a system bad data, broken logic or flawed assumptions, and no matter how sophisticated the technology, what comes out the other side is still garbage. Just faster, more automated, more expensive garbage. Worth keeping in mind before signing that AI contract. ### **The Technology Is Real. The Problem Is Everything Else.** AI in hospitality, deployed correctly, is genuinely exciting. Dynamic pricing engines that analyse demand signals, booking pace and market conditions simultaneously and adjusting inventory in real time in ways no human revenue manager could execute at that speed. Guest communication platforms that personalise every interaction at scale, 24 hours a day. Housekeeping optimisation tools that improve room turnaround and reduce wasted movement measurably. When AI lands in a hotel with clean data, clear processes and trained people, it delivers. The results are real and the competitive advantage is significant. The problem is most hotels aren't that hotel. And they're buying AI anyway. ### **The Foundation Problem.** AI runs on data. And in most hotels, the data situation is quietly **chaotic**. Guest profiles that are half empty because nobody made it a habit to complete them. A comp set that was selected five or six years ago and hasn't been seriously reviewed since (the same issue I explored in [How RGI Is Killing Your Business](https://boredhotelier.com/how-rgi-is-killing-your-business/)). Pricing logic that was configured by someone who left the business two years ago and that nobody fully understands anymore. Loyalty tiers, contracted rates, channel strategies - all sitting in different systems that don't talk to each other. Now add AI on top. The pricing engine optimises against whatever comp set it's given. The guest communication platform learns from whatever templates and policies already exist. The housekeeping tool schedules based on whatever data it can find. The AI isn't the problem. The foundation underneath it is. And AI, unlike a human team, won't quietly work around the gaps. It will use them all without exception. *Broken assumptions don't disappear when you add technology. They just travel faster.* ### **AI Doesn't Create Problems. It Reveals Them.** This is the part vendors don't put in their pitch decks. **AI exposes dysfunction**. A hotel with clean data, empowered staff and documented processes will find AI transformative. A hotel where nobody questions a five year old comp set, where policies are inherited and unexamined, where the management layer doesn't own outcomes - that hotel will find AI expensive and confusing. Not because the technology failed. Because it worked exactly as designed and showed the hotel precisely what it was working with. The good news? Everything AI exposes is fixable. And fixing it makes the hotel better with or without AI. ### **So What Do You Fix First?** If you're serious about getting real value from AI - and you should be, because this technology is only getting better and your competitors are moving - here's the order that matters. **Fix your data first.** Audit it honestly before anything else. Guest history, loyalty profiles, pricing logic, comp set relevance. If you wouldn't trust a human to make decisions based on this data, **don't trust AI** to either. Clean data is the single most important investment you can make before any AI implementation. *Your digital presence needs the same audit.* [*Your next guest is already asking ChatGPT where to stay*](https://boredhotelier.com/your-next-guest-is-asking-chatgpt-where-to-stay-is-your-hotel-in-the-answer/) *\- and whether your hotel appears in the answer depends on data you may not have reviewed.* **Fix your processes second.** Document how things actually work - not how they're supposed to work. Every AI implementation touches human workflows. Pricing decisions reach the front desk. Guest communications shape service expectations. If those workflows are unclear, AI will inherit the confusion. This is also the moment to question everything that's been sitting unchallenged for years - as I explored in [4 Receipts. 1 Salad](https://boredhotelier.com/four-receipts-one-salad/). **Fix your people third.** Train them. AI literacy is now an operational requirement. Your revenue manager needs to understand what the pricing engine is doing and why. Your front desk team needs to trust the system. Your GM needs to read what the data is actually saying. The biggest AI failures in hospitality don't come from bad technology. They come from teams who were never prepared to work alongside it. **Then buy AI.** With clean data, documented processes and a trained team, AI stops being a risk and becomes exactly what it was always supposed to be. A genuine competitive advantage that compounds over time. **One Question Before You Sign Anything.** Is your hotel ready to have its assumptions exposed? Because that's what AI does. It doesn't judge. It doesn't soften the message. It just shows you exactly what you gave it to work with. Fix the hotel first. Then give it AI. Garbage in. Garbage out. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ *Further reading:* [*AI is reading your press releases.*](https://boredhotelier.com/finally-someone-is-reading-your-press-releases-its-ai/) *For the first time in a very long time, someone is.* *And* [*GEO. AEO. LLMO. It's Still Just SEO.*](https://boredhotelier.com/geo-aeo-llmo-its-still-just-seo/) *On how to optimize your hotel content for AI.* # **Frequently Asked Questions** **Is AI a good tool for hospitality?* Yes - in the right conditions. AI delivers real results in hotels with clean data, documented processes and trained teams. In hotels where the foundation is broken, AI doesn't fix the problems - it automates them. The technology is only as good as what you give it to work with. Which means the honest answer to "is AI good for my hotel?" is really "how good is my data?"* **How is AI used in hospitality operations?* The most impactful applications currently are dynamic pricing and revenue management, guest communication and pre-arrival personalisation, housekeeping scheduling and room turnaround optimisation, and demand forecasting. The common thread is that all of these are data-intensive, repetitive and time-sensitive - exactly where AI outperforms humans. Where AI consistently underperforms is anywhere that requires judgment, empathy or the ability to read a room. That remains stubbornly human.* **Can I trust AI to price my hotel rooms?* With the right setup - yes. With the wrong setup - absolutely not. An AI pricing engine is only as reliable as the data feeding it. A stale comp set, unloaded contracted rates, poorly configured channel logic - all of these will produce pricing decisions that feel inexplicable to your front desk team and erode trust in the system fast. Before trusting AI with pricing, audit your data foundation honestly. If you wouldn't trust a human to price correctly with that data, don't trust AI to either.* **Which hotel jobs can be replaced by AI?* This is the question everyone is asking and very few are answering honestly. Roles that are primarily data processing, repetitive communication or pattern recognition - certain revenue management functions, guest messaging, demand forecasting, scheduling - will be significantly automated. Roles that require genuine human connection, service recovery, leadership and creative problem solving will not. The more interesting question isn't which jobs disappear but which jobs change, and whether your team is being trained for what comes next.* **What happens to hotel marketing jobs as AI becomes mainstream?* Marketing in hospitality doesn't disappear - it transforms. Basic content creation, graphic design, email copywriting and social media scheduling are already being automated by AI tools that produce competent work at a fraction of the traditional cost. What remains human is strategy, brand voice, creative direction and the ability to make AI tools produce something that actually sounds like your hotel rather than every other hotel. The most valuable hotel marketer in 2026 isn't the one who writes the best copy - it's the one who knows how to orchestrate AI tools to produce the right output, interpret the data correctly and make decisions that no algorithm can make alone.* ### The Ballroom Trap URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-ballroom-trap/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T17:56:19.000Z Let's talk about the ballroom. Every hotel that has one is simultaneously proud of it and quietly stressed about it. And for good reason. The ballroom is expensive real estate. Every square meter of it needs to justify itself - a concept I first explored in [How RGI Is Killing Your Business](https://boredhotelier.com/how-rgi-is-killing-your-business/) when talking about rooms, and one that applies just as powerfully here. [RevPAM - Revenue Per Available Metre](https://boredhotelier.com/revpam-the-metric-your-hotel-should-have-been-using-yesterday/) \- applies this logic to every space in your hotel, not just the ballroom. ## **Does your hotel even need a ballroom?** Not enough people ask this question. If you're a resort of around 200 rooms with a massive convention center - rent it out. You don't have the rooms capacity to support large groups consistently, and weddings don't happen every day. You cannot justify a full banquet and kitchen team on the hope of occasional events. The math doesn't work. If you're a larger resort - MICE on weekdays, weddings and social events on weekends. Clean model, good revenue mix, works well when executed properly. If you're a city hotel of medium to large size - a ballroom is almost always a plus. But this is exactly where the trap begins. ## **The Trap.** A catering enquiry comes in. Corporate lunch, gala dinner, product launch. No sleeping rooms attached. Pure catering business. And the sales team hesitates. *"Let's hold the space. Maybe we'll get a group lead with rooms."* So they wait. The catering business goes elsewhere. And the group lead (more often than not) either doesn't materialise, arrives too late, or comes in with rates so heavily negotiated that the net revenue barely justifies the effort. Meanwhile the ballroom sat empty. This happens everywhere. Every week. In hotels of every size. And here's the uncomfortable question nobody asks out loud: does the owner know? Not in a general sense, but specifically. How many days did the ballroom sit empty last quarter while the sales team waited for a group that never came? How much catering revenue walked out the door during that time? Most owners couldn't answer that question right now. And that's not just a sales team problem. That's a governance problem. ## **The Uncomfortable Truth About Groups.