As hospitality leaders, we are conditioned to focus on a specific set of metrics. We live and breathe RevPAR, occupancy, ADR, and direct booking percentages. These numbers are the bedrock of our operational control, and rightly so. The latest Insights Podcast prompted me to think more about the data we often overlook.
My guest was Carlos Cendra, a partner at the tourism data intelligence firm Mabrian Technologies. Our discussion centred on the strategic value of looking beyond a hotel’s own walls to the macro trends shaping its entire destination. It served as a powerful reminder that while we can optimise every square foot of our properties, our ultimate success is tied to forces far outside our control. The challenge, then, is to understand those forces. This conversation provided a glimpse into how that’s becoming possible.
Takeaways
Embrace a Wider Perspective: Shift from a hotel-centric to a destination-centric focus. Your success depends on your location’s perception.
Real-Time Sentiment is Actionable: Use real-time sentiment analysis for risk management and to make rapid, agile marketing pivots.
Sustainable Pricing Requires Macro Data: Pricing has long-term consequences. Use macro data to understand the market and ensure sustainable growth.
The Product is the Destination: Don’t just sell rooms; sell access to the destination. Your marketing must reflect this role.
The limits of an inward-looking view
The first and most important takeaway for me was a reinforcement of a simple truth: no hotel is an island. We spend enormous effort analysing the guest journey from the moment they land on our website to the day they check out. But we often have a blind spot when it comes to the very first decision they made: choosing our city or region.
Why here? Why now? What are their expectations for the destination itself? Answering these questions with our own data is nearly impossible. This is the strategic gap that destination-level intelligence aims to fill. It’s about complementing our sharp, internal focus with a wider, contextual lens, allowing us to understand the traveller sentiment, motivation, and concern that bring guests to our doorstep.
A more authentic way of listening
Traditionally, understanding a market meant commissioning surveys or focus groups. While they have their place, they’ve always felt imperfect. The act of asking a question can shape the answer. What I found compelling in the approach we discussed was its observational nature. Carlos explained how his team at Mabrian, as an example of this methodology, analyzes millions of spontaneous online interactions, from social media comments to travel reviews, to build a picture of what people truly think.
From my perspective, this represents a shift towards a more authentic form of market research. It’s the difference between asking someone if they enjoyed their dinner and quietly observing whether they finished their meal. This unfiltered, real-time data captures what’s genuinely on travellers’ minds, whether it’s excitement about a new culinary scene, growing interest in nature tourism, or concerns about safety or overcrowding.
“Travelers don’t travel to a hotel—they travel to a destination.” Carlos Cendra
From data points to strategic narratives
Of course, the sheer volume of this data makes it unusable without the right technology. This is where the application of AI plays an important role. Our conversation highlighted a key evolution: the move from AI as a data processor to an AI that helps interpret and build a narrative.
What I found particularly interesting was the idea of using generative AI to automatically generate conclusions from the structured data. It means you’re not just handed a dashboard of raw numbers; you’re given a story. For example: “We’re seeing a 10% drop in flight searches from Germany, which correlates with a 15% spike in online conversations from that market expressing concern about rising travel costs.” This connects the dots, turning abstract data into an actionable strategic insight.
Context is everything: A practical look
Two examples from our discussion really drove home the practical value of this external context.
The first was a case study on how a destination could measure the impact of a distant geopolitical conflict on its perceived level of safety. This illustrated how quickly external events can affect the bottom line, often in ways that are invisible until bookings start to decline. Having the data to see that perception shift in real-time and to see which source markets are most affected allows for a precise and agile marketing response.
The second was the pricing paradox, where a holiday to Bali could be cheaper for a Spanish family than one to the Balearic Islands. It’s a stark reminder that our pricing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Without understanding the total cost of travel from the consumer’s point of view, including airfare, we risk making strategic errors and pricing ourselves out of key segments, including our own domestic market.
Final words: Adopting a bifocal strategy
If there’s one guiding principle that the conversation reinforced for me, it’s that travellers choose a destination, not a hotel. While simple, it’s a foundational concept we sometimes lose sight of in our day-to-day operations. Our properties are the gateways to an experience, and our marketing and product development should be built around that truth.
Ultimately, my discussion with Carlos wasn’t just about a specific technology or company; it was about the need for a more holistic, bifocal strategy in hospitality. We need one lens focused sharply on our internal operations and guest experience, and another focused just as clearly on the broader destination landscape. The hoteliers who master the ability to use both will be the ones best equipped to navigate the complexities of the years ahead.
Watch the full episode here (In Spanish)
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