How History, Childhood Impressions, and Emotional Memory Can Create a Future Guest
The hospitality industry has learned to sell practically everything that can be measured. We sell a room at a specific price per night, breakfast at a per-person cost, a spa treatment by duration, an upgrade by the difference between room categories, and a loyalty program by the number of points and status level. We have become very good at showing potential guests the size of a room, a photograph of the bed, the view from the window, the restaurant, the pool, and the number of available amenities. Yet most hotels have one extremely valuable asset that is used far less than it could be: their own history. Some hotels have decades or even hundreds of years behind them, famous guests, historic events, unique architecture, works of art, gardens, legends, and human stories. Yet very often, all of this remains simply part of the interior. A guest walks past an old photograph without knowing who is depicted in it; a child runs through a historic staircase without understanding how many people passed along it before them; a family has breakfast in a restaurant that has existed for decades, but receives more or less the same experience they could have had in a modern hotel built only a few years ago. As a result, the hotel sells space, service, and convenience, but does not always sell the meaning—the sense and emotional significance—of the place itself. This is why I would like to propose an idea that at first glance may seem small and even somewhat romantic, but could actually become an interesting tool for hotel marketing, guest experience, and long-term brand building: what if a hotel deliberately began creating an emotional connection with future guests before they became independent consumers? Not by selling a room to a child, not by marketing luxury to them, and not by trying to turn them directly into customers, but by introducing them to the hotel's history, transforming its architecture and heritage into a game, creating an emotional experience, and allowing that experience to become part of their personal memory. We Sell Too Much of What Is Easy to Describe The traditional hotel business model is fairly rational. A guest chooses between room categories, compares prices, looks at photographs, reads reviews, evaluates the location, facilities, and range of services, and then makes a decision. For a hotel, this is convenient because virtually all of these characteristics can be measured, packaged, and presented in an advertising message. But this is precisely where one of the main challenges of the modern hospitality industry emerges: the more elements of a hotel product can be measured, the easier they are to compare and the more difficult it becomes to build genuine differentiation around them. A competitor can renovate its lobby, install similar furniture, open a new restaurant, improve its spa, purchase more expensive amenities, or offer a complimentary transfer. It can even copy the format of a breakfast or a particular service technology. But there is one asset that cannot simply
Share
