Hospitality Has an Experience Problem

By Elke Bretz, Founder of azulomo

We’ve become very good at designing beautiful places to stay. But have we become equally good at understanding how people want to feel inside them?

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There has never been more beautiful hospitality. Open Instagram, Airbnb or a hotel booking site and it is difficult not to be impressed. Beautifully restored farmhouses. Limewashed walls. Linen sheets. Sculptural lighting. Outdoor baths. Carefully considered breakfast trays. Pools disappearing into olive groves.

We have become extraordinarily good at creating places people want to look at. But I keep coming back to a different question: have we become equally good at creating places people want to feel something in?

Because those are not quite the same thing. And I believe the space between them is where one of hospitality’s biggest opportunities now sits.

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We have designed the stay. Have we designed the experience?

Before founding azulomo, I spent much of my career in experience design and optimisation. The environments were different, but the fundamental question was remarkably similar: what is this person trying to achieve, what are they experiencing along the way, and what is helping or preventing them from getting there?

You learn very quickly in experience design that what a business provides and what a person actually experiences are not necessarily the same thing. A product can contain every feature it is expected to have and still feel difficult. A website can look beautiful and still fail to persuade. A journey can be technically seamless and somehow remain forgettable.

Hospitality is no different. We can provide the pool, the beautiful bedroom, the coffee machine, the local toiletries and the perfectly styled terrace. Those things matter, of course, but they are ingredients. They are not, by themselves, the experience.

The experience is what happens to the guest because of them. Perhaps they sleep more deeply. Perhaps conversation lasts longer over dinner. Perhaps they put their phone down without consciously deciding to. Their children disappear into the garden. They feel anonymous for a few days. They reconnect with someone. Or perhaps, for the first time in months, nothing is asking anything of them.

That distinction has become central to how I think about hospitality.

“Guests don’t only book places. They book possibilities. The promise of how life might feel, if only for a few days.”

When somebody searches for somewhere to stay, they appear to be making a property decision. Two bedrooms or three. Pool or no pool. Hotel or villa. Near the beach or in the countryside. Breakfast included. Dog friendly. Good reviews. Within budget.

But underneath those practical criteria sits something much more human: what am I hoping this trip will give me?

It might be rest, connection, freedom, celebration, privacy, adventure, belonging, stillness, time together or simply time alone. Sometimes we don’t articulate those things even to ourselves, yet they influence what catches our attention, what feels right and what we are willing to pay more for.

This is why I believe the future of distinctive hospitality begins not with demographics or amenities, but with a deeper understanding of the desired state of the guest. Not simply, who is staying here?, but how do they want to feel while they are here?

That sounds like a subtle change in language. In practice, it changes almost everything.

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Beautiful is increasingly the starting point

There is another reason I think this matters. Good design has become abundant.

Independent stays, boutique hotels and vacation rentals now have access to the same visual inspiration, suppliers, photographers, designers and social platforms. Ideas move quickly. What once looked distinctive can become familiar remarkably fast.

The result is a strange contradiction: hospitality has arguably never looked better, yet it can also feel increasingly interchangeable. A beautiful property can attract attention, but beauty alone doesn’t necessarily answer the question every guest eventually asks: why this place?

Increasingly, that is a commercial question as much as a creative one. When guests struggle to understand what meaningfully distinguishes one stay from another, comparison becomes easier. Price becomes louder. Discounts become more tempting. The photographs may earn the click, but there needs to be something deeper that makes the property feel worth choosing.

Distinctiveness is not about adding more. It is about creating greater meaning around what is already there.

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Guest experience begins before arrival

One of the habits I brought with me from experience design was to look at the whole journey rather than the isolated product. In hospitality, we often talk about guest experience as though it begins when someone walks through the door. I think it begins much earlier.

It begins when someone first discovers you. With the photograph that makes them stop scrolling. The sentence that makes them think, this feels like us. The clarity of the booking journey. The confidence created by the reviews. The message received three days before arrival.