** The right group at the right time is still gold. A conference that fills your rooms AND your ballroom at a solid rate during a slow period? Smart selling. No argument there. The problem isn't groups. It's **over-reliance on groups** as a primary strategy rather than a tactical tool. Because look at what a group actually costs. Rates heavily discounted off BAR. Complimentary rooms. Loyalty points. Intermediary commissions. Free upgrades. Added value stacked on added value until the margin is barely recognisable. And groups leave **gaps**. Occupancy gaps that are genuinely hard to fill - **gaps you end up discounting into oblivion**. Your RGI at month end tells the whole story (and if you want to understand why RGI itself is also a deeply flawed measure, [this post](https://boredhotelier.com/how-rgi-is-killing-your-business/) will make you uncomfortable in the best possible way). ## **Meanwhile, Catering Is Quietly One of Your Highest Margin Businesses.** Yes, catering may have its own commissions and loyalty costs. But the food cost relative to what clients pay is remarkably low. Catering is priced at a premium, and clients accept that premium. The margin between production cost and invoice price is where catering quietly outperforms almost every other hotel revenue stream. Your GOP feels it. (Or should.) Every empty ballroom hour isn't just lost revenue. It's lost high margin revenue. Take a 500 square meter ballroom sitting empty 200 days a year. Even at a conservative daily catering rate, do the math. Then ask yourself honestly whether your group strategy is actually outperforming that number on an annual basis. Not in a good month. On a full year. The answer might reshape your entire commercial calendar. And it's not just the ballroom. Boardrooms, breakout rooms, pre-function space - all of it sits empty for large portions of the year in most hotels. The same argument applies to every square meter of meeting space you own. All of it is real estate. All of it needs to justify itself. ## **Here's What Nobody Is Measuring Properly.** This is the part that should concern every owner and asset manager reading this. There is currently no widely used tool or industry dashboard that properly tracks and benchmarks ballroom occupancy and **revenue per square meter of meeting space** across hotels. Think about that. We have STR for rooms. We have comp sets for RevPAR. We benchmark, we analyse, we obsess over every available room night. But the ballroom? That enormous, expensive, high-potential piece of real estate sitting in the middle of your hotel? We measure it loosely at best. A catering revenue total here. An event count there. Nobody is systematically asking: *What is my *ballroom occupancy percentage* this year? What is my *revenue per square meter of meeting space*, and how does it compare to my competitors? How many hours did this space sit empty while we waited for a group that never came? What did those empty hours actually cost us in lost catering margin?* If you ran these numbers honestly (and compared them against even two or three competitor properties), the results would reshape your entire commercial strategy. The hotels that start measuring this properly will have an immediate and significant advantage over those still guarding their ballroom space on instinct and hope. ## **Build the Base. Free the Ballroom.** The long term solution is a transient demand base strong enough that rooms sell themselves, freeing the ballroom to take any catering enquiry that walks through the door without the anxiety of *"but what about groups?"* This is a commercial strategy, not an operational one. It requires someone who understands the full picture - direct booking channels, corporate account development, digital marketing, revenue management, distribution strategy - and can connect all of it into a coherent plan that reduces group dependency over time. It's the kind of thinking that rarely comes from one department alone. And it's exactly the conversation that should be happening between commercial leaders, GMs and owners far more often than it does. Is this easy? No. It takes years of investment and consistent execution. It's not a quick fix. But it's the right direction. And the hotels moving that way are the ones whose ballroom revenue per square meter actually makes sense at year end. Until then - at the very minimum - start measuring. Build your own dashboard. Track your ballroom occupancy. Calculate your revenue per square meter of meeting space. Compare it year on year. Because right now, most hotels don't even know what they're losing. And what you don't measure, you can't fix. The culture that allows this to go unmeasured and unchallenged is the same one I wrote about in [One "No." Millions Lost](https://boredhotelier.com/one-no-millions-lost/): nobody owning it, everyone pointing up, and the business quietly suffering as a result. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ *Further reading:* [*RevPAR Is Up. Margins Are Down. Bonus Received.*](https://boredhotelier.com/revpar-is-up-margins-are-down-bonus-received/) *\- on the metric and the incentive structure around it.* # **Frequently Asked Questions** **How do you calculate revenue per square metre of meeting space?* Divide the total revenue generated by your meeting or event space by its total size in square metres. Revenue Per Square Metre = Total Space Revenue Γ· Total Square Metres. Apply it monthly and space by space - your main ballroom, boardrooms, breakout rooms and pre-function areas each tell a different story. A 600 square metre ballroom generating €15,000 per month produces €25 per square metre. A 80 square metre rooftop bar generating €32,000 produces €400 per square metre. The comparison between spaces is where the real insight lives - and where most commercial conversations should start but don't.* **How do hotels increase ballroom and meeting space utilization?* Stop treating the ballroom as a room you protect and start treating it as a room you sell. The single biggest driver of low ballroom utilization is holding space for groups that never materialise. A catering-first approach - taking non-residential business aggressively while building a transient rooms base strong enough to reduce group dependency - consistently outperforms the traditional "hold for groups" strategy when measured honestly across a full year.* **Is residential or non-residential business better for hotel meeting space?* Both have merit but they serve different purposes. Residential business - groups that also book sleeping rooms - looks attractive on paper because it fills two revenue streams simultaneously. The reality is that residential groups come heavily discounted, laden with complimentary rooms, intermediary commissions and added value that erodes the margin significantly. Non-residential catering business - a corporate lunch, a product launch, a gala dinner - arrives at full catering rates with food cost as the primary variable. The margin on a well-run non-residential event often outperforms a discounted residential group. Most hotels don't know this because nobody has run the comparison honestly.* **When should a hotel consider leasing its ballroom or meeting rooms?* When the space is consistently underperforming and the honest answer is that you can't fix it - not with the current team, budget or commercial strategy in the foreseeable future. A ballroom sitting empty 200 days a year generating nothing is not an asset. It's a liability with good lighting. Leasing to the right tenant - a corporate office needing flexible event space, a co-working operator, a restaurant concept - can generate predictable income while reducing the overhead of maintaining a full banquet operation. Hotels don't have to be great at everything. Sometimes the smartest commercial decision is knowing what to hand to someone who is.* **How do you calculate the true cost of an empty ballroom?* Take your total meeting space in square meters. Estimate a conservative daily catering rate for your market. Multiply by the number of days the space sat empty or underutilised last year. That number - which most hotels have never calculated - is your opportunity cost. Now compare it to what your group strategy actually delivered net of discounts, commissions, complimentary rooms and added value. The gap between those two numbers is the conversation every owner should be having with their commercial team.* ### What Is RGI in Hotels - And Why It's Killing Your Business URL: https://boredhotelier.com/how-rgi-is-killing-your-business/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T08:20:16.000Z *RGI - Revenue Generation Index - is a hotel performance metric that measures your property's RevPAR against the average RevPAR of a selected group of competitor hotels. An RGI above 100 means your hotel is outperforming its competitive set. Below 100 means it's underperforming. Simple in theory.* Let me paint you a picture. You're sitting in a revenue meeting. The GM is nervous. The owner is on the call. Someone pulls up the comp set report and there it is - RGI below 100. And then it begins. *"Well, our comp set includes a hotel next to a mall.""That property has villas - completely different product.""They have large apartments, it's not a fair comparison.""That hotel reports ADR inclusive of F&B packages."* That last one. Let's just sit with that for a second. A hotel. Reporting ADR. Inclusive of food and beverage packages. And we're using this number to benchmark performance. *Why do we worship it?* RGI compares your RevPAR to the average RevPAR of your competitive set. Above 100 means you're outperforming your comp set. Below 100 means you're losing to them. Simple in theory. Deeply flawed in practice. Because it assumes your comp set is actually comparable. And in most cases - it isn't. Not even close. Here's how a comp set typically gets built. Someone (a GM, a revenue manager, an owner with opinions) picks 4 or 5 hotels that feel roughly similar. Same stars, same area, roughly similar rates, different chains. Except that comp set might include a property with 40% suites versus your 10%. A hotel attached to a convention center with guaranteed group business. A resort with all-inclusive packages baked into their rate. A boutique property with 60 rooms versus your 400. You are now measuring yourself against all of these. Every single month. And when your RGI dips, you spend an hour in a meeting explaining why the comparison isn't fair. Which everyone in the room already knows. But nobody says it out loud. And here's where it gets truly uncomfortable. [STR built an entire industry around comp set data.](https://boredhotelier.com/the-company-that-tells-hotels-how-theyre-doing-has-never-run-a-hotel/) Revenue management systems like IDeaS and Duetto - billion dollar businesses - are largely built around optimising against that same comp set. If the comp set is fundamentally flawed, what exactly is the whole machine optimising against? It's a question the industry doesn't particularly want to answer. ### **So what actually matters?