By Pablo Revale
April 1, 2026 · 4 Minutes
Adapted from Originally published in Unstoppable Hospitality on LinkedIn.
Hotels are obsessed with the physical. Better linens. Better food. Better service training. Better lobby design. I get it. That’s the core of hospitality. But is it? If you’ve ever read a book on networking or influence, you know the first rule: understand the person in front of you. What drives them. What excites them. What makes them feel seen. You can’t build a real connection with someone you don’t know. Hospitality is not about infrastructure. Hospitality is human connection, and connection depends on information. How are you preparing to receive a guest? How do you know what they need if you don’t have their preferences, their previous behaviors, their desires? If you don’t, then you are guessing. And guessing doesn’t scale.
Hotels spend 1.4% to 3% of revenue on technology. Banks spend 6% to 12%. Retail, media, and advertising figured this out years ago. They use information at every single interaction. Tailored products, tailored content, improving algorithms. Amazon generates 35% of its revenue from recommendation engines. Netflix says 80% of what you watch comes from personalization. These companies didn’t get better at guessing. They stopped guessing entirely.
Hospitality has an intrinsic advantage. Hotels have both digital and physical experiences. They can interact with guests face to face. Ask them directly. See the reaction of a well-done upsell in real time. That’s a massive advantage. But almost no one is using it because the information never flows. It stays trapped in one department, one system, one interaction that no one else can see.
The oil and gas industry didn’t innovate because it wanted to. It innovated because it had to. For decades, the playbook was simple: drill where you know there’s oil. Each successful drill generated enormous returns. Why change? Technology only became a priority when they needed to reach reserves that were physically inaccessible without it. Horizontal drilling. Hydraulic fracturing. Deep-water rigs. Innovation wasn’t driven by curiosity. It was driven by the fact that the easy wells were drying up. Hospitality is in the same place. The easy wins from improving the physical product are plateauing. You can only renovate the lobby so many times. The next wave of value isn’t in the room. It’s in the information about the person inside the room. And just like oil and gas, the biggest innovations in hospitality tend to come from outsiders.
Hospitality is giving the guest what they need, in the moment they need it, without them having to ask. You might think that’s impossible. I’d challenge you on that. It’s already being done. Every time Spotify queues the right song. Every time Netflix surfaces the right show. Every time Amazon shows you something you didn’t know you wanted. These aren’t accidents. They’re the result of companies that decided information was the product, not just a byproduct. If you really want to connect with people, make sure to build the infrastructure that makes them feel listened to.
