Dumb and Dumber
I was listening to a podcast the other day—Stephen Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO—hosting one of the foundational father figures of the AI movement. The conversation took a turn that…
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Every Robot was Kung-Fu Fighting!
Come recent news out of Shenzhen this week had me double-checking the calendar to ensure I hadn’t slipped into a Real Steel fever dream. But it’s 2026, and China has…
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Square Peg. Round Hole.
You often hear people in this industry talking about technology as if we’re just trying to jam a square peg into a square hole. It’s a comforting, albeit lazy, metaphor.…
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Hotel Brands are Aggregators
We tend to think of hotel brands as, well, brands. Distinct identities. Lifestyle positioning. Design, tone of voice, target audience. But as I’ve repeatedly called them, they’re labels. Traffic data shows…
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A seat at the table
I’ve just arrived at a fresh, modern hotel in the States. On first glance, it’s a win. The room is bright, the design is well-calculated, and it actually features a…
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Branding is never done
Let’s talk about a company that has been around for over a century. They are, by almost every metric, the most recognizable brand on the planet. Every country knows them.…
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Intentional
It’s a curious thing, staying in a property that seems to have missed the memo on the industry’s collective race toward the bottom. I’m currently hunkered down in a hotel…
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Hallucinated Bookings: Travel’s New Bug
Some time ago, together with my friend Daniel Doppler, I wrote about AI hallucinations in the travel industry. Back then, we suggested that sooner or later we would reach a…
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Airline Shrugged
It’s an extraordinary thing, the modern airline business. A masterclass in the institutionalized shrug. I recently flew to Europe, shelling out for a business class service on a major international…
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Cognitive Flexibility: The Only Souvenir Actually Worth Bringing Home
Psychologist Adam Galinsky from Columbia has published a series of studies on a topic our industry usually treats with all the philosophical depth of a LinkedIn post by Big Luca:…
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