** Here's the question nobody asks enough: what are we actually trying to measure? If the answer is "are we making money and growing" - RGI tells you almost nothing useful on its own. Here's what tells you more: **TRevPAR β€” Total Revenue Per Available Room.** Not just rooms. Everything. F&B, spa, parking, ancillary spend. A guest who spends $200 on a room and $150 in your restaurant is worth far more than a guest who books a $220 rate and never leaves their floor. RGI doesn't see that. TRevPAR does. **GOP PAR β€” Gross Operating Profit Per Available Room.** Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. A hotel running high occupancy at discounted rates with bloated payroll might have great RGI and terrible GOP. Which number actually pays the bills? **Direct Booking Ratio.**What percentage of revenue comes direct versus through OTAs? This tells you about brand strength, loyalty program health, and long term margin sustainability. A hotel with 80% OTA dependency and great RGI is a fragile business dressed up in a good-looking report. **Guest Retention Rate.**How many guests come back? This is the most underused metric in hospitality and arguably the most honest one. You can game almost every other number. Retention is harder to manipulate - though it's worth acknowledging that loyalty points and status matching can artificially inflate return rates without genuine satisfaction driving them. Strip those out and look at what's left. That number tells you the truth. ### **Now here's an idea the industry isn't talking about yet.** What if instead of comparing RevPAR - revenue per available room - hotels started comparing revenue per square meter of accommodation space? A 25 square meter standard room generating $150 a night is performing very differently from a 90 square meter suite generating $300 a night. The suite looks impressive in a RevPAR report. But per square meter? It's actually underperforming the standard room significantly. Now apply that logic to your entire comp set. That hotel with villas? Suddenly the comparison gets very honest very fast. Those large apartments your GM keeps mentioning as an excuse? Let's see how they perform per square meter. The all-suite property that always beats you on ADR? Run the numbers. Revenue per square meter strips away the excuses. It normalises for the one thing that actually defines your physical product - space. It doesn't care how many rooms you have, what category they are, or how creatively someone packages their F&B into their rate. It just asks one simple question: how hard is every square meter of your hotel working for you? Is this metric widely used today? No. Should it be? Absolutely. And I'd argue it's only a matter of time before someone builds the benchmarking tool to prove it. ### **So what's the best benchmarking solution?** Here's my honest answer: there isn't one single metric. There never will be. The moment you pick one number to judge performance, smart people find ways to make that number look good while the actual business quietly suffers. The best benchmarking is a **dashboard** of metrics that together tell the whole truth: **Revenue per square meter** \- normalises for your physical product. Here we've explored [revenue per square meter](https://boredhotelier.com/revpam-the-metric-your-hotel-should-have-been-using-yesterday/)[ in detail](https://boredhotelier.com/revpam-the-metric-your-hotel-should-have-been-using-yesterday/) β€” including how to calculate it space by space across your entire property. **GOP PAR** \- because revenue without profitability is just an expensive ego trip. A hotel running high occupancy at discounted rates with bloated payroll might have great RGI and terrible GOP. [In this separate post](https://boredhotelier.com/revpar-is-up-margins-are-down-bonus-received/) we've covered exactly why this happens - and what metrics actually reveal it. **TRevPAR** \- captures the full guest spend, not just the room. **Direct booking ratio** \- measures brand strength and long term margin health. **Guest retention rate** \- the most honest verdict on whether your hotel is actually good. And here's the order that matters: benchmark against your own last year first. Your budget second. Your comp set third. Your biggest competitor isn't the hotel down the street. It's your own potential. ### **So why hasn't the industry moved on?** Because RGI is simple. It's one number. It fits in a PowerPoint slide. It's easy to present to an owner who doesn't want a dashboard - they want a verdict. The hospitality industry has a chronic allergy to complexity in reporting. Which is ironic given how complex the actual business is. The real solution isn't just better metrics. It's better financial literacy at ownership and board level. Until owners start asking better questions, operators will keep giving them the easy answer. And everyone will keep sitting in that Monday morning meeting. Explaining why the RGI isn't their fault. Stop explaining your RGI. Start explaining your business. And maybe (just maybe) start measuring it better. For a real world example of how commercial strategy plays out on the ground - and what happens when hotels get the environment completely wrong - read [Three Resorts. One Beach. One Winner.](https://boredhotelier.com/three-resorts-one-beach-one-winner/) *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **What is RGI in hotels?* RGI stands for Revenue Generation Index. It is a hotel benchmarking metric that measures your property's RevPAR - Revenue Per Available Room - against the average RevPAR of your competitive set. An RGI above 100 means your hotel is outperforming its comp set. Below 100 means you're underperforming. Simple in theory, deeply flawed in practice - because the metric is only as reliable as the comp set it references, and most comp sets are not genuinely comparable.* **My hotel's RGI is below 100\. What should I do?* Before panicking - audit your comp set honestly. Is every property in it genuinely comparable? If not, fix that first. Then look at GOP PAR, TRevPAR and your direct booking ratio. Those numbers will tell you far more about where the real problem is.* **Who owns STR and why does it matter?* STR was acquired by CoStar Group in 2019 for $450 million. CoStar is a commercial real estate data company whose primary clients are investors, lenders, brokers and developers. When CoStar acquired STR they were explicit that the goal was to serve the hotel real estate investment community. Whether the day to day needs of a revenue manager or a GM drive product development at a $450 million real estate data business is a question we don’t normally ask.* **Is Amadeus Demand360 worth the investment for hotels?* For commercial teams who actually know how to use it - yes. There is of course some value in the forward-looking occupancy on the books, but the same can be provided by CoStar. The real value is the detailed backward-looking segmentation breakdown, where you can see exactly which segment you're losing to your competitors and by how much. Corporate, wholesale, government, groups, retail - all broken down in just enough detail. You can also build your own comp set independently of STR, which is arguably the smarter move - add the hotels you actually want to compete with, not the ones that ended up in your STAR report by default. The challenge remains segmentation inconsistency across hotels - different operators report different segments differently. The data is good. Interpreting it correctly requires experience. And if you manage an IHG hotel it would be worth reaching out to your counterparts at Accor, Marriott, Hyatt and Hilton to ask how they report their business and what segments they use - before drawing any conclusions from the comparison.* **Why is revenue per square meter not yet a standard hotel benchmarking metric?* Because it requires participation at scale to be meaningful - the same reason STR took decades to become the industry standard. You need enough hotels in a given market reporting consistently before the comparison becomes useful. The concept is sound. The infrastructure doesn't exist yet. Which means whoever builds it properly first will own the next generation of hotel benchmarking.* **What is the difference between RGI and RevPAR?* RevPAR - Revenue Per Available Room - is your hotel's own revenue efficiency metric: total room revenue divided by available rooms. RGI - Revenue Generation Index - is a comparative metric that measures your RevPAR against the average RevPAR of your competitive set. An RGI above 100 means you're outperforming your comp set. Below 100 means you're underperforming. The problem with RGI is that it is only as useful as the comp set it references - and most comp sets are not genuinely comparable. RevPAR tells you what you earned. RGI tells you how you compare. But neither tells you whether you're actually profitable.* ### Your Next Guest Is Asking ChatGPT Where to Stay. Is Your Hotel in the Answer? URL: https://boredhotelier.com/your-next-guest-is-asking-chatgpt-where-to-stay-is-your-hotel-in-the-answer/ Last updated: 2026-08-08T08:11:46.000Z Twenty years ago, Google wasn't a strategy. It was a website where tech people looked things up. Then it became how every traveler in the world found hotels. The hotels that figured out SEO early held their positions for years. Not because they were the best hotels. Because they moved first and the algorithm learned to trust them. The ones that waited found themselves paying OTAs to reach guests who would have booked direct if they'd had the chance. **What's Actually Happening** **Travelers are asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity where to stay.