The hospitality industry has spent the past decade in acquisition and expansion mode. This growth in both scale and geography has resulted in more hotel brands, refined segmentations and intricate portfolios designed to capture every type of traveller. In theory, it’s a rational response to growth. Each new nameplate fills a strategic gap that helps hotel brand owners invest, operators scale and guests choose.
However, with this growth and the continued shift to the asset-light model has come an inevitable level of complexity. The hotel major groups have built bewildering portfolios comprised of a hybrid mix of price tiering and lifestyle. Accor alone has over 50 badges.
But there is a growing disconnect at the heart of this model. The gap between how companies structure themselves and how people choose where to stay, is widening.
A traveller planning a trip today is more likely to start with a ‘moment’ than with a brand. It could be a weekend away, a last-minute business trip, or a celebration. They’ll move fluidly through the search engines, OTAs, AI and social feeds, filtering by what feels relevant in that specific moment. Choice is no longer guided by a top-down structure. It is assembled from the bottom up, shaped by context, behaviour and need.
During that journey, the carefully constructed hierarchy of a hospitality group becomes almost invisible.
What matters instead is how well a property answers the question the consumer is actually asking:
“Is this right for me, right now?”
Untangling this portfolio complexity is a massive task – both strategically and commercially. The real unlock here is truly getting under the skin of the ever-evolving, increasingly complex, often brand agnostic consumer. Understanding and clearly articulating their hopes and dreams, putting them at the centre, will deliver better aligned consumer experiences. And with that, greater brand affinity.
I know what you’re thinking – there is nothing new here – other sectors have already moved on. FMCG businesses, faced with similar complexity, have shifted from organising portfolios around products to organising them around people and their need states. Coca-Cola thinks in terms of occasions: energy in the morning, refreshment in the afternoon, indulgence in the evening. Unilever has reframed around the role brands play in consumers’ lives, and crucially, why. This deeper level of consumer understanding reveals that the same person makes different choices depending on the moment, and brands win by showing up appropriately in each of those moments.
Understanding consumer motivations and behaviours is essential to assembling experiences based on need, context and mood. And a recent McKinsey study should make us re-evaluate our assumptions about consumer tiers – luxury hotels aren’t necessarily the preserve of the super wealthy.
And as hotel brands seek to diversify into other experiential touchpoints such as luxury yachts and private members clubs to build their brand awareness and equity across lifestyle ecosystems, so understanding the consumer and their journey becomes critical. A rich and evocative set of consumer portraits strategically aligned to a clear offer and brand positioning will enable credible and authentic diversification and brand stretch.
At the very top end of the market, groups like Dorchester Collection, Cheval Blanc and Oetker Collection have taken a more simplified consumer first approach. Rather than expanding portfolios to cover every segment, they have remained deliberately focused – small collections of properties, each highly individual, but bound by a clear and deeply understood idea of what their guest is looking for. Cheval Blanc, for example, interprets luxury through the lens of LVMH (its owner) with craft, culture and curated experience that extends beyond the hotel. They have done this in a credible and effortless manner.
This is the critical difference. These collections start with the consumer and build experiences that reflect their behaviour. Because the nature of what guests value has changed. Hotels are no longer judged solely as places to stay, but as experiences to be had – social hubs, cultural touchpoints, extensions of a lifestyle. These are not attributes that sit neatly within traditional brand tiers. They are fluid, contextual and highly personal.
Without that understanding, brand strategy risks becoming an inward-looking exercise, creating complexity that serves the organisation more than the customer. This doesn’t mean devaluing the role of brands. It means re-rooting them in the reality of how people choose.
Because ultimately, consumers are not navigating hospitality groups. They are navigating their own lives and assembling trips from a mix of needs, desires and constraints. The brands that succeed will be those that understand that journey deeply enough to show up in the right way, at the right time.
Written by Jim Burton
