This hotel hasn’t even opened yet.
And yet—here we are. Google is already showing guest reviews. Verified ones, with shiny little stars. The funny thing? Nobody has ever stayed there. In fact, nobody could have. The building is still going through its onboarding phase.
Some of these so-called reviews are nothing more than questions—“Does anyone know when it opens?”—the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a Reddit thread, not packaged as a five-star testimonial. But the algorithm, in its cold indifference, happily turns a question into an empirical judgment.
These aren’t guests. They’re prophets.
To be clear, I don’t object to pre-stay reviews. The tone of a phone call, the smoothness of a booking engine, the quality of an email response—those are signals, and they matter. But that’s not what’s happening here.
Take this one:
“I’m thrilled Marriott Hotels is expanding in Italy. This could be the most anticipated Marriott opening in Europe in years. I can’t wait to be among the first to book for summer 2025.”
Five stars from Bobby Djavaheri of the future, apparently.
This isn’t a Review. It’s a Preview.
So what’s the lesson?
The hotel may still be empty, but the stars are already aligned.
Yes, it really is the Summer of Love.
Until next week,
Simone Puorto