** Not as a novelty - as a first option. Two thirds of travelers have already used AI in some part of trip planning. One in three are using it to actually book. And unlike Google, which gives you a list of links to scroll through, AI gives you one answer. A recommendation. Like advice from a trusted friend who has read every review, visited every website and compared every option, in seconds. There is no page two. There are no ads. There is just a recommendation. And right now, for most hotels, that recommendation belongs to someone else. Booking.com and Expedia were live in the ChatGPT app directory on day one. If your hotel doesn't have a direct presence in the AI ecosystem, those platforms will represent you, using descriptions you didn't write, assembled from sources you can't update, with no interest in telling your story well. **How AI Actually Decides What to Recommend** Before you can fix anything, it helps to understand how these systems think. AI recommendation engines don't work like search engines. They don't rank pages by keywords. **They build trust.** Before recommending a hotel, an AI system needs to understand what it is, verify that it exists and confidently match it to what the traveler is asking for. To do that, it cross-references your hotel across multiple sources simultaneously: your website, your Google Business Profile, your OTA listings, TripAdvisor, review platforms, travel blogs, local guides, social media. **It's looking for consistency, credibility and clarity.** When the information it finds is consistent and complete - it recommends with confidence. When it finds gaps, contradictions or thin content - it either recommends cautiously or doesn't recommend at all. The good news is that most of what AI needs from you is not technical wizardry. It's the same good practice your marketing team should already be doing - just applied with AI visibility in mind. ## **Step by Step: How to Make It Happen** **Step 1: Start by knowing where you stand.** Open ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity in incognito mode (important, so previous searches don't bias the result). Ask it to recommend hotels in your city for your specific positioning. "Best business hotels in Riyadh." "Luxury family resorts in Bali." Whatever your property is. Does your hotel appear? If yes - what does it say? Is the information accurate? Is the description compelling or generic? If no - that gap is your to-do list. This takes ten minutes and costs nothing. Do it today. **Step 2: Make your information consistent everywhere.** This is the single most important thing you can do. AI systems cross-verify your hotel across every platform it can find. If your hotel name is slightly different on Booking.com than on your Google Business Profile. If your address format differs between TripAdvisor and your website. If your room count or amenities list contradicts itself across platforms - the AI loses confidence and moves on. Your hotel name, address, phone number, website, star rating, room types and key amenities must be identical everywhere. Google Business Profile. Booking.com. Expedia. TripAdvisor. Your own website. Every single platform. Audit this across your entire digital footprint. Fix every inconsistency. This is not glamorous work. It is foundational. **Step 3: Rewrite your descriptions in human language.** AI systems process natural language. They match hotels to traveler queries that sound like real questions - not marketing copy. A traveler doesn't ask ChatGPT for *"a premium lifestyle property with elevated amenities and a curated guest journey."* They ask for *"a stylish hotel near the financial district with a good gym and easy airport access for a three night business trip."* Read your current hotel descriptions out loud. If they sound like a brochure from 2015 - rewrite them. Describe your hotel the way a knowledgeable friend would describe it. Specific. Honest. Clear about who it's right for and why. *"A 200-room business hotel two minutes walk from the DIFC, with a rooftop pool, 24-hour gym and a direct booking rate that beats any OTA"* will get you recommended. *"A world-class destination offering unparalleled luxury experiences"* will not. **Step 4: Build an FAQ section on your website.** This is one of the highest impact changes you can make - and most hotels don't have it. AI systems love FAQ content because it mirrors exactly how travelers ask questions. Write the questions your guests actually ask - not the questions your marketing team thinks they should ask. *"Is the hotel walking distance from the old town?""Do you allow late checkout for loyalty members?""Is the pool heated year round?""What's the best room type for a family with two young children?"* Answer each one directly and honestly. This content becomes instantly citable by AI when a traveler asks the same question. It also happens to be genuinely useful to guests. Win-win. **Step 5: Make reviews your priority.** AI systems treat your review profile as a trust signal. Volume, recency, rating and how you respond to feedback all feed into whether an AI feels confident recommending you. A hotel with 2,000 recent reviews averaging 4.6 across Google, TripAdvisor and Booking.com - consistently managed, with thoughtful responses to both positive and negative feedback - reads as credible and safe to recommend. A hotel with 400 reviews, a patchy response rate and a score that fluctuates between 3.8 and 4.2 depending on the platform reads as unreliable. Build a systematic process for requesting reviews from satisfied guests. Respond to every review - especially the negative ones. Keep the language natural and specific, not templated. And make sure your scores are consistent across platforms - because AI will notice when they're not. **Step 6: Get mentioned on trusted third-party platforms.** AI systems don't just read your own website. They look for validation from sources they trust. Travel blogs. Local guides. Industry publications. YouTube reviews. Reddit discussions. The more your hotel appears in trusted third-party content - described consistently and positively - the more confident an AI becomes in recommending you. This doesn't mean paying for coverage. It means being genuinely good enough that people write about you. It means engaging authentically in travel communities. It means making sure your hotel is listed and described accurately on every relevant platform - not just the big OTAs. [*AI is reading your press releases*](https://boredhotelier.com/finally-someone-is-reading-your-press-releases-its-ai/) *\- and most hotels are saying nothing worth finding.* If a travel blogger writes about *"the best rooftop bars in Bangkok"* and your hotel's bar makes the list - that is more valuable for AI visibility than almost anything else you can do. **Step 7: Add schema markup to your website.** Schema markup is a piece of code that tells search engines exactly what your content means β€” your property type, location, amenities, price range, check-in and check-out times, and contact details, all structured in a format that machines can read instantly. It remains a worthwhile part of your overall SEO strategy and can help with rich results in Google Search. It is worth noting that Google has clarified schema markup is not required for generative AI search specifically β€” there is no special structured data that guarantees AI visibility. The value of schema is real, but it sits within your broader SEO foundation rather than being a direct lever for AI recommendations. Get it implemented if you haven't already β€” just don't expect it to move the needle on ChatGPT or Perplexity on its own. **Step 8: Test. Monitor. Adjust.** AI recommendations are not static. They update as new information becomes available: new reviews, new content, new mentions across the web. What you look like to ChatGPT today may be different in three months if you're actively building your digital presence. Run your AI audit (the incognito ChatGPT test) once a month. Track whether you're appearing, what's being said, and whether the information is accurate. When something is wrong - fix it at the source. When you're not appearing - ask yourself what the hotel that is appearing is doing that you're not. **The Bigger Picture** Hotels spent the last two decades watching OTAs take over their distribution while paying 13-25% commission on every booking they should have owned. The ones who built direct booking strategies early - strong websites, loyalty programs, rate parity discipline - are in a much stronger position today. **AI discovery** is the next version of that story. And it's moving faster. The hotels that understand how AI recommends properties, build their digital presence accordingly and show up consistently in AI-powered searches will own a growing share of direct bookings over the next five years. The ones that wait will find themselves paying whoever did move first (to reach guests who were already looking for them). You know how this story ends. You've seen it before. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ ### **Frequently Asked Questions** **Is it possible to make AI recommend my hotel when travelers ask for suggestions?* Yes, but not in the way most people imagine. You can't instruct an AI to recommend you. What you can do is build the kind of digital presence that AI systems trust enough to recommend confidently. Consistent information across every platform, strong review scores, clear descriptions that match how travelers actually search, third party mentions on trusted sources. AI recommends hotels it can verify. Your job is to be verifiable.* **How do I get ChatGPT or Google AI to suggest my hotel?* Start with the basics that most hotels neglect. Make sure your hotel information is identical everywhere it appears online - name, address, amenities, star rating. Rewrite your descriptions in plain conversational language rather than marketing copy. Build an FAQ section on your website that answers the questions travelers actually ask. Respond to every review. Get mentioned on travel blogs, local guides and third party platforms that AI systems treat as trusted sources. None of this is complicated. Most hotels just haven't done it systematically.* **Can I pay to have AI platforms recommend my hotel?* Not directly. Unlike Google Ads or OTA sponsored listings, there is currently no paid placement model inside ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity recommendations. What Booking.com and Expedia have done is integrate directly into the ChatGPT app ecosystem - meaning if your hotel isn't represented well on those platforms, those platforms will speak for you in AI conversations, using content you didn't write. The answer to this isn't paying AI - it's owning your own narrative well enough that AI has no reason to rely on someone else's version of it.