Travel Content Creation

I've been thinking a lot about the kind of content brands put into the world. Some of it sparks conversation and strengthens brand connection. Some of it...just fills the feed. Most B2C brands are great at chasing engagement, but not always at building brand meaning. When I mapped it out, the content that matters most always ends up in the upper-right quadrant: High Engagement + High Cultural Relevance / Emotional Impact. 🟩 The Sweet Spot This is content people actually interact with and that strengthens brand connection: • User-Generated Storytelling (not just reviews, but authentic, emotional UGC) • Lifestyle & Aspirational Content (travel inspo, fashion, wellness — fits seamlessly into how people see themselves) • Viral TikTok/Reels Trends (when done authentically and in sync with culture) • Influencer Collaborations (especially when creators embody your brand values) • Community Challenges / Hashtag Activations (identity-driven and participatory) This is where loyalty gets built. Where campaigns outlive algorithms. Where engagement means something. ⸻ 🟧 What to Watch Out For (Low/Low) • Generic Product Ads (feature dumps without story) • Random Sales Promotions (uninspired discount graphics) • Forced Trend-Jacking (when brands hop on memes without fit) 👉 These pieces don’t move the needle on culture or engagement. ⸻ 🟪 The Trap (High Engagement / Low Relevance) • Giveaways / Sweepstakes (quick hits, low equity) • Funny Memes / Low-lift Humor (attention-grabbing but not tied to your brand) • Clickbait-y Hacks (drive views without deepening connection) • Flash Discounts (transactional, not relational) 👉 Yes, these light up the metrics — but they don’t build lasting brand affinity. ⸻ The takeaway? Don’t just chase clicks. Make more content for the upper right: where engagement fuels cultural relevance, and cultural relevance and emotional impact fuels long-term brand love. 𝙄𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙣’𝙩 𝙨𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙢𝙮 𝘽2𝘽 𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙭, 𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙘𝙠 𝙞𝙩 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚: https://lnkd.in/d7DXQDMB 𝙄’𝙡𝙡 𝙙𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙧 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙤 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙪𝙥𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙄𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚 𝙎𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙈𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙖 𝙇𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙥 𝙣𝙚𝙬𝙨𝙡𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨. 𝙎𝙪𝙗𝙨𝙘𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙚 𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚: https://lnkd.in/d28dna4K

TikTok just rolled out a feature that could disrupt the whole hospitality industry. Meet TikTok Go: The first major step toward social platforms becoming full-fledged booking engines. We've been saying it for years, social media has become the primary discovery engine for modern travelers. 81% of travelers use social for travel inspiration. Gen Z and millennials aren't starting on Booking.com or Expedia - they're scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, getting inspired by content. But until now, there's been massive friction in the discovery-to-booking journey. A potential guest discovers your property on social media, gets excited, wants to book, but then has to click through your profile, find your website, navigate to booking pages, and enter dates. At each step, you lose potential guests. But TikTok Go changes this completely. Here's how it works: Eligible creators can partner with hotels to create content and earn commissions when that content drives bookings. Users can now book hotels directly inside TikTok through a Booking.com integration. Each participating hotel gets a dedicated landing page showing prices, amenities, reviews, nearby attractions, and related TikTok videos. This is a fundamental shift creating several massive advantages: 1. Seamless Discovery-to-Booking: Guests inspired by your content can book immediately, eliminating the friction that kills most social media conversions. 2. Potentially Better Attribution: For the first time, we could have clear tracking from social content to actual bookings, solving the attribution blindspots that have plagued social media ROI calculations. 3. Creator Economy Leverage: You can tap into established creator audiences without building your own following from scratch. The program is already active in Indonesia and Japan, now rolling out across the U.S., with plans to expand beyond hotels into food, wellness, and other local services. We're witnessing social media platforms taking their first major step toward overtaking OTAs. The exact mechanics will evolve, but the change has been set in motion. Every major shift in hospitality creates a brief window where early adopters capture outsized returns. Websites in the 90s. Mobile booking in the 2010s. Social commerce in the 2020s. The hotels building serious social media followings today will be best positioned when these booking features become standard across all platforms. While most properties post occasional content and hope for the best, smart operators are treating social media as their primary guest acquisition engine. TikTok Go is just the beginning. What are your thoughts?

