Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted is important.. ——William Bruce Cameron
This issue is filled with examples of how a great hotel location can work against you, a bad photographer who might make the best publicity campaign, and a philosopher who invented Instagram in the 17th century.
special thanks Alpik Sponsor this newsletter:
New channels for vacation exploration are growing rapidly, but most travel brands are yet to get on board. Cottages.com, the UK's leading provider of holiday homes and luxury properties, and Alpik Build an AI app featuring ChatGPT and other assistants: real-time inventory, real pricing, direct bookings. Read how they did it And what an AI distribution will look like for you.
Pascal (French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher) wrote this 350 years before Instagram.
“We usually just want to know something so we can talk about it; we would never travel by sea if traveling by sea meant never talking about it, and purely for the joy of seeing things we could never describe to others.” ——Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662)
Their targets are locals. Hotels across the U.S. are opening private members clubs in underutilized conference rooms, rooftop pools and ballrooms. Clayton in Denver charges $1,900 to $3,200 per year. New York-based Seven24 Collective has more than 600 members, with membership fees exceeding $2,150. Auric Room in Montana charges $6,500 per year and has a 95% renewal rate.
Members clubs can generate recurring revenue, build local community, and provide guests with a place that's different from your average hotel bar. There's also a financing angle, as developers who once sold condominiums to finance hotel construction now also sell memberships. The obvious risk is that if the club gets too big, paying hotel guests may start to feel like second-class citizens. Read + The Wall Street Journal (no paywall)
“The enjoyment of your trip is inversely proportional to the size of your luggage.” — Kevin Kelly
Around 52% of passengers now prefer to take carry-on luggage only, while carry-on spinners account for around 60% of luggage purchases. Airlines themselves have created this shift. US airlines collected $7.27B in baggage fees in 2024, while globally, the world's largest airlines generated $33.3B in 2023 (CarTrawler/IdeaWorksCompany).
The behavior that airlines incentivized is now a difficult problem in operations. Boarding times have roughly doubled since the 1970s, in part because overhead bins cannot accommodate large amounts of luggage. Airlines have responded by enforcing size rules more strictly and increasing gate inspection fees.
A study by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts LucerneThe survey conducted in 14 Swiss hotels measured a variety of factors (functionality, personality, emotion, location and employee behavior) to understand the drivers of influence and recommendations.
The hotel scored 64% for functionality, 58% for personality and 51% for emotion. Getting it right is easier than getting emotionally involved.
Research has found a negative correlation between location and influence scores. Hotels with fewer prime locations perform better than others in terms of impact on guests. The possible explanation is that a great location makes a hotel lazy. Hotels without this advantage must win over guests through experience.
As the study states, design impact encompasses differentiation, coherence and consistency throughout the stay. As the influence of the design increases, so does the recommendation rate. Negative reviews about look and feel on Booking.com reduced the rating by an average of 1.11 points, lower than any other factor tested.
On the employee side, autonomy is directly related to the quality of the guest experience. Guests feel this when staff can act on their behalf without permission.
(Thanks to Bashar Wali for this report.)
Apparently, Iceland doesn't need help looking pretty.
Icelandair is looking for hire a bad photographer; People who have no photography skills, poor framing, and unfamiliar composition. Selected candidates will receive a 10-day trip to Iceland in June 2026, with travel expenses covered, plus $50,000 for photography, content and participation costs. For all you bad photographers out there, the application deadline is April 30th.
This follows a series of ingenious campaigns launched by the Icelandic tourism ecosystem, including iceland universe A parody of Zuckerberg’s virtual universe propaganda, Conspiracy movie claims that Iceland was generated by artificial intelligence, and a letter Explain to travelers how to enjoy real, unreal experiences.
Most destinations are trying. Iceland continues to prove they don’t have to.
William Mayer Put on the chart what most founders learn the hard way.
In travel startups, many early conversations are white lies.
One large partner said they needed to discuss it internally. A hotel chain says they like what you're building. “The timing is not right, but keep us posted,” one investor said. Each one feels like a move forward, but most just reduces social friction.
The founder who finally developed tolerance for unkind truths. They ask harder questions, push for clear commitments, and learn that passion without commitment often doesn't work. In practice, anything without a clear next step is a no go.
Posts by April Dunford It’s a powerful guide that tackles an issue that many B2B teams still don’t handle well: positioning, which is essentially about how a product should be, understood by whom, and for what.
She points out that most companies are wrong about who they are competing with. Deep down, everyone has a different answer. Marketing looks at the loudest competitors, product looks at future competitors, sales looks at the last deal they lost, and founders often look at outdated images. But the only thing that matters is the buyer’s perspective. What would they do if you didn't exist? Often, the answer is the status quo. Spreadsheets, emails, manual workflows, or nothing. If you ignore this, your positioning will end up fighting the wrong battle.
She also pointed out that function is not the same as value, and value is not the same as handling objections. Many products try to do it all at once, but end up conveying a message that is technically correct but difficult for customers to care about.
Some thoughts I shared in an article Recent interviews with Shiji Group
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For years I have thought the winner would be the one with the best technology. Technology is important, but understanding your customers is even more important. Data tells you what's happening. Customers tell you why.
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Personalization isn't about adding options, it's about removing irrelevant options. Less cognitive load, faster decision-making, and higher conversion rates.
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The industry is obsessed with frictionless experiences, but the right friction builds trust. Calling back at the right moment, or preventing a wrong confirmation step, creates more confidence than a perfectly smooth process.
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For twenty years, whoever owns the interface owns the customers. Artificial intelligence is changing that. Discovery, comparison and trading no longer need to happen in the same place. The next battle is at the decision-making level.
“If the company is not doing well, you have to bring positivity and make people believe it is possible. If the company is going well, you want to keep them grounded. Emotions that are contrary to what others in the organization are feeling are exhausting.” — Bill Gurley (about my first million podcast [27:32])
Propellic tracked sessions, search intent and ad performance for more than 60 travel brands to map the damage. Conversion rates declined in the Mediterranean region. Meanwhile, Southeast Asia is showing peak performance as ad spend continues to grow.
their reports, Impact of Middle East Conflict on Tourism Marketing in 2026examines why session data for frozen zone destinations is misleading, which destination clusters are still growing amid the crisis, and how to build retargeting audiences now to convert with maximum ROAS when confidence returns.
Free live briefing with Propellic's Brennen Bliss and John Matson on April 23 (9:30 AM CT). (Register here).
“Just tried this.'The degree of danger is useful. The way it reframes the positioning problem is exactly what you want when you can't sleep at 11pm because of strategic issues” —Jose Luis Vilar, Co-Founder Carabello
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Mauricio Prieto