* **What is GEO and how is it different from SEO for hotels?* GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) is a term used to describe optimising your hotel's digital presence for AI-generated recommendations. In practice, Google has confirmed that its generative AI features pull from the same Search index, ranked by the same quality systems, as regular Google Search. Which means GEO isn't a separate discipline - it's SEO with higher stakes. The fundamentals haven't changed: quality content, consistent data, strong authority signals. What has changed is that the cost of getting it wrong is higher. A weak digital presence used to mean a lower ranking. Now it means not being in the answer at all. Further reading on this topic:* [*GEO. AEO. LLMO. It's still just SEO.*](https://boredhotelier.com/geo-aeo-llmo-its-still-just-seo/) **Why isn't my hotel showing up in AI travel recommendations?* The most common reasons are inconsistent information across platforms, thin or generic website content, and a weak review profile. AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini cross-verify your hotel across multiple sources simultaneously - your website, Google Business Profile, OTA listings, TripAdvisor and third-party mentions. When they find contradictions, gaps or content that could describe any hotel on earth, they either recommend cautiously or don't recommend at all. Start with a data consistency audit across every platform your hotel appears on. That single step resolves the majority of AI visibility problems.* **How do I check if my hotel appears in ChatGPT recommendations for my city?* Open ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity in incognito mode - incognito is important so previous searches don't bias the result. Type a query that matches your hotel's positioning: "best luxury hotels in Dubai," "business hotels near the financial district in Singapore," or whatever your property actually is. Check whether your hotel appears, what it says about you, and whether the information is accurate. Run the same test across two or three different AI tools - results vary between them. This takes ten minutes and costs nothing. Do it once a month and track whether your visibility improves as you strengthen your digital presence.* **Does my hotel need to be on Booking.com or Expedia to appear in ChatGPT recommendations?* Not necessarily, but it helps significantly. Booking.com and Expedia integrated directly into the ChatGPT app ecosystem on day one, which means if your hotel isn't represented well on those platforms, they will speak for you in AI conversations using descriptions you didn't write and content you can't control. Your own website, Google Business Profile and review presence matter just as much - AI systems cross-verify across all sources simultaneously. The hotels most visible in AI recommendations are those with consistent, complete information everywhere - OTAs, direct channels and third-party platforms alike. The goal isn't to choose between OTAs and direct. It's to make sure every source saying something about your hotel is saying the right thing.* ### Two Guys. One Table. Zero Revenue. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/two-guys-one-table-zero-revenue/ Last updated: 2026-08-08T08:11:00.000Z Please. For the love of hospitality. Stop putting billiard tables in your bars. I know how it happens. Someone in a planning meeting says *"entertainment!"* and everyone nods. An activity! Guests will love it! It'll drive people to the bar! Here's what actually drives people to the bar β€” and it isn't a billiard table. ## Here's what really happens. Two guys claim the table within the first hour. They nurse one beer each for the entire session. They eat nothing. They high five occasionally. Everyone else navigates around them. That's it. That's your entertainment investment. Don't believe me? Run this experiment tonight. Go to your nearest neighborhood bar with a billiard table. Find the guys playing. Count their drinks per hour. Count their food orders. Write it down. Then walk to the bar next door - no billiard table, just good music and comfortable seating. Do the same exercise. The difference will make you want to sell the billiard table by morning. ## Here's the psychology. When people play billiard their hands are occupied. Their attention is locked on the table. The relaxed, social, let's-order-another-round energy evaporates completely. Nobody flags down a waiter mid-shot. Nobody orders a sharing platter when they're calculating angles. Billiard creates focus. Bars need flow. Put a billiard table in your bar and watch your revenue per cover quietly die. And while you're at it - look at how much floor space that table is taking up! Three additional tables in that footprint, each generating food and drink revenue over a four hour evening. Run that number against what the two guys nursing their beers are spending. That's your billiard table's true cost, measured in square meters. But here's the real problem. It's not the table. It's what the table represents. Putting a billiard table in your bar and calling it entertainment is **lazy management**. And lazy management is very expensive in today's hospitality landscape. Because the alternative - the thing that actually works - requires effort. It requires creativity. It requires someone who actually cares enough to think beyond the obvious. Infused cocktails. Theme nights. Whiskey flights. House-infused bourbons. Wine pairings with a story behind them. A bartender who knows how to talk to guests and make them feel like the only people in the room. Staff who are trained - properly trained - to engage, recommend and create moments, not just take orders. Live music that sets a mood instead of filling silence. That's what fills a bar. That's what drives a second round, a third round, a late night cheese board nobody planned on ordering. The billiard table is what happens when nobody wants to do any of that work. When management decides that guests can entertain themselves and quietly hopes for the best. And before anyone says this is the bar manager's problem - sit at your own bar first. When did you last spend two hours at your hotel bar on a Tuesday evening? Not to inspect it. Not to greet a VIP. Actually sit there as a guest would - order a drink, wait for the menu, feel the music, watch the staff. Experience what your guests experience. Most bar managers haven't done this recently. Most GMs haven't either. And it shows. Because if they had - the billiard table wouldn't be there. And neither would half the other things quietly killing the atmosphere. Lazy management is expensive. The billiard table is just the most visible symptom. Put a live DJ there instead. Or a jazz trio. Or literally just better lighting and a cocktail menu worth reading. Anything but the billiard table. You're welcome. πŸ˜„ For a masterclass in what genuinely engaged management looks like across an entire resort - and what it does to your F&B revenue - read [Three Resorts. One Beach. One Winner.](https://boredhotelier.com/three-resorts-one-beach-one-winner/) And if you want to see how the same lazy management thinking plays out at a much bigger commercial scale - with a much bigger empty space - [The Ballroom Trap](https://boredhotelier.com/the-ballroom-trap/) will feel very familiar. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ ### **Frequently Asked Questions** **Does a billiard table increase bar revenue in hotels?* No. It reduces it. Hands occupied with a cue means nobody is flagging down a waiter. Attention locked on the table means nobody is ordering another round. The floor space alone β€” three additional revenue-generating tables in that footprint β€” tells you everything you need to know before you even look at a spend-per-cover report.* **Are there situations where games like billiard, darts or table football actually work in a bar?* Yes β€” exactly one. When guests are paying for the game itself. An arcade bar concept where every game costs $3 to $5, the music is loud, the beer is cold and the whole experience is the product β€” that works. You're selling the game! In any other configuration, where the game is free and you're relying on it to drive F&B spend β€” no.* **Where should a hotel put a billiard table if not in the bar?* A games room. If you must have one. Quiet, separate from any F&B outlet, with no expectation of revenue beyond keeping families occupied for twenty minutes on a rainy afternoon. The games room exists so that the billiard table doesn't end up somewhere it can do real damage. Just don't put a bar in the games room and call it entertainment strategy.* **How do you increase revenue per cover in a hotel bar?* Start by removing everything that gives guests a reason not to order. Then add everything that creates a reason to stay β€” storytelling, atmosphere, music, engaged staff, a cocktail menu worth reading. Revenue per cover is a direct reflection of how much a guest wants to be in your bar.* ### 4 Receipts. 1 Salad. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/four-receipts-one-salad/ Last updated: 2026-08-08T08:05:08.000Z Let me set the scene. I'm at a resort. I order a salad. A simple, normal, unremarkable salad. What follows is not simple, normal, or unremarkable. First comes a micros check. I sign it. Write my name. Write my room number. Even though I already told the server clearly, at the beginning, that I'll be paying directly. Not posting to the room. Cash. Card. Whatever. Just not the room. Then comes an identical micros check. Same fields. I sign again. Write my name again. Room number again. For the same salad. That I'm still not posting to the room. Then I tap my phone to pay. Apple Pay. Done in a second, encrypted, secure, the most frictionless payment experience ever invented. The POS prints a slip. The associate slides it across to me. I look at it. Right there, printed clearly on the slip in black and white, it says: *"No signature required."* The associate points at those exact words. And then asks me to sign it. I sign it. He prints the customer copy. Slides that across too. I look at him. He looks at me. I sign that one too. He takes it. Keeps it. Files it away somewhere, presumably in a folder that exists for no reason, maintained by no one, reviewed by nobody, for the rest of time. Four signatures. One salad. ### **Why does this happen?** I asked. *"Finance department said so."