Then it continues into the stay itself: the first ten steps into the property, what they notice and what they don’t have to ask. What has quietly been anticipated. How the light feels at four in the afternoon. Where they instinctively put their bag. Whether they know what to do next.

And it continues long after checkout, in what they remember, describe to somebody else, photograph, review and eventually decide whether they want to experience again.

The stay is the property. The experience is the entire relationship around it.

That distinction matters.

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More isn’t necessarily better hospitality

Hospitality has spent decades becoming very good at adding. More amenities. More services. More choice. More technology. More touchpoints. More personalisation. Sometimes those additions genuinely improve an experience. Sometimes they simply create more hospitality.

I am increasingly interested in the opposite question: what could we remove?

The unnecessary decision. The intrusive message. The complicated instruction. The noise. The visual clutter. The awkward interaction. The assumption that good service must always be visible.

There are guests for whom exceptional hospitality might mean conversation, recommendations and connection. For another guest, exceptional hospitality might mean barely seeing another person for three days. Neither is inherently better. What matters is fit.

Good hospitality isn’t simply attentive. It is perceptive.

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The experience and the commercial outcome are not separate conversations

This is perhaps where my view differs most from the idea of slow hospitality as simply a softer, more soulful approach to hosting.

I don’t believe human feeling and commercial intelligence belong in separate conversations. Quite the opposite.

When a property understands the people it is for, it can make clearer decisions about the experience it creates. When that experience has a recognisable identity, it becomes easier to communicate. When guests understand what makes a stay different, perceived value can increase. When perceived value increases, a property has a stronger reason to be chosen for something other than price. And when the experience genuinely delivers on that promise, it has the potential to influence reviews, recommendations, return visits and direct demand.

The chain I am interested in is:

Guest Fit → Desired State → Stay Identity → Experience → Perceived Value → Commercial Value

This sits at the heart of much of the work we are developing at azulomo. It asks us to stop treating guest experience as the decorative layer that comes after the commercial strategy.

The experience is part of the commercial strategy.

“The stay is the property. The experience is everything that builds value around it. It shapes what makes someone stop, choose, pay more, remember you, recommend you to others and, ultimately, decide that yours is a place worth returning to.”

So what makes a memorable hospitality experience?

I don’t think there is a universal formula. And that is precisely the point.

A memorable stay isn’t necessarily the one with the greatest number of amenities, the most expensive interiors or the most attentive service. It is the one where the different parts of the experience seem to understand what the guest came for.

The setting supports it. The design supports it. The pace supports it. The communication supports it. The people support it. Even the things deliberately left out support it. And, crucially, the promise made before booking matches the feeling delivered afterwards.

That coherence is difficult to fake. It is also difficult to copy.

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This is where Slow Living Hospitality™ begins

When I began developing azulomo, I needed language for this way of thinking. Slow Living Hospitality™ became that language.

It is not an aesthetic. It doesn’t require a farmhouse, neutral interiors, an olive grove or a particular kind of guest. And it isn’t simply hospitality performed more slowly.

It is a way of designing hospitality around greater understanding of the human being experiencing it. What are they seeking? How do they want to feel? What belongs in this experience and what doesn’t? Where should hospitality be visible, and where should it disappear? What will they remember?

And importantly, how can all of those decisions create not only a more meaningful stay, but a more distinctive and commercially resilient hospitality business?

Those are much more interesting questions to me than what else can we add?

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The opportunity isn’t to create more. It is to understand better.

Hospitality will continue to become more beautiful. Technology will become more sophisticated. AI will make discovery, personalisation and operations increasingly intelligent. Amenities will be copied, design trends will travel faster, and guests will have more choice than ever.

Which makes the human question more important, not less: what does this person actually want to feel here?

Understand that deeply enough and decisions about the property, service, photography, words, pricing and experience begin to connect. The result isn’t simply a nicer stay. It is a stay with a clearer reason to exist, a clearer reason to be chosen and, perhaps most importantly, a clearer reason to be remembered.

That is the kind of hospitality I believe is worth designing.

Elke Bretz
Founder, azulomo