Hello,

20+ Years ago hotel marketing was being upended by the internet and mobile. Today AI has the potential to reinvent a lot again. What is the mindset we need to do this? Check out the column below.

PS: The most complete hotel brands chart ever made, we included a form to submit any errors, missing brands etc.

Best, Martin

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The 4 Horsemen of AI Change

AI transformation fails when treated as IT deployment instead of behavior evolution. Conor Grennan lists the 4 ways that AI adoption fails. The systems that are frequently done but which don’t result in real adoption. Worth a read.

AI CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The Future of Beauty Shopping

AI and AR are coming to beauty retail into “phygital” experiences where online and offline merge. The experiences are mostly a novelty today. I wonder if this is where “retail media” and hotels have a topic to discuss. Theoretically hotels are the ideal place for a pop-up store. People have some time. Watching 24hour news channels is boring. etc.

BEAUTY TECH RETAIL

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.

Creative Diversity vs Consistency

Lisa Kane’s conversation reframes brand strategy for the modern age: consistent design is important, but creative diversity builds resilience. I’m not going to get overly philosophical about this. The fact is that for centuries it was about consistency, now consistency means boring. So how to maintain interest while not going off-brand. Not easy for big companies. Easier for startups.

BRAND STRATEGY SHIFT

Retail Media: Boom or Bubble?

Retail media’s (the ads on Amazon, Walmart etc) growth is undeniable, but it seems some big brands are trimming budgets due to measurement issues. Clearly, the next phase will demand analytics and ROI, not just access. Data must prove its worth again. Also how long until the consumers realize that the majority of what they’re being shown is an ad? Retail media with OTAs is still at it’s infancy.

RETAIL MEDIA SHAKE-UP

Making a $1m ad with AI

A team used Google’s Veo 3.1 and Nano Banana to produce a cinematic-quality ad with zero cameras, pure AI. It is surprisingly good and shows how creative AI can democratize storytelling. Could hotels start using this to accelerate their marketing process? And would it be useful?

GENERATIVE VIDEO ADS + AI IN TV ADS

Burberry and rain

Burberry’s “Postcards from London” proves that British drizzle can be cinematic. The campaign turns everyday London into a humorous, stylish ad. Interesting to see luxury brand continuing with the humor maybe appealing better to the attention economy.

BRAND STORYTELLING

Luxury Hospitality and Preparation

True luxury starts before check-in. Tommy Pacanins reminds us that the assistant, not the guest, often defines a VIP’s expectations. Luxury isn’t excess it is many tiny details, planned in advance.

ULTRA-LUXURY INSIGHT

Brand Culture Meets Franchise Values

Jennifer Connell discusses five timeless rules: lead from the floor, train before correcting, obsess over the guest journey, trust the numbers, and protect the culture. The problem is who sets the culture? The brand? The owner? or the Manager? To the guest it is meant to be set by the brand. But with triple “owners” that is not as easy.

HOSPITALITY LEADERSHIP

Just remove friction, if possible

At the Hotel Summit 2025, Zoran Pejović and Wolfgang Emperger reminded attendees that technology should just remove friction, if possible. The best hospitality tech fades into the background, empowering people to connect. Somehow in hospitality tech still needs to learn to disappear.

HOTEL TECH BALANCE

Podcast: I was invited to talk about AI in hospitality on this podcast, along with many other great industry thought leaders. A great discussion, we didn't agree on everything. Which made it more interesting.

Opinion

The “Paypal Mafia” of Hotel Marketing

Among friends, we joke that WIHP was the PayPal Mafia of hotel marketing. It sparked more entrepreneurs than any other hotel tech startup I know of (Design Hotels did quite good too). It wasn’t planned that way, of course. But for a few years, there was this unique cluster of talent, energy, creativity, and sheer determination that somehow all landed in one place – and which then went off to create even more hotel marketing technology and agencies.

I was lucky enough to be there during that time. In fact it was WIHP’s founder Vincent who got me into the hotel industry. 20 or so years ago I was looking for a new start after several years in marketing and sales. Vincent, who had recently acquired a few small hotels in Paris, took a chance on me and asked if I wanted to work for him. I had zero hotel experience (but that’s the beauty of the industry). After a few years, I moved over to WIHP, the marketing company he was launching. He took a risk on me (and many others) and I thank him.

Back then, online hotel marketing was was still new. There were no playbooks, just trial and error, and we were running scrappy experiments (some clever, some borderline crazy). It was the kind of era when you could boost rankings on OTAs by adding a few hundred imaginary rooms to your listing. Yeah, not everything was pretty. But we learned and got better.

I remember when mobile apps became a thing and some snake-oil salesmen were creating and selling templated hotel apps that really had no purpose for big money. Some of those sales men came to our offices shouting at us because we were telling our clients they didn’t really serve any purpose. It was the wild west. But I digress.

WIHP went on to become Europe’s largest hotel marketing agency and grew into a tech company. Watching Vincent’s recent interview on 10 Minutes News brought all that into focus again.

Working in hotels taught me that hospitality attracts a certain kind of person. Those who like solving problems in real time, who thrive on improving something every day.

Currently, we’re at one of these pioneering moments again. AI might do to hospitality what the internet once did, change distribution, systems, tech – and drive more growth. In fact it might do a lot more. We’re once again figuring it out in real time. The internet revolution has brought incredible growth to the industry, and still does.

Guest satisfaction continues to rise, even as prices climb. That’s not normal in most industries, yet hospitality keeps pulling it off. Better hotels, smarter tech, more connected teams, it all adds up.

We don’t know where the AI revolution is leading, just like we didn’t really know how far the internet would go. Last time it was a distribution shift, this time it is a lot more. Revenue management, guest engagement, personalization, automation and a lot more. Where are the next groups of innovators?

Note: I didn’t mention everyone who was part of the “Paypal Mafia of Hotel Marketing” because I’m just too concerned that I’ll miss some of the people. I might update this later with the full list.

• The Art of the Olympics – Link

• The Monocle Design Directory – Link

• Taylor Swift, Sora, and the Slop vs. Substance Debate – Link

• Defining Basic Marketing Terms – Link

• The Complete Hotel Brands of the World Chart – Link⁺

• NEW: Hotel Design & Tech Benchmark Q4 2025 – Link⁺

pace: The speed at which hotel rooms are being booked for a specific future period, compared to another period or against the hotel’s targets (for example, compared to last year or the hotel’s budget). Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