Hello,

I don’t think I have ever taken on a marketing project without some kind of complaints about a brand name, regret by some, lists of sophisticated names in others etc. So many stories exist about how important a brand name that people tend to over-think it. The truth is, 99% of names can work. And with that, here’s the newsletter.

Note: Have you submitted your ideas to improve the hotel brands chart yet?

Best, Martin

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Trending

Mews: Part 1 – “The big revolution is artificial intelligence”

Build a Cult, Not a Brand

Maybe this is true – but the title is a bit strong. Too many interpret this concept to convert one’s brand into a kind of ideological platform. I agree to designing communities with story and identity, moats that price and scale can’t easily breach. It’s provocative, sure, but the loyalty math checks out. Make meaning, not just media. But I would say, be careful of ideologies, they creep in and sidetrack the brand. See my column.

BRAND BELIEF

Leadership, Luxury, and Discomfort

Brilliant interview with a GM who has managed the best hotels. The podcast dives into Omotenashi (the Japanese word for exceptional hospitality see definition at the end), and the idea that real luxury invites a bit of discomfort—growth over excess. That the idea of just hiring great people (really hard) and letting them get on with it isn’t enough. There needs to be structure around it. Worth a listen, wish it was a longer recording.

HOSPITALITY LEADERSHIP

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.  

ChatGPT Changes Hotel Marketing

The editor of Hospitality.Today wrote a piece on GPT and hotel marketing, it is worth reading. In it he discusses that Instant Checkout brings conversion into the chat, pushing hotels from pop-ups to actual conversations that earn trust. The work now is making data AI-readable, showing up transparently in assistants, and treating discovery as dialog. If your hotel isn’t “in the chat,” you’re not in the consideration set. Start with structured data and FAQs today.

AI BOOKING

Who should lead commercial strat?

I have commented on this before. Rev Mgrs are becoming commercial strategy leaders. It makes sense as they have the most pragmatic look at things. But will that make things boring and spreadsheet based? Before coming to the travel industry I had never experienced an industry where pretty much all the marketing was directed by the price. In consumer goods, pricing is set once and sometimes there are discounts. In travel almost all demand is managed through price. My only request on commercial strategy is that it doesn’t become boring.

TOTAL PROFIT⁺

Mega Sports Events = Live Tourism

World Cups, Olympics, F1 they’re excellent tourism campaigns, I look at Barcelona post Olympics and it hasn’t been the same city. Yes, they’re pricey (Qatar invested $200B), but they catalyze airports, hotels, transit, and storytelling that pays back for years, look at how much Tour de France spends on showcasing every city. Done right, the legacy is more than stadiums. It’s a new positioning. Then there are those who didn’t do it so well.

EVENTS STRATEGY

Hospitality Is Community Now

Beyond comfort and service, there’s that intangible benefit of community. People with similar interests, ready to discuss them. Members’ lounges and programming that bring these together, and it’s proving sticky for loyalty and lifetime value. Operators need space design and rituals, not just CRM. Community is the new amenity. A friend once told me the owner of the hotel he worked at would rather be half empty with the right people than full with the wrong ones. The owner was probably very rich.

COMMUNITY DESIGN

Where Are Your Direct Perks?

Hotels complain about OTA commissions, then hide meager “benefits” on their sites. Want direct bookings? Offer real, guaranteed perks, breakfast, credits, flexible cancels, and make them loud. Compete with Booking.com on clarity and certainty, not vibes. If it’s not obvious in five seconds, it doesn’t exist. Unfortunately OTAs will complain, but it’s true: You need hard perks to get them to book direct. Your profit isn’t the guests’ problem.

DIRECT BOOKING

Luxury and Wellbeing

The one thing that I don’t think is changing as much as observers keep saying is Luxury. The fundamental psychology of luxury is the same, and has been for centuries. But still, there will be shifts. Luxury is drifting from logos to inner life: wellbeing, discipline, emotional regulation. Think Oura Ring flexes and marathon medals over monograms, backed by Bain and Deloitte signals on experience-first spend. Status is becoming quiet and internal, and hospitality is perfectly placed to stage it.

LUXURY WELLBEING

Atlas vs. Chrome

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas is their AI assisted browser with multi-step agents and a chat sidebar, similar to Comet that I commented on a few weeks ago. The hurdle isn’t features, it’s breaking Chrome’s default advantage on billions of devices. Still, assistants, OSes, and browsers are converging fast. I’m curious whether habit or help wins this race. I would say one key feature to remedy is data security. Because even if I found Comet to be a great tool, I don’t use it on professional environments.

AI BROWSER

Opinion

The Brand Name Myth

One of the most common conversations I have with founders is about brand names. What to call the company, how much meaning it should have, whether it needs to be clever, memorable, descriptive. I get it. I’ve been there myself, naming things is hard. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the name itself doesn’t matter nearly as much as people think.

Apple is a terrible name for a computer company. It tells you nothing about what they sell. Google was confusing at first (was it Goggle? Goo-guhl? Go-ogle?). Nike is still mispronounced depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on. Louis Vuitton is hard to spell, Hermès is hard to pronounce, and Mars doesn’t sound like chocolate. Yet all of these are some of the strongest brands in the world.

Why? Because names start out meaningless (if you pick a common word it starts with an existing meaning which is even harder to define). The meaning of the brand is injected into the word over years of repetition, marketing spend, customer experience, and cultural reinforcement. That’s what branding is, literally burning an association into people’s minds.

From my experience (and it seems to be a standard in marketing), it takes about five years for a brand to start “sticking.” You can try to speed up the name recognition with more money, but you can’t seem to skip the time it takes for people to associate a name with your company’s purpose. Which means the real questions to ask when choosing a brand name are more pragmatic:

• Can people pronounce it?

• Can you get the dot-com (if that still matters to you)?

• Will you be buried under 10,000 search results if you pick a common word?

• How much time and money are you prepared to invest in making it mean something?

Everything else is noise. Don’t overthink the symbolism. Don’t try to make the name carry all the weight of your vision. History shows us that the best brands were not “good names” when they started. They became good because the companies behind them built meaning into them.

So if you’re stuck with brand name uncertainty, stop. Pick a name you can live with, one that doesn’t get in the way. Then spend your energy on building the brand itself. Because in the end, the logo, the name, the cleverness of the word… none of that will matter if you don’t burn the meaning into people’s minds.

The brand isn’t in the name. It’s in the work.

• Moncle’s Design Notes: Timber, Identity, Icons – Link

• AI Has Flipped Software Development – Link

• Lounges Lost the Plot – Link

• Everything Is Television Now – Link

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

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

Omotenashi: The Japanese concept of thoughtful hospitality and selfless service, where hosts take care of guests by anticipating their needs without expectation of reward. Etymology: From Japanese. It combines “omote” (surface, public face) and “nashi” (none), reflecting the idea of genuine, honest hospitality with no hidden motives. The practice dates back to traditional Japanese culture, especially tea ceremonies, where every effort is made for the guest’s comfort and pleasure. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.