The Founder’s Essay Series by azulomo

Ideas for a More Human Kind of Hospitality

By Elke Bretz, Founder of azulomo

Hospitality has never looked better. But when beautiful has become abundant, what makes one stay worth choosing over another?

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Spend ten minutes looking at beautiful places to stay and something strange begins to happen.

The limewashed walls. The linen. Handmade ceramics. Sculptural lighting. Plunge pools. Outdoor showers. Carefully imperfect furniture. Breakfast served on beautiful trays. A solitary chair positioned just so beneath an olive tree.

It is all beautiful. And yet, after a while, one place can begin to dissolve into another.

This isn't because hospitality has lost its creativity. Quite the opposite. We have become exceptionally good at making places desirable. Inspiration is everywhere, good design has become more accessible and independent properties can now present themselves with a level of sophistication once reserved for the world's best hotels.

But that creates an interesting problem.

When beautiful becomes abundant, beautiful alone becomes a weaker reason to choose.

And I think that changes what distinctiveness in hospitality needs to mean.

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Beautiful has become the starting point

There was a time when exceptional interiors or beautiful photography could create significant separation between one property and the next.

Today, guests expect more.

They move through extraordinary imagery every day. Their visual literacy has become more sophisticated. They know what good hospitality looks like before they have even decided where they want to go.

That doesn't make design less important. I think it makes what the design is in service of more important. Because there is a difference between a beautifully designed property and a property with a recognisable identity.

One can make you admire it. The other makes you understand why you want to be there. And increasingly, I think that distinction matters.

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Inspiration has elevated hospitality, but also made it more alike

I love beautiful hospitality. I save it, study it and notice the smallest details in it.

But there is a contradiction in the way we now create places.

We have never had access to more inspiration, yet the same access that expands our creative possibilities can quietly narrow them too. We see something beautiful and save it. Someone else saves it. A designer references it. A host recreates it. An algorithm shows us twelve more versions of it. Eventually, inspiration becomes a ‘visual language’. Then the visual language becomes a ‘formula’.

There is nothing inherently wrong with limewash, microcement, boucle, striped parasols or beautiful bottles of olive oil waiting in the kitchen. Many of those things can genuinely contribute to a wonderful stay.

The question is simply: Why does it belong here?

Because if the answer is only because it looks good, there is a reasonable chance it will look good somewhere else too.

Distinctiveness begins when choices stop being borrowed from an idea of what hospitality should look like and start becoming expressions of what this particular stay is trying to be.

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A stay needs more than a look. It needs a point of view!

This is where I think hospitality becomes much more interesting.

Imagine two equally beautiful rural properties. Similar price. Similar size. Both have a pool, beautiful interiors, wonderful views and excellent reviews.

One has been designed around the idea of long, sociable days: generous shared spaces, a kitchen that invites everyone in, places to eat outside from breakfast until late, games left within reach, local food worth gathering around.

The other is designed around retreat: privacy, silence, deep sleep, somewhere to read alone, shaded corners, minimal interruption and the sense that nobody needs anything from you.

They might photograph equally beautifully. But they are NOT selling the same experience.

That difference is what interests me.

The strongest identity doesn't necessarily come from having something nobody else has. It can come from having a much clearer understanding of what everything is there to create.

The architecture, interiors, service, communication and small decisions begin to point in the same direction. The stay develops a point of view.

And suddenly, beautiful has meaning behind it.

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Distinctiveness isn't about being different for the sake of it

The word distinctive can easily become another instruction to add something.

A statement bathtub. A dramatic colour. An unusual amenity. A feature designed to make somebody stop scrolling. And yes, those things can work.

But novelty and distinctiveness aren't the same thing. Novelty asks: what could make us look different? Distinctiveness asks: what could make us more recognisably ourselves? That is a much harder question.

It requires restraint because not every good idea belongs. It requires confidence because the answer may not appeal equally to everyone. And it requires understanding what the property, place and guest have in common.

At azulomo, I think of this as Stay Identity: the recognisable idea running through a stay that connects who it is for, how it should feel, where it is and what makes the experience meaningfully its own. It isn't a theme. It is coherence.

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Place is one of the hardest things to copy

One of the richest sources of distinctiveness is often already outside the door.

Place. Not place as decoration. Place as participation.

What grows here? What do people eat? What happens at five in the afternoon? Where does the light fall? What can you hear at night? What do local people know that somebody staying for four days probably doesn't?

What could happen here that couldn't happen quite the same way somewhere else?

The answers don't need to become elaborate guest experiences. In fact, sometimes they are very small. Bread from the bakery everyone queues at on Sunday morning. A walking route through the landscape rather than a generic list of attractions. Ceramics made ten kilometres away. A bottle from the vineyard visible across the valley. Knowing which beach becomes quiet after four. And these things don't shout.

Together they can create something increasingly valuable in a world of visual sameness: specificity. And specificity gives a stay roots.

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The strongest identity should travel beyond the property

If a stay has a distinctive identity, I should be able to feel it before I arrive. This is where the commercial side becomes particularly interesting to me.