The travel industry is leaving serious money and impact on the table. Hotels, airlines, and tourism boards still lean heavily on traditional editorial coverage when it comes to media or FAM trips. Journalism will always matter (I’m a freelance journalist myself), but the data is undeniable: most travelers are booking trips because of what they see on social media. I have worked in this space from every angle: ✈️ as a journalist telling destination stories 📸 as a content creator with a loyal, engaged audience 🌏 and as the founder of a travel community that physically brings travelers to destinations, directly impacting tourism dollars From where I stand, one thing is clear. Creators and community founders are not just a “nice-to-have” in your marketing mix. They are one of the most powerful, conversion-driving tools a destination can have. Yet somehow, we are still being asked to work for free. The same brands who will spend tens of thousands on a glossy print ad will hesitate to invest in the people actually driving bookings. Here is why that mindset needs to change: Recently, I worked with a tourism board as an influencer on a media trip and at the same time, I hosted a private trip there. While on the FAM, I brought 5 paying travelers booked in 24 hours, two weeks before departure. Those travelers posted content too, even though they are not influencers. The tourism board was shocked at both the speed of sales and the ripple effect of organic content created by everyday people. Next month, I am hosting a trip to Bali. Seventy Americans are flying across the world for this experience. That is over $300,000 in tourism dollars generated from one trip. That is 70 travelers capturing moments, telling their own stories, and inspiring their own networks. That is 70 sources of user-generated content, plus my own, plus the long-tail impact when their friends and followers start planning their own Bali trips. This is not hypothetical ROI….It’s real and measurable right now. Travel brands, this is your sign. Stop asking creators to work for free. Start seeing the value of influencer and community-led travel, and pay accordingly. The future is not just about one campaign or article posted once. It is about the social ripple effect that drives bookings, loyalty, and lasting brand love. If you want travelers to choose you, you need to meet them where they are already planning and booking. Right now, that is on social media and in communities they trust. #travel #tourism #hospitality #communitybuilding #creatoreconomy #hotels #airlines #tourismboards #journalism

While the travel industry races to dominate Instagram and TikTok, many sustainable travel brands, especially those who are unbranded, local or community-driven are missing out on a quieter but incredibly powerful platform: 𝐏𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭. Unlike traditional social media, Pinterest isn’t designed for likes or virality. It’s a visual search engine where users go to plan their lives, not scroll through them. And that’s precisely why it’s one of the most aligned platforms for sustainable tourism. Pinterest is where people search for how they want to travel, not who they want to travel with. And here’s where it gets interesting: as of now, 96% of all searches on Pinterest are unbranded. That means users are typing in things like “eco retreats in Latin America”, “cultural trips for women”, or “offbeat travel experiences” not company names. This creates a rare opportunity for grassroots, regenerative, and offbeat tour operators to be discovered without needing global recognition or massive ad budgets. 𝟏. 𝐏𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 In a space where big OTAs (online travel agencies) dominate Google and social algorithms, Pinterest flips the script. The fact that almost every search is unbranded makes it the perfect discovery tool for small, community-rooted experiences from a women-led trek in Morocco to a seaweed-foraging tour in Chile. If your brand centers around values instead of volume, Pinterest is your space. 𝟐. 𝐈𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐀𝐠𝐞 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥 Pinterest’s core users are women aged 25-44, many of whom are sustainability-conscious, wellness-driven, and in a phase of life where they’re actively planning meaningful travel solo retreats, family holidays, cultural immersions or low-impact honeymoons. These women are not just dreaming, they’re deciding. This demographic is increasingly steering tourism demand toward slower, greener, and more inclusive experiences. 𝟑. 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 One of Pinterest’s biggest advantages is how content remains evergreen. A post today about “regenerative farming stays in Portugal” can resurface six months or even six years later and still drive traffic. This is vastly different from platforms where visibility dies within hours. Plus, Pinterest doesn’t rely on followers. It's driven by visual design and keyword search, meaning anyone can get visibility with the right content strategy. If you're a sustainable travel brand or tour operator especially one focused on authenticity, culture, and community. Pinterest could be your most impactful channel. The conscious traveler is already out there, searching. Pinterest is where many of them begin that journey.

I asked AI to plan a luxury trip to Jordan last weekend. It beat every tourism board pitch I've seen this year on two layers. On the third, it was hopeless. Here's the framework I now use. The AI-versus-humans debate in travel is lazy because it's binary. The honest answer is layered. Each layer has a different winner, and most brands don't know which layer they're actually competing on. I call it the 3-Layer AI Travel Stack: → Discovery Layer: AI wins. Logistics, timing, pricing, comparison. AI does this faster and better than any human ever will. → Curation Layer: It's a tie. AI filters brilliantly but needs human taste to rank what actually matters to a specific traveller. Taste is critical and very hard for machines. I think it's the most important part of travel marketing now. → Meaning Layer: Humans win. Emotional arc, narrative, relationships, cultural nuance based on a persons unique preferences. This is where AI falls apart completely, and is where you should focus when creating content. Every CMO should be able to answer this in one sentence: which layer is my brand actually competing on, and is that layer defensible for the next three years? Which layer are my teams strongest at and where do I need help? If the answer is discovery, rebuild the strategy now. If it's meaning, protect it like capital. I think this is the most useful mental model I've developed for trying to figure out where a travel marketer stands against AI. It's not about whether AI will disrupt travel marketing (that is a given). It's about knowing exactly which part of your value proposition is safe, which part isn't and which parts you need help with 🚀 Run the 3-layer audit on your own brand this week. Which layer are you actually winning on? Reply in the comments, or DM me your answer and I'll tell you what I see.