* That's it. That's the whole answer. No further context. No logic offered. No visible discomfort at the absurdity of the situation. And here's the thing. The waiter isn't the problem. He's doing exactly what he was told. He probably thinks it's ridiculous too. But nobody asked him. And nobody asked why. That's the problem. Somewhere, a finance manager issued a directive. Maybe it made sense once (unlikely). Or maybe it never made sense and just never got challenged. Either way, it traveled down the chain, reached the restaurant floor, and became gospel. No one questioned it. Not the restaurant manager. Not the F&B director. Not the GM who presumably eats at this restaurant and has signed a few too many receipts for his own lunch. Nobody stopped and said: wait, we're asking guests to sign a slip that literally says β€œno signature required”, twice! - should we maybe look at this? And here's what makes this particularly interesting. That finance directive was almost certainly created to save money - better reconciliation, cleaner audits, tighter controls. Reasonable enough in a spreadsheet. But what does it actually cost? Staff time printing and filing papers nobody ever reads. A guest experience that feels bureaucratic and distrustful. A brand perception that says we care more about our internal processes than your time. The cure, in this case, is considerably more expensive than the disease. ### **This Is What Happens When Management Stops Asking Why** There are formal tools that exist specifically to catch exactly this kind of thing. Guest journey mapping. Mystery shopping programs. Operational audits. Hotels invest in all of them. And yet the four-signature salad survives, untouched, year after year, because the person who could question it has stopped walking the floor. When was the last time your GM sat at that restaurant - not to inspect it, not to greet a VIP, but actually sat down, ordered food, waited for the menu, paid the bill and felt every single step of it as a guest would? Not last quarter. Not last year. When? Because if they had, the four-signature salad wouldn't exist. A culture that executes without thinking isn't efficient. It's dangerous. It quietly fills your guest experience with small, absurd friction points that individually seem minor and collectively scream: nobody is paying attention here!!! As I wrote in [One "No." Millions Lost](https://boredhotelier.com/one-no-millions-lost/) \- this is the same culture of nobody questioning anything, playing out in a different corner of the hotel. It starts at the front desk and it ends in the restaurant. Same disease, different symptom. Your guest doesn't care that it was the finance department's idea. They care that they just signed four pieces of paper for a Caesar salad and are now questioning every decision that led them to this resort. ### **The Questions Every Manager Should Be Asking** Walk your floor. Sit at your own restaurant. Order a coffee at your bar. Check in as a guest would. And ask: Why are we printing this? Why are we asking them to sign this? Who actually looks at this copy? What problem are we solving here - and are we actually solving it? Question everything that touches the guest experience. Especially the stuff that's been *"just how we do it"* for years. Because your guests are questioning it. Trust me. They have time to think about it. They're busy signing receipts. Small friction is still friction. And friction is the enemy of a great guest experience. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ ### **Frequently Asked Questions** **Does a payment made by Apple Pay or contactless require a signature in a hotel restaurant?* No. Contactless and digital wallet payments like Apple Pay are encrypted transactions that don't require a signature β€” and most POS systems will actually print this on the slip. If a hotel is still asking you to sign a contactless payment receipt, that's an internal policy decision, not a payment requirement. And it's worth asking who that policy actually serves.* **If I'm paying my restaurant bill directly and not posting it to my room, do I still need to sign a check?* In most cases, no β€” or at least not twice. A micros check makes sense when a bill is being posted to a room account. When a guest is paying directly by card or digital wallet, the signed check serves almost no purpose beyond internal reconciliation habits that nobody has bothered to question. The answer is usually "finance department said so" β€” which is not the same as a good reason.* **Why do hotels waste so much paper on receipts and credit card slips?* Genuine question that deserves a genuine answer β€” nobody really knows anymore. Most of those printed slips end up in folders that nobody opens, filed for audit periods that come and go without anyone ever pulling a physical receipt. Hotels that proudly serve filtered water in glass bottles and ban plastic straws are simultaneously printing four copies of a receipt for one salad. The sustainability conversation in hospitality has a very convenient blind spot when it comes to back-of-house paper waste.* **Where do hotels store all those signed receipts and for how long?* Typically in physical folders or boxes in the finance office, kept for anywhere between one and seven years depending on local tax and audit requirements. In practice, the vast majority are never looked at again after they're filed. The irony is that digital payment systems already create a complete audit trail automatically β€” making the printed slip not just wasteful but genuinely redundant in most cases.* ### Three Resorts. One Beach. One Winner. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/three-resorts-one-beach-one-winner/ Last updated: 2026-08-08T08:10:04.000Z Picture this. Three five-star resorts. All on the same stretch of beach. All belonging to the same hotel chain, but different brands. Same sun. Same sand. Same guests, more or less. Three completely different stories. I watched all three. I took notes. And I have opinions. ## **Resort A: The Commercial Suicide** Resort A has a shuttle bus. A generous, free, perfectly organised shuttle bus that runs all day taking guests straight to the old town - packed with cheap restaurants, bars, markets, and entertainment. Three times cheaper than anything on the resort property. Resort A has no happy hours. No promotions. No live music. Just soft, slow, background hotel music floating sadly across the pool, the lobby, the restaurant, and the bar. The kind of music that doesn't make you want to order another drink. The kind of music that makes you want to leave. And leave they do. Guests wake up, have breakfast because they paid for it, spend the morning by the pool bringing their own water from the room, and by midday they're on that shuttle bus. They eat lunch in the old town for $8\. They have drinks for $4\. They come back for dinner only if they booked half board, eat quickly, and disappear again. Resort A's F&B revenue? My best guess - $0 to $10 per person per day. I can't see their P&L. But I've been in this industry long enough to read a restaurant. They built the perfect system for exporting their guests to the competition. And they paid for the bus. ## **Resort B: The Almost-Perfect Strategy** Resort B tried. And I genuinely respect the effort. Happy hours by the pool and beach from 4pm to 5pm. Upbeat music in different venues. Guests visibly enjoying their sundowners by the beach every afternoon. You could feel the energy - something Resort A never managed. But then 5pm happened and the happy hour by the beach was over. Here's the problem. Sunset is at 6pm. So 5pm is too early to go to your room and get ready for dinner. Too early to move inside. But at 5pm, Resort B's beach happy hour ended, and the only option was to move to the sports bar inside the main building for the continuation, as it had a happy hour from 5pm to 7pm. Except nobody wanted to go inside at 5pm when the most beautiful hour of the day was just beginning outside. So what did the guests do? They walked three minutes down the beach to the competition - who, by the way, are absolute geniuses. That resort extended their beach happy hour all the way to 7pm. They placed a live DJ right on the sand - close enough for Resort B's guests to hear it from their sunbeds. And as if that wasn't enough, at 7pm the DJ was replaced by a violinist or a saxophone player, creating the kind of atmosphere that makes you think: *why would I ever leave?* Resort B's guests didn't leave. They just relocated. Watching Resort B's sunset. Drinking competitor cocktails. Staying for dinner at a five star resort belonging to a completely different international hotel chain. Resort B almost had it. The strategy was right. The execution missed by exactly two hours and one DJ. ## **Resort C: The Masterclass** Resort C understood something the others didn't. The goal isn't to offer promotions. The goal is to make guests never want to leave. Every day without exception - sunrise yoga, pilates flow, SUP classes, aqua cardio, balloon pop, can toss, spin the wheel, watermelon eating contests, water gun battles, kite making workshops, coconut leaf art, shell collecting, bracelet making, archery challenges, beach tug of war, sack races, beach volleyball, beach football, water volleyball, sandcastle building, frisbee, cooking classes, kayaking. All free. All organised in-house. All day long. Read that list again. That's not an activities program. That's a masterclass in guest engagement. That's a team that woke up every morning with one goal - make sure no guest ever looks at their watch and thinks: *I'm bored. Let's go somewhere else.