What is experiential hospitality

Travel planning used to be straightforward – pick a destination, book a room, and plan activities upon arrival. Not any more. In a travel landscape shaped by Instagram and TikTok, experiences come first and hotels need to adapt.

What is experiential hospitality?

The data is in. Globally each year we’re shifting our spending towards experiences, and away from things. As a result, the word "experiential" is getting used more and more, often to mean different concepts that can easily get confused.
‍

Experiential travel -
Refers to a trend whereby travelers increasingly plan and organize their trips with experiences as their central focus - often booked before other elements like hotels and flights.
‍
Experiential hospitality -
Refers to a strategy increasingly adopted by hotels and vacation rentals to include experiences as a core component of their guest offer.
‍
Experiential marketing -
Refers to the tendency across multiple industries (including travel) to focus their brand, messaging and social media around experiences.
‍

What does it mean to offer experiential hospitality at your hotel?

Experiential hospitality is a strategy. As with any other strategy, adopting it means more than just a short marketing campaign or page on your website. It means aligning 4 core aspects of your hotel offer around experiences:
‍

Putting experiences at the forefront of your marketing -
Experiences go hand-in-hand with marketing - they give you a unique story to tell, which boosts SEO, and they offer great video content which is proven to improve impressions and clicks on your social media.
‍
Making those experiences easily bookable for your guests -
Guests expect to be able to book experiences as they do everything else - online, in advance, at the click of a button. It’s not enough to have a static page of recommendations that gets out-of-date, or asking them to reach out to your concierge.
‍
Using experiences to help, not hinder your staff service -
The key to execution of experiences is that the booking process is sufficiently easy, flexible and automated. Let guests self-serve to free up your staff on going above and beyond where it counts.
‍
Assessing your experience offer with data and regular performance reviews -
Just as you are constantly finding ways to grow and improve the performance of your hotel rooms, the same is true of your experiences. You need centralized, reliable and consistent data on inquiries, bookings and reviews.
‍

What are some examples of stand-out experiences in hospitality?

Let’s take the example of experiential hospitality at the Four Seasons which stands out for its experience hotels around the world. Why?
‍

Experiences are at the forefront of their marketing strategy -
Their ‘Based on a True Stay’ campaign has been phenomenally successful in showcasing the brand to offer so much more than just luxury hotel rooms.
‍
Experiences are easy and exciting to browse and book on their hotel websites -
You can check live availability, add to cart, and checkout in minutes on each individual hotel site.
‍
The way experiences are managed mean that their staff service shines rather than falls down on execution -
Demonstrated by their public reviews and guest satisfaction scores.
‍
They are constantly reviewing, growing and improving their experience offer -
Increasing the destinations for their highly successful Private Jet experience, and adding Four Seasons Yachts from 2025.
‍

Is experiential hospitality strictly necessary?

A common misconception is that experiential hospitality is restricted to luxury or niche travel segments. In reality, the trend of experiential travel is industry-wide, and unavoidable. So opting out of experiential hospitality risks you falling behind. How?
‍

The way guests plan and book their trips has changed -
Without experiential hospitality, hotels risk reduced web traffic, and ultimately fewer bookings.
‍
The bar for success has changed -
Hotel assets go beyond just rooms, and leaving them underutilized leaves money on the table. Without a true strategy for experiences, hotel performance relies entirely on the ebb and flow of occupancy during peak seasons.
‍
The guest's focus has changed -
Not owning experiences leaves guest satisfaction up to chance - with a knock-on effect for reviews, recommendations and return travelers.
‍

How hard is experiential hospitality?

The perceived cost of implementing a strategy of experiential hospitality sometimes means hotels opt to ignore the trend - in spite of the risks. Experiences are traditionally associated with operational headaches at hotels - calling organizers to check availability at the last minute, or getting caught answering guest queries with out-of-date information. Until now, digital solutions have meant large upfront investment, with no guaranteed payoff.
Today, the technology and expertise exists to implement experiential hospitality well, and at little to no upfront cost on complex technological integration, or staff training.
‍

If you’d like to learn more, you can check out what we’re up to, or book a call with one of our team.

November 27, 2023