Your travel content isn't a destination anymore. It's raw material. While most travel marketers are still optimizing for clicks, smart brands are realizing their content has become infrastructure for AI systems. Here's the shift that's happening right now: - From Traffic Driver to Training Data Your destination guides, tour descriptions, and travel tips aren't just web pages anymore. They're being retrieved, understood, and assembled into AI answers that millions of travelers will see. - New Goal: Get Included, Not Clicked Success used to mean someone clicked through to your site. Now it means your expertise gets cited, quoted, and synthesized into the AI response. The traveler might never visit your website, but they're still consuming your knowledge. - Content as Building Blocks Think of every piece of content as a LEGO brick that AI systems can snap together. Your "Best Time to Visit Santorini" blog post might get combined with someone else's flight data and hotel recommendations to create the perfect AI travel answer. The metrics that matter are changing. Instead of just tracking pageviews, ask yourself: Is my content quotable? Is it becoming part of the collective travel intelligence that AI systems rely on? Your content strategy needs to optimize for retrieval and synthesis, not just search rankings. Are you creating content that AI wants to include? DMOs... you may be in trouble if you haven't changed your reporting to focus on this over traffic.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗮 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗼𝗿 𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆. 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝘁 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. Over the past two years we’ve seen an explosion of: • AI for travel conferences • AI strategy webinars • AI transformation panels • AI consultants publishing thought leadership But here’s the uncomfortable reality: Most of the real AI disruption in travel won’t come from presentations about AI. It will come from platforms that 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 of travelers already use every day. And one of the biggest just made its move. For the first time in more than a decade, Google has rolled out a major redesign of Maps and introduced “Ask Maps,” a Gemini powered conversational interface. At first glance, it looks like a helpful chatbot. But step back and the bigger shift becomes clear. Google Maps is evolving from a navigation tool into an agentic travel planning platform. Travelers can now ask things like: • “Plan a 10-day trip through Italy focused on food and small towns.” • “Design a luxury resort itinerary in the Caribbean.” • “Build a pre- and post-cruise experience around Barcelona.” And the AI assembles recommendations using Google’s enormous dataset of: • places • reviews • photos • geographic context • behavioral signals from billions of travelers But the real breakthrough may be this: The system learns continuously. Every interaction helps Ask Maps understand a traveler’s preferences, over time, the AI builds a living preference profile that improves recommendations trip after trip. And here’s the line the industry should pay attention to: The AI that helps plan the trip may ultimately control what gets discovered. Because Google Maps is already used by well over a billion people every month during travel and local discovery. 𝗡𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆. That has big implications for hotels, cruise lines, resorts, and destinations. Travel discovery has shifted from: Search → websites → booking platforms to Conversation → AI recommendation → itinerary creation It’s about who helps the traveler plan the trip in the first place. And if Google Maps becomes that planning layer, it may quietly become one of the most powerful distribution and discovery platforms in travel. So while the travel industry has spent the last two years talking about AI… Google 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘀. Sometimes the biggest disruption doesn’t come from a panel discussion. It comes from a product update. Curious how others in travel, hospitality, cruise, and destination marketing are thinking about this. We are entering the era of AI-native travel planning.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆. The funnel has simply changed in a way that favors OTAs at every step. Google’s new AI and Web Guide experiences move the user from Sponsored listings to Paid placements to the Meta module and then directly into OTA organic carousels. The path never returns to hotels. It reinforces the duopoly at the top of the funnel while hotels are pushed further down the page. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝘀𝗸 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. If AI agents and Web Guide treat your hotel as a data endpoint, but the OTA has richer, cleaner, and more complete structured data, the system will choose them. If your guests no longer start on your website, you need a strategy for discovery through machine readable content, not just marketing. Google is shaping results from the semantic layer, and OTAs have mastered that layer with complete schemas, stable room logic, and consistent ARI signals. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗹, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁? Most hotel websites were built as brochures, not commercial systems. They rely on fragmented PMS, CRS, and channel manager setups that introduce inconsistencies. They depend on external intermediaries to present accurate room information because the hotel itself is not publishing a clean and unified source of truth. When AI surfaces the data, OTAs appear more reliable because they have already invested in the infrastructure required for structured visibility. 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 or paid placement. It is controlled by structured data coverage and technical stability. If you want AI to choose your property, your website must function as a dataset that can be trusted. 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗔𝗥𝗜 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁. 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲. Your commercial logic must be stable enough for agents to depend on. This is the gap Agentic Hospitality built its MCP server and API hub to close. 𝗛𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿, not the fallback. That only happens when the hotel owns the semantic layer that powers modern search and modern booking. The open web is shifting. The funnel is changing. OTAs are ready for it. Hotels need to be ready too. #AgenticHotelDistribution at AgenticHospitality.com.

