Hello,

There’s a big shift underway on the volume of marketing we’re going to need to do to stay relevant. In a way it is going to make everything more expensive, but then we have AI that is going to make it cheaper. In summary, I don’t think the workload will decrease (so much for AI replacing marketing) I think we’ll need to create a lot more.

Note: Did I mention that most complete hotel brands chart ever made now has a form to submit any errors, missing brands etc.

Best, Martin

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Luxury Visual Systems

Aman’s negative space, BVLGARI’s tactile cues, Cheval Blanc’s architectural grids. On Instagram, clear coherent brand works well. If your feed can’t be recognized in two seconds, it’s not a brand, it’s a collage. On the other hand, the world is shifting to unlimited content. Can we automate brand coherence, without achieving boredom? see the column.

LUXURY BRANDING

LVMH + Hospitality, an Ecosystem

Louis Vuitton put $1B into a flagship hotel location on the Champs-Élysées. From a Parisian point of view, location isn’t ideal, sometimes I wonder if it was just a real-estate play. I digress, the story here is how LVMH entering the luxury hotel space could embed retail experiences and shopping to turn it into a luxury flywheel? A Disneyland of luxury?

LUXURY ECOSYSTEM

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.

WPP shifts to tech provider

WPP (the global ad agency conglomerate) is building an AI ad tool that is now being opened to the market – well it isn’t quite self-service yet. From signing multi-million ad contracts with consumer goods firms they’re building ad tech. If anyone knows about ads, brand integrity, etc it is them. If this works it could be the ad iteration setup needed for hotels (see the column).

AGENCY PIVOT

Coach’s Comeback, hotel ideas?

According to this post/article, Craft, nostalgia, and values pulled Gen Z to Coach; more than half of new customers come from that segment, for a brand that was viewed as passé that’s pretty good. Boutique hotels can steal the playbook: tangible craft, circular design, local storytelling, it’s a better story than just a logo – and might not be that much more expensive than franchise fees. Also, combatting boredom? see the column.

BRAND REVIVAL

LLM = lower conversions? AI Search

Two interesting research pieces on AI and SEO. A University research based on 900+ sites and $20B in revenue, “organic LLM” traffic doesn’t convert as good as regular search. Then another SEO research showing how AI mode is shifting clicks patterns. SEO and e-commerce conversions aren’t the same. But there are overlaps. Data is interesting, you’ll need to make your own conclusions here.

LLM VS SEARCH + AI SEO SHIFT

Revenue Managers vs Commercial Strategists

Apparently 76% of an RM’s week is spent on internal tasks and 40% of price recs get overridden. The debate on who should lead the commercial strategy in hotels is in the air again. Should it be the Marketing leader or the Revenue leader. I’m biased.

ROLE UPGRADE⁺

LLMs to test your ads

A study making the rounds claims you can predict purchase intent at 90% accuracy by having an off-the-shelf LLM “impersonate” a customer, look at a product image, and compare impressions with no training needed. It is 100% worth trying – as long as it doesn’t become boring.

AI CONSUMER TESTS

The Cost of Being Boring

System1’s analysis is pretty simple: dull ads burn budget and market share, while emotion wins even in “boring” categories (like b2b saas). If your ads are boring, you’re probably paying more. See this weeks column below and previous columns. Boring (and uncreative) can work, but it’s going to cost more.

AD EFFECTIVENESS

Hotels have satisfaction in Q3

Shiji’s latest benchmark shows the Global Review Index back at 87.0% despite summer’s peak. Despite rates going up, and some uncertainties on the economy, this is a pretty good performance.

GUEST EXPERIENCE⁺

Opinion

Unlimited Content, Unlimited Boredom?

There’s something paradoxical about our times. We are entering an era of unlimited content. AI is generating articles, videos, music, animations (Sora and others are opening up new visual glut/slop – let’s just call it streams). But despite this tidal wave of creativity, we’re seeing a steady rise in boredom. [link]

Odd, right?

You’d expect boredom to drop with more content, more feeds, more videos, more everything. But it turns out that when everything is constantly new, nothing really sticks. In a world where every scroll reveals something fresh, attention spans are shorter and tolerance for repetition is vanishing.

Which brings me to hotels, and marketing in general. We used to run campaigns over three to six months, repeat ads, and slowly build brand familiarity. That era is slowly (or rapidly) vanishing. Audiences now expect something new every time they see you. The idea that you can show the same ad five times and it’ll start working? That’s so 2024 (+a few month). By the third view, they’re bored. By the fifth, they’re annoyed.

The core problem isn’t lack of content, it’s the speed at which we consume and discard it. AI is only going to accelerate that. For hotels, this means we can’t just produce a set of brand ads and let them run for a season. We’re going to need volume, variety, and velocity.

Yes, branding is still about repetition. But now, the repetition needs to come in the form of a consistent identity shown across different creative executions. Not one billboard repeated. One brand expressed a hundred ways – a brand director’s nightmare.

That means hotel marketing teams (and their agencies) need to get comfortable with a completely new cadence. We’ll need to generate many different ads for the same hotel, not because people want more choice, but because they’ve been trained by their feed to expect something new every time they look.

The good news? With AI, that’s possible. The bad news? With AI, everyone else can do it too.

So while unlimited content might not cure boredom, it’s going to reshape marketing. Whether we like it or not, we’re all in the content business now.

• AI Film festival is coming – Link

• Apple vs Cloud vs AI – Link

• Ten Charts, Big Signals – Link

• The Year’s Smartest Hospitality Marketing – Link

• A directory of free resources to start with AI – Link

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

Word history: rack rate: The word “rack” in “rack rate” comes from the industry’s tradition of displaying room prices on a rack or board at the front desk. “Rate” means price or cost. So, “rack rate” means the price shown or listed, not including any discounts. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