I want to talk about “time”. The ultimate commodity, the one thing we can’t buy more of, and a concept we seem to have utterly lost control of in our rush to automate everything. It’s a paradox that’s been nagging at me.
Think about it. We’ve built an entire industry, hospitality, around the idea of offering people a break from the tyranny of the clock. A chance to slow down, to luxuriate, to exist outside the frantic rush of their daily lives. But in our push for efficiency, we’ve started to re-introduce that same frantic pace back into the very experiences meant to escape it. The 60-second check-in, the instant digital recommendations, the endless push for streamlined processes—we’re so focused on saving time that we’ve forgotten what we were supposed to be doing with it in the first place.
I was thinking about the old, grand hotels. Their sense of time was different. It was unhurried. The doorman, the concierge, the front-desk clerk—each played a part in a human-led process that was about welcome and care, not just speed. Now, we talk about time in terms of milliseconds of page load, nanoseconds of API response. We measure everything, but we don’t seem to have a deeper appreciation for the moments we are actually creating.
Then there’s the concept of “real-time.” It’s the ultimate digital holy grail. We want real-time pricing, real-time inventory, real-time guest feedback. And for good reason—it gives us incredible power to optimize and react. But does that push for “real-time” also put us on a treadmill, running faster and faster just to stay in the same place? Are we so consumed with reacting to the immediate moment that we miss the bigger, slower trends?
Maybe the real luxury isn’t saving time, but having the autonomy to waste it beautifully. The serendipitous conversation at the front desk, the unexpected discovery from a human recommendation, the quiet moment of reflection in a lobby that hasn’t been re-engineered for maximum foot traffic. These are the things that truly stay with us. The technology can’t seem to measure them, but they are the very essence of memorable hospitality. We have to be careful that our obsession with saving time doesn’t lead us to a future where there’s nothing of value left to fill it with.
Life is so tech. But the real art is still in the timeless.
Mark Fancourt