* And here's the psychology that makes it genius. Guests don't sit by the pool calculating the monetary value of a SUP class or a cooking lesson. They don't think "that saved me $30." What they feel - instinctively, emotionally - is that the resort gave them something. That they're being taken care of. That this place is worth being in. That feeling opens wallets. Not aggressively. Not through upselling scripts or pushy servers. Just naturally, because a guest who feels genuinely looked after is a guest who orders the second bottle, books the spa treatment and stays for dinner without needing to be convinced. **Perceived value** is the most underrated revenue driver in hospitality. Resort C understood this. Completely. Kids entertained all day. Parents relaxed, happy, on their second glass of rosΓ© before noon. Happy hours running across all venues at sunset. And when happy hour ends, instead of asking guests to either go inside or start paying full price, Resort C gave them a reason to stay. Live cooking stations on the beach. A seafood market where you pick your own catch and choose how it's cooked. Live music: different genres, different venues, something for everyone. They didn't chase the cheap spend. They built an environment where spending felt like a pleasure, not a transaction. And the staff? They knew your name. Your room number. Your dietary preferences. Everywhere you went, someone introduced you to something else to do, something else to try, somewhere else to go within the resort. Both Resort A and Resort C offered a free shuttle to the old town. Same gesture. Completely different context. Resort A built their entire guest experience around that shuttle. Resort C offered it as one small courtesy within an ecosystem so engaging that most guests barely used it. Resort C's F&B revenue per person per day? My estimate - $90 to $115\. Possibly more. Same beach. Same sun. Same guests. ## **The Payroll Paradox** Here's where it gets really interesting. Resort A - commercially the worst performer - was visibly short staffed. And this is the vicious circle. Low revenue means fewer staff. Fewer staff means slower service. Slower service means guests leave. Guests leaving means lower revenue. Lower revenue means even fewer staff. I sat in Resort A's restaurant once - briefly, out of morbid curiosity. The silence of cutlery hitting plates echoed around me like a hospital cafeteria. I waited 25 minutes for a menu. The plates from breakfast on the terrace were still there at 7pm. Ten hours later. Untouched. Forget upselling. If you wanted another glass of wine you'd fall asleep before anyone came back. Resort C felt almost overmanned by comparison. Every two or three tables had what felt like a dedicated server. Strange at first glance. Genius on reflection. You eat more when you're served fast. You drink more when your glass is refilled before you notice it's empty. Servers who aren't stressed have time to engage - to recommend, to upsell, to make you feel like a guest and not a number. Fast, attentive, engaged service doesn't cost more. It earns more. And here's a thought worth leaving with Resort A's GM. Your satisfaction scores are probably fine. Guests who spend all day in the old town eating cheap food and enjoying themselves are actually quite happy. They'll give you a decent review. They just won't spend a single dollar more than they have to at your property. NPS won't tell you that. Your F&B revenue report will - if anyone's actually reading it. ## **The Word Nobody Uses Enough** I keep coming back to one word throughout all of this. **Engagement.** Engage your customer. Walk their journey. Ask yourself what they actually want - not what's convenient for your operational structure, not what's easiest for your schedule, not what looks best on a cost report. What does your guest want? Fast, caring service. Recognition. Something to lift their mood - live music, a spectacular sundowner, their children laughing somewhere nearby while they finally exhale. These aren't complicated asks. These aren't expensive fixes. They are the basic building blocks of hospitality that five star resorts with beautiful beaches and stunning sunsets still manage to miss. Every single day. ## **The GM's Bar Problem** I'll leave you with this. How many GMs have asked their F&B team why the bar isn't making enough revenue? And how many of those same GMs would never - not once! - bring their own wife, husband, or friends to that bar? Because it's dull. Because the menu is uninspired. Because the music is wrong. Because the whole atmosphere says nobody here really cares. He goes to nicer places. Places with energy. With good music. With staff who make him feel welcome. What makes him think his guest deserves any less? Don't commit commercial suicide. If your hotel isn't retaining guests and isn't driving in-house spend - walk the property yourself. Sit by the pool. Order a drink. Wait for the menu. Watch the sunset. Ask yourself honestly: would I want to be here? More often than not, that question answers everything. If you want to go deeper on what lazy bar management actually looks like in practice β€” and why that billiard table in the corner is costing you more than you think β€” read [Two Guys. One Table. Zero Revenue.](https://boredhotelier.com/two-guys-one-table-zero-revenue/) And for the organisational culture that allows all of this to happen unchallenged - [One "No." Millions Lost ](https://boredhotelier.com/one-no-millions-lost/)connects the dots. *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ ### **Frequently Asked Questions** **How do you increase F&B revenue in a hotel?* Three things working together β€” the right offering, genuine guest engagement and fast service. Most hotels focus on the menu and forget the last two. Speed matters more than most F&B managers realise. The faster you serve, the more guests eat and drink β€” not because you're rushing them, but because a refilled glass and a timely recommendation keeps the experience flowing. Add live music, an activity, a reason to linger β€” and the revenue takes care of itself. The hotels with the highest F&B spend per guest aren't necessarily the ones with the best food. They're the ones where nobody wants the evening to end.* **How do you design a profitable hotel happy hour?* Start with timing. Too short and guests don't have enough time to relax and decide they're staying β€” one drink in and they're still thinking about going somewhere else. Give them at least ninety minutes. On the offer itself β€” not everything needs to be discounted. Pick your most popular drinks with the highest profit margin already built in and make them look attractive. Guests still need to eat, so build a small happy hour food menu β€” taster portions, high margin, designed to complement drinks not replace dinner. And stop putting free bowls of chips and half a kilo of peanuts on the table. A small bowl of olives as a compliment, if you must place something, - fills nobody up and might actually make them want to order appetizers.* **When should a hotel consider renting out its F&B outlets?* When an honest look at the P&L tells you the outlet is underperforming and you can't see a realistic path to fixing it β€” not in the next couple of years, not with the current budget, current team or current concept. Start by evaluating revenue, profitability and what's actually preventing you from doing better. If those obstacles aren't fixable in a reasonable timeframe, find out what the space is worth to the right tenant. If that number beats your current net contribution β€” renting is worth serious consideration. Hotels don't have to be great at everything. Handing an outlet to a restaurateur who is genuinely good at their concept can drive more revenue, more awareness and more footfall than an in-house operation that's quietly bleeding. You also get to piggyback on their marketing β€” done by people who actually know how to fill a restaurant.* ### One "No." Millions Lost. Here's How. URL: https://boredhotelier.com/one-no-millions-lost/ Last updated: 2026-08-08T08:07:12.000Z Let's zoom out. You're running a global hotel chain. Thousands of properties worldwide. Hundreds of thousands of employees across every continent. A loyalty program with millions of members. A brand that took decades to build. Now zoom back in. A receptionist at one of your beach resorts just told a guest (flatly, without apology) that late checkout isn't possible. If you missed how that moment unfolds from the guest's side, start with [The Most Expensive Word in Hospitality](https://boredhotelier.com/the-most-expensive-word-in-hospitality/). That's it. That's where this story starts. ### **The Cascade** That guest isn't just a guest. He's a senior executive. Head of procurement at a large multinational company. He travels constantly, influences travel decisions for hundreds of colleagues, and has been loyal to your chain for years. He leaves that hotel frustrated. He tells his story at dinner, in a WhatsApp group, at a conference, on a review platform. People listen, because people like him are trusted. Somewhere in London, a procurement decision is quietly made. Your chain doesn't make the preferred vendor list. A corporate account worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year - gone. Not because of a pricing issue. Not because of location. Because of a two-letter word spoken by an exhausted, underpaid receptionist in Bali who had no idea what was at stake. She still doesn't know. Nobody told her. ### **The Real Problem Isn't the Receptionist** Let's be clear. This isn't her fault. She's overworked. She's following the rules she was given. She has targets to hit: enroll new loyalty members, process check-ins, keep the queue moving. Nobody sat her down and explained what an existing loyalty member actually represents. Nobody connected the dots between her daily interactions and the company's global revenue. She doesn't feel like part of a machine worth billions. She feels like someone managing a front desk that's perpetually understaffed. The retention of loyal, high-value members has never been explained to her clearly. She knows how to sign people up. She doesn't know why keeping them happy is worth more than anything else she does that day. Where was her manager when this happened? Probably in the back office. ### **The Back Office Problem** This is more common than any hospitality company wants to admit. There's a layer in every hotel - between the executive committee and the frontline staff - where things go to die. Department heads. Managers. The people who are supposed to be the bridge between strategy and execution, between the brand promise and the guest experience. When this layer works, it's magic. Frontline staff feel supported, informed and empowered. Guests feel it immediately. When it doesn't work (and far too often, it doesn't), you get something ugly. Line employees, the heroes who work double shifts and deal with every complaint and carry the entire guest experience on their backs, look up at their managers and think: *what exactly do you do around here?