A property may have created a wonderful experience, but if its photography, listing and website reduce that experience back to a list of generic features, much of its value becomes invisible.

The pool is photographed because there is a pool. The bedroom because there is a bedroom. The terrace because there is a terrace. The copy tells me there are two bathrooms, Wi-Fi, air conditioning and a fully equipped kitchen.

All useful. But I still don't know why this one…

The promise and the reality should recognise one another. Because distinctiveness hidden inside the property cannot do much work before someone books. The value has to be visible before it can influence the decision.

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When difference becomes difficult to see, price becomes louder

This is where distinctiveness stops being simply a branding conversation.

Imagine five properties sitting beside one another in a search result.

They are all beautiful. Similar location. Similar facilities. Similar reviews. Similar photography. Similar language.

Beautiful retreat.

Home away from home.

Perfect place to relax and unwind.

What does the guest compare next?

Very often, price!!! Not necessarily because they are looking for the cheapest option, but because we haven't given them enough meaningful difference to compare instead.

This is why I believe distinctiveness and perceived value are so closely connected.

When a guest understands why your property feels particularly right for them, what kind of experience it offers and what they’ll find there that they won’t quite find elsewhere, value becomes easier to see. The question begins to shift from how much does it cost? to something far more powerful: what is this experience worth to me?

When guests can see the difference, they have a reason to value the difference.

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Being chosen is different from being considered

Beautiful photography can get a property onto the shortlist. Good reviews can reduce risk. The right facilities can satisfy the practical requirements.

But somewhere between being considered and being chosen, something else has to happen.

A guest has to prefer you.

I think hospitality sometimes underestimates how important preference is.

Preference isn't always rational. It can be an accumulation of tiny signals that somehow make one place feel more right than another.

This feels like us.

I can see us there.

This is exactly what I need.

That response is powerful because it moves a property beyond suitability.

The stronger the alignment between what the guest wants and what the stay represents, the less interchangeable the property becomes. This is where the thinking from Guest Fit and Stay Identity begin to meet. One asks what the guest is really seeking. The other asks what this stay is uniquely capable of giving them.

Where those two things overlap is where desire becomes much more specific.

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Distinctiveness can be quiet

Perhaps one of the things I care about most is that distinctiveness doesn't have to perform. It doesn't need a gimmick. It doesn't need to become an Instagram moment. And it certainly doesn't need every corner of a property to demand attention.

Sometimes the most distinctive thing about a place is its restraint.

The way breakfast happens.

The quality of sleep.

The relationship with the landscape.

The absence of unnecessary instructions.

The fact that somebody has thought carefully about where you will sit at sunset.

The confidence to leave something beautifully simple.

These decisions may appear small individually.

Together, they create character.

And character is difficult to reproduce because it comes from a particular combination of people, place, intention and choices.

That is why I think some stays remain with us while others, despite being objectively beautiful, slowly disappear from memory. We remember how somewhere made sense.

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This is where perceived value begins to change

There is a tendency to think about value in hospitality as a calculation. What did I get for what I paid? But perceived value is more complex than the number of things provided.

A guest can stay somewhere relatively simple and feel they received extraordinary value. They can also stay somewhere expensive and beautifully appointed and leave wondering why it cost so much.

The difference often sits in meaning.

Did the experience feel considered?

Did it feel relevant?

Did it deliver something the guest cared about?

Did the details connect?

Did the reality live up to the promise?

Did it feel like somewhere they could have experienced only there?

When those things begin to align, the physical components of the stay start carrying more value because they belong to something larger.

And commercially, that matters. Because a property with a clear reason to be chosen has a stronger foundation for price confidence, recommendation, memory, repeat demand and direct relationships with guests.

Not because it has added more. But because it has become more itself.

This is also why I am careful about the visual language surrounding slow living. It is easy for slow hospitality to become associated with a particular aesthetic. Natural materials. Earthy colours. Rural landscapes. Linen. Handmade objects. A certain kind of beautiful imperfection.

I love many of those things. But they aren't Slow Living Hospitality™…

A city hotel can create it. A contemporary coastal villa can create it. A tiny guesthouse can create it. A beautifully restored historic property can create it.

Because the idea isn't about how a stay looks. It is about how deliberately the experience has been shaped around the people it is for, the place it belongs to and the feeling it wants to create. The aesthetic should follow the idea. Not become the idea.

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The opportunity is not to look more different. It is to become more distinct.

Hospitality doesn't need more things designed simply to stop the scroll. It needs places with clearer reasons to exist. Places that know who they are for. Places that understand what those people are seeking. Places where the design, experience, language and setting reinforce one another rather than competing for attention. Places where the photographs don't simply show what is there, but begin to communicate what being there might feel like.

And places where that clarity makes value easier to see…

Because in a world filled with beautiful options, the question is no longer simply whether a guest likes what they see. It is whether, among everything they could choose, they can see a reason to choose you.

That is the difference I believe is worth designing for.

Elke Bretz
Founder, azulomo

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