Booking.com Is Quietly Rebuilding Travel Search from the Inside Out While others hype, Booking engineers are tuning. ➡️ Booking.com began agentic thinking years ago via conversational recommendation systems. ➡️ They now use modular architecture: small fast models for tasks, larger ones for understanding, and in-house evals where precision matters. ➡️ Agent orchestration includes an LLM that calls APIs, triggers RAG, and filters inputs to reduce hallucinations. ➡️ The system doubled topic detection accuracy and significantly reduced human agent workload. ➡️ They're highly mindful about user memory, consent, and personalization boundaries. Agent-to-Agent is Coming and you won’t even see it. The next wave of digital interaction is invisible. AI agents will transact, compare, and decide without ever surfacing your website. Guests won’t “search” anymore. Their AI concierge will ask another agent. That agent will respond. If your hotel isn’t in the schema (if your data isn’t structured, trusted, and fast ) you’re gone before the conversation starts. Booking.com understands this. That’s why they’re engineering their platform for speed, specificity, and agent-readability. Not for browsers. For bots. WHAT HOTEL COMMERCIAL TEAMS NEED TO TAKE FROM THIS If the future of travel discovery is agent-mediated, then: Your website is not your front door. It’s your API. Your content is not for guests. It’s for machines that represent them. Your competition is not the hotel next door. It’s the agent with better training data. DIRECT CHANNEL IS YOUR LAST ADVANTAGE You don’t own the OTAs. You don’t control what AI agents rank first. But you still control your site, your guest data, your CRM, and your schema. If zero-click travel search becomes the norm, and agent-driven decisions dominate the funnel, your hotel will only be visible to agents that can ingest your data. If your site isn’t optimized for agent-to-agent discovery, it may never be part of the decision set. THREE POWERFUL ACTION STEPS 1️⃣ Turn your website into structured data. Every room type, amenity, policy, and special offer must be machine-readable. Schema markup is no longer optional. It’s how you enter the AI conversation. 2️⃣ Build your brand for zero-click visibility. Stop designing for humans only. Start optimizing for agents. Short descriptions, clear metadata, offer summaries with structured pricing logic, you’re not writing copy. You’re building trust signals for machines. 3️⃣ Teach your team AI fluency, fast. Your revenue manager needs to understand prompt engineering. Your marketing coordinator needs to write for agents. If you're still debating chatbots in 2025, you're already a step behind. AI agents won’t knock on your door. They’re already making decisions. The only question left: Are you being represented? I know this is confusing. DM me with any questions.

83% of travelers now say trust — not price — defines value when booking a hotel, according to a recent Choice Hotels survey. At first glance, that reads as a loyalty or brand affinity headline. But, in practice, I think it reflects a deeper shift in how travel decisions are being made. For much of the past two decades, the decision flow was relatively stable. A traveler would choose a destination (Paris, for example) then move to a familiar platform, whether an OTA or a loyalty ecosystem, and select a hotel, often guided by brand affinity. In that model, brand played an early and influential role, shaping the consideration set before a specific property was ever evaluated. But I think this survey, and other observed consumer travel trends of late, suggest that sequencing is changing. Increasingly, the journey begins with a property rather than a destination. A hotel hits your instagram explore feed, or someone DMs you a Reel of the property where the most recent White Lotus was filmed. The initial reaction is not to identify the brand, but to understand the place: where is it, what is it, why does it feel compelling, and how do I get there? From there, the traveler works outward — toward the location, then the broader trip — often building the itinerary around that initial point of interest. Brand still matters, but its position in the decision-making process has shifted. It is less likely to be the driver of discovery and more likely to serve as a reinforcing signal at the point of conversion. Affiliation with a trusted ecosystem (whether a major loyalty program or a third-party designation) can VALIDATE the choice, reduce perceived risk, and influence final booking behavior, BUT it is no longer the primary entry point. This distinction has meaningful implications for how hotels think about demand generation. If discovery is occurring earlier and outside of brand-controlled channels, then competing at the point of booking is no longer sufficient. Hotels must find ways to participate in the creation of demand itself through content, positioning, and association with experiences or ideas that resonate before a traveler begins a formal search. In that context, loyalty may become more valuable, not less — but in a more targeted role. Not as the mechanism that initiates interest, but as the one that helps close it. We explore this shift, along with the rise of food-led hotels and its implications for differentiation, in this week’s episode of This Week in Hospitality. Stream below or wherever you get your podcasts — and share your thoughts with Ben Wolff, Edwin Kramer, Scott Eddy, and I on the episode here or in the YouTube comments. Happy streaming!