The Costly Disconnect Between Luxury Hospitality and Its Marketing (What Every Guest-Obsessed Hospitality Leader Deserves to Know)

To the hospitality leaders who have poured everything into creating an unforgettable guest experience, this is for you.

Content from luxury hospitality groups and hotels in 2025 is beautiful, there's no doubt about that. It's polished, slick, and has perfect words placed on top of it. Usually adjectives, the kinds you do in a brand strategy exercise.

But unfortunately, the digital expression is FAR from accurate, and is extremely distanced from the values, personalization, passion, design, and detail of the real-life experience.

Even more than that, but it lacks the one thing that defines unforgettable hospitality:

Romance.

Not a love story in the traditional sense, but the magnetic pull of an experience that sees you, moves you, and stays with you long after you leave.

The Deeper Issue: Takers vs Givers

The following might trigger marketers, but let me be clear that this isn't an attack on marketers, but how marketing inherently operates, and continues to operates. I've met many a Director of Marketing that is kind, generous, and extremely hospitable. Marketers that are givers.

However...

Most marketing is built around extraction. Get views. Get attention. Fast hits with shallow engagement.

Dopamine.

But luxury hospitality? True luxury hospitality is built on generosity. On presence. On care.

On oxytocin.

This isn't about the individuals — the Directors of Marketing or Brand — it's about the paradigm. Marketing, traditionally practiced (and the way the luxury hospitality sector has always done it), is taking, and sees the client for their wallets and as a transaction. Hospitality, as it's best expressed, is giving, and sees the client as an opportunity to delight and inspire.

Until this gap is acknowledged and addressed by leadership, luxury hospitality marketing will continue to feel emotionally disconnected from the experience it's meant to represent.

If everywhere and everyone is competing for dopamine – taking – what happens if you go after something else entirely?

The Neuroscience Behind This...

The directors, GMs and leadership in charge of the client experience put an incredible amount of effort to creating a sense of belonging for the client, only to see it reduced to a soulless rendition online.

I'm not qualified to advise on how to overhaul all of luxury marketing. But I can recommend the first step, rooted in neuroscience and the neurotransmitter, oxytocin.

Oxytocin is the neurotransmitter of trust, memory and emotional bonding. It's what makes a moment unforgettable It's what your best GMs, directors and experience curators are already creating through their deep level of care.

Storytelling can do that too.

No, not the misused word 'storytelling', like in 'brand storytelling'. Storytelling that respects the age-old and timeless craft.

Only when rooted in real, remarkable characters, story triggers the same neurochemical response as great luxury hospitality: oxytocin. And when crafted with precision, it activates narrative transportation, the neuroscience-backed gateway to immersion.

Just like during the stay, immersion predicts both loyalty and spend.

So, if the stay creates immersion, shouldn't the story?

How many of you can say, in full honesty, that your hotel content today creates immersion in the same way the experience does? It simply does not. Even if your audiences watches through a whole 30sec reel, they're onto the next dopamine-focused piece of content.

Yes, dopamine and endorphins play a part within the breadth of hospitality, but in luxury hospitality, where care, presence and emotional depth define the experience, oxytocin is the true driver of loyalty and memory.

(I'll be writing more soon on immersion within storytelling: 'narrative transportation')

Visual, or Visceral. You Decide.

There's a consequence of not evolving, and it's always at the forefront of the minds of those that pursue unreasonable hospitality. And in hospitality marketing it's no different.

Most keep investing in films that look premium that 'get' likes, but feel totally empty. They bring in the influencers, but the soulless content performs maybe for a weekend, but doesn't convert. They highlight aesthetics to 'get' attention, but forget the humans behind the magic. They hire the agencies that promise success but receive the same cliched result that has plagued the industry for far too long.

Most hospitality strategy is visual, not visceral, and it shows.

Let's lay it out:

1. Story is treated like a marketing asset

2. So it’s delegated to marketers, not crafted with care

3. So guests encounter content that’s aesthetically on-brand but emotionally hollow

4. So the story doesn’t match the feeling of the stay

5. So emotional pull, loyalty, and spend are lower than they could be

6. So the brand becomes forgettable, even when the experience is extraordinary

They invest so much in creating extraordinary guest experiences, yet they end up looking and sounding like everyone else.

Hmm.

The Strategic Solution

Part of the fix isn't another influencer or more content. It's timeless, character-driven storytelling that is calibrated to the feeling guests carry home. A love story between you and your guests that extends beyond the experience itself.

Storytelling done well requires knowledge, depth, emotional intelligence, care, and creative integrity. It can’t be handed off to a marketing team or squeezed into a content calendar. Because the truth is, most marketers don’t know how to do it.

Only when leadership recognizes storytelling as a core part of the guest experience — an artisanal craft on par with the architects, chefs, and designers they already entrust, not a line item in the marketing budget — will things begin to change.

Every frame needs to deepen connection, and every word must evoke the soul of the experience. You can only do this when you shift your focus away from dopamine and towards oxytocin.

And when you do, you'll finally have marketing that the team that works so hard to create an unforgettable experience will be proud of.

At it's core, the guest doesn't just want luxury, they want to feel something real. And story is the most powerful way to make them fall in love before they ever arrive.