The hotel industry is sitting on a goldmine but leaves the majority of it untouched. Hotels are still selling rooms as if it is 1999, even though every other major consumer industry has figured how to monetize their attention, personalize their experiences and capture wallet shares across the entire customer lifecycle.
Hotels are still the most popular choice for travelers, despite their physical presence in almost every market. They also have a 24/7 service infrastructure and interact with one of the world’s highest intent customer profiles.Hotels remain the most popular choice for travelers. Most commercially unleveraged sector on the planet. The worst part of all? It’s largely an attitude problem.
Revenue without Leverage
We in hospitality obsess about RevPAR, (revenue per room available, but you knew that already) as a holy grail measurement. This metric was designed for a time when hotel commerce ended at the reservation. Most valuable companies do not measure revenue per item. They maximize. revenue per user, per transaction, per interaction. Since decades, airlines have known about this. Amazon is a company that lives and dies on it.
Hoteliers, on the other hand, work in isolated silos. The PMS doesn’t speak to the booking engine. The spa is unaware of the guest’s loyalty level. The email marketing tool cannot transact natively. The commercial opportunity is also fractured.
Meanwhile, the OTAs–despite not owning a single property–have captured the demand layer by building real commercial infrastructure: merchandising, bundling, payments, segmentation, loyalty, and lifecycle monetization. The hotels gave up this opportunity for the sake of short-term visibility, and long-term dependence.
It’s not the tech that’s the problem. It’s The Funnel.
Few hotels have a commerce-stack, while all hotels have tech stacks. Most hotel websites convert around 1%. They are not built to convert. Not because they have poor marketing. They’re designed to educate. To act as digital brochures. The booking engine has been treated as a widget and not the transaction core.
Question: What happens once a guest has booked a room in your hotel? In the majority of cases, nothing. No personalized upsell. No experiential cross-sell. No itinerary. No automated reengagement loop. There is no reason to encourage them to book directly again. The funnel of commerce begins and ends with the reservation. We leave money on the nightstand.
Hotels are platforms, not products.
Platforms are the most valuable companies on earth. They can capture demand, orchestrate the transaction, personalize customer journeys and keep them within an ecosystem.
Hotels already have the real-world infrastructure for this: restaurants and bars, spas and gyms, retail stores, events, concierge services, etc. However, they have lacked digital rails for transforming that infrastructure into an connected guest experience.
Start thinking about revenue per guest (RevPG?). The total lifetime value is not just the revenue from minibars or in-room spending, but also includes every transaction and recommendation. The leverage comes from this shift away from static rooms and towards dynamic relationships.
The Leapfrog moment in Industry
It’s official: The leapfrog time is now.
Emerging is a new infrastructure, which is AI-native. This generation also puts the guest first and enables commerce. One that replaces middleware with intelligence. Every guest interaction can be turned into a revenue-generating opportunity. Hoteliers can take back control over their own demand. Technology alone will not save us. What we need to do is change our posture.
It is time to stop thinking as fixed asset operators and begin acting like orchestrators for fluid commerce eco-systems. The future of hospitality will be Guest lifetime value Not “heads on beds”
Conclusion: Reclaiming The Demand Layer
It’s been too long since the industry was commercially under-leveraged. It won’t remain that way. In the next decade, power will shift from intermediaries to innovators. The hotels that adapt to this change will be able to unlock new business opportunities, new ways of monetizing, and new forms for guest loyalty. Those that don’t embrace this shift will be increasingly commoditized.
It’s a simple question: Will you reinvent hospitality or will you settle for the way it has always been done?
It is time to build a commercial engine for hospitality that it has always deserved.
