Hospitality Is Moving Pre-Arrival
Decision happens before the stay.
Welcome to Issue No. 002 of Sojourn. An independent publication packed with short, opinionated interpretation for those shaping the future of travel & hospitality.
Interpretation. The most important part of hospitality now happens before anyone arrives. Not at check-in. Not in the room. Not even on the website. It happens earlier, and it happens in the mind. In the moment someone forms an expectation of how a place will make them feel.
From search to recognition. People no longer discover hotels. They recognize them. Taste, identity, and belonging do the filtering first. By the time someone searches, the emotional decision has already been made. The search is just confirmation.
Signals, not channels. Distribution used to mean presence everywhere. Now it means resonance somewhere. Aesthetic. Language. Heritage. Values. Who else is already there. These signals don’t amplify marketing. They replace the need for it by doing the decision-making work upstream.
Hard reality. Most hospitality brands still treat this layer as surface. They build the product. Then they try to explain it. But explanation is too late. Interpretation already happened.
Category change. Positioning is no longer a wrapper around the experience. It is the first experience. Before the stay. Before the booking. Before price is compared.
Role shift. Hotels are no longer destinations. They are identity signals. People don’t go to them to see what they’re like. They go because they already know.
Bottom line. The experience layer of hospitality is moving upstream. The next advantage won’t be better check-in. It will be being chosen before arrival.
Hospitality’s next advantage won’t be on-site. It will be decided before anyone shows up.
Curious to hear this from your side of the table: where, in your business or brand, is the real decision being made before anyone ever ‘arrives’?