* That thought is a five-alarm fire. When your frontline staff loses respect for the management layer, your culture is already broken. The service will reflect it. The guests will feel it. And you won't be able to pinpoint why your scores are slipping, because nobody will tell you the truth. ### **The Cascade That's Supposed to Work. But Doesn't** Here's how a global hotel chain is supposed to function. Global HQ sets the vision, the standards, the messaging. Continental offices adapt and cascade it. Regional teams push it down to area teams and to the individual properties. GMs and their executive committees receive it, brief their department heads, who brief their managers, who brief their teams. Clean. Logical. Efficient. Except most of the time, the message dies somewhere in the middle. A global initiative around loyalty experience gets communicated in a memo. The memo gets forwarded. The GM mentions it in a meeting. The department head nods. It never reaches the receptionist. So she keeps saying no… And here's the part that makes this truly uncomfortable. Most GMs know the cascade is broken. They've seen the memo get forwarded and forgotten. They've sat in the briefing where nobody asked a single question. They know the message didn't land. And most of the time nothing changes. Because fixing it requires uncomfortable conversations, consistent follow-through and a genuine belief that what happens at the front desk is the GM's personal responsibility. Not the front office manager's. Not the excom's. The GM's. ### **The Blame Ladder** Here's the part that should keep owners and operators up at night. The receptionist thinks loyalty experience is management's problem. She's just doing her job. The manager thinks KPIs and guest satisfaction are the excom's problem. They're paid enough to care. The GM thinks it's a regional issue. One property won't move the needle on a global scale. Everyone is pointing up. Nobody is owning it. Have this mindset embedded in your hotel and honestly… just replace the entire management team and start again. Because a culture where nobody feels responsible is a culture that will actively destroy your brand, one interaction at a time, in lobbies and at front desks across the world, invisibly and expensively. ### **What You Can Tell From a Single "No"** Here's what's remarkable about that moment at checkout. From one flat, unapologetic "no" - no alternative offered, no manager in sight - you can diagnose an entire organisational failure. No staff empowerment. No management presence. No loyalty education. No communication cascade. No ownership culture. One word. An entire business laid bare. The good news? All of it is fixable. Start with the GM looking in the mirror. Then work downward. Brief your excom on what loyalty actually means commercially. Make your department heads accountable for whether their teams can answer the question: why does this guest matter? Create a culture where the receptionist feels connected to the bigger picture - not just a person processing check-ins until her shift ends. It's not complicated. It's just uncomfortable. And most hotels would rather leave it broken than have the conversation. The front desk isn't where hospitality fails. It's just where you finally see it. And if you want to see how the same culture of nobody owning anything plays out at commercial and asset level, read [The Ballroom Trap](https://boredhotelier.com/the-ballroom-trap/). *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ ### **Frequently Asked Questions** **What are hotel staff empowerment best practices?* Give staff the tools to say yes before they need to say no. This means clear guidelines on what they can offer without escalating β€” a complimentary drink, a room upgrade, a late checkout β€” and the confidence that using that authority won't get them in trouble. Empowered staff need three things: information, authority and protection. Most hotels provide none of the three and then wonder why everyone defaults to the rulebook.* **What is the key to retaining and growing corporate accounts in hotels?* Consistency. Corporate travel managers don't expect perfection β€” they expect reliability. One bad experience reported by a frequent traveler can quietly end an account worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The hotels that retain corporate business long term are the ones where service doesn't depend on which shift is working or which manager is on duty. That consistency starts with culture β€” not contracts.* **How can you tell if middle management is disengaging hotel staff?* Watch the frontline. When line employees stop asking questions, stop flagging problems and stop going beyond the minimum β€” that's not a staffing issue. That's a management issue. The most reliable early warning sign is when your best frontline people start leaving for properties that pay exactly the same but feel different to work in. Culture walks out the door long before the resignation letter arrives.* ### The Most Expensive Word in Hospitality URL: https://boredhotelier.com/the-most-expensive-word-in-hospitality/ Last updated: 2026-08-08T08:09:22.000Z Picture this. You're at a beautiful resort in Bali. The beach is stunning. The sunsets are the kind you save to your camera roll and actually look at again. You've done the sunset wines, the long swims, the whole thing. The resort isn't perfect. The service is patchy, a little too dependent on luck. But you're a traveler. You adapt. You find the good stuff and you lean into it. Then comes checkout. You're a high-tier member of the hotel's loyalty program. You've stayed at this chain more times than you can count. You know the drill. Members typically get late checkout. Just a little extra time. Two hours, maybe. Enough to transition smoothly to your next hotel without the stress of killing time in a lobby with your luggage. So you ask. *"Let me check."* Fine. You wait. *"No. Not possible."* Not even 1pm. Not even an apology. Just no. ### **That "no" just undid everything.** Every good memory from that stay - the beach, the sunsets, the moments you genuinely loved - gets a shadow cast over it. Because the last thing you felt at that hotel was **dismissed**. And here's the kicker. The hotel probably wasn't even at full occupancy. They were just following the rules. Staff too afraid to make a call. A culture where nobody's empowered to say yes to anything, because saying yes feels risky and saying no feels safe. Except it isn't safe. It's catastrophic. ### **Let's talk about what that "no" actually cost.** The departing guest - a loyal, high-spending, well-traveled customer - leaves frustrated. They write the review. They remember. The arriving guests? They're waiting past standard check-in time because forcing every single room to vacate at noon, when you're short-staffed on housekeeping (which was very obvious to me), means a bottleneck that serves nobody. You don't have the manpower to turn every room at once. So now you're upsetting guests on both ends. And you are spending money on compensation dinners and apologies. This is poor management 101. Now here's something worth sitting with. Your high-tier loyalty members are not average guests. These are the people your entire loyalty program was built to retain. Losing one of them to a bad checkout experience doesn't just cost you a review. It costs the entire company a disproportionate share of the future revenue - the kind that's very hard to replace. And the truly painful part? Hotels invest millions building loyalty programs, negotiating partnerships and funding marketing campaigns. And then invest absolutely nothing training the receptionist on why the person standing in front of her actually matters. That's not a training budget problem. That's a **priority problem**. That's a leadership failure. ### **Here's what good looks like.** Train your staff to never lead with no. Ever. Not "no, not possible." Not "sorry, I can't." Speak in solutions. Speak in alternatives. *"I can't give you 2pm today, but let me offer you 1pm. Would that work?"* *"We're tight on rooms this morning, but here's what I can do. Let us store your luggage and you've got full access to the spa, showers, lockers, the pool and beach for as long as you need. We'll take care of you until you're ready to go."* That's it. That's the whole thing. Same situation. Same constraints. Completely different feeling. It is a training issue. But training starts with leadership deciding it matters. When was the last time your GM sat down with the front desk team and walked through exactly what a loyalty member represents to the business? Not the points system. Not the enrollment targets. The actual revenue, the actual lifetime value, the actual cost of losing them. If that conversation hasn't happened recently, you already know why your staff defaults to no. **The guests you need to think hardest about are your loyalty members.** These aren't occasional travelers. They've seen the world. They've stayed at the best properties on every continent. They chose your chain repeatedly, and that loyalty means they also benchmark you constantly against everyone else they've experienced. When you get it right, they're your biggest advocates. When you hit them with a flat "no" at checkout, they don't forget. And they don't forgive. The power isn't in always saying yes. It's in never making someone feel like they don't matter. *Keep on reading - I explored in* [*One β€œNo”. Millions Lost*](https://boredhotelier.com/one-no-millions-lost/) *how this isn't a front desk problem - it goes all the way up.* *xoxo, Bored Hotelier* πŸ˜‰ ### Frequently Asked Questions **What is the biggest mistake hotels make with loyalty program members?* Treating enrollment as the finish line. Most hotels measure loyalty program success by how many new members they sign up β€” rarely by how well they retain the ones they already have. A member who feels unrecognised will leave quietly, say nothing to the front desk and tell everyone they know. The most expensive loyalty failures never show up in enrollment reports.* **What is hotel service recovery and why does it matter?* Service recovery is what happens between something going wrong and a guest deciding how they feel about your hotel. Done well β€” a genuine acknowledgement, a practical solution, a human moment β€” it can turn a frustrated guest into a loyal one. Done badly, or not at all, it confirms every doubt they had. The window is small. Most hotels miss it entirely because nobody on the floor is empowered to act fast enough.* **What do hotel loyalty members actually complain about most?* Not feeling recognised. That's the root of almost every loyalty complaint β€” whether it's a denied upgrade, a missing amenity or a flat no at checkout with no apology and no alternative. Elite members know their benefits come with "subject to availability" fine print. What they can't forgive is being made to *feel invisible* by a brand they've chosen repeatedly. Ironically, it was exactly that moment, a receptionist who said no without even a sorry, that made me start writing this blog. So in a way, I owe her one.* πŸ˜‰