A quiet shift is happening in hospitality.
General managers and brand teams are seeing a noticeable increase in direct emails, social messages, and phone calls from guests claiming “special occasions” or asking for personal consideration. Many of these messages feel formulaic. Some are clearly copied and pasted. Others stretch credibility.
The instinctive reaction is understandable: ignore them, standardize the response, or clamp down with policy. That would be a mistake.
What looks like noise is actually a signal of unmet demand for human recognition inside highly optimized systems.
This Isn’t About Free Stuff
Travelers are not suddenly becoming more entitled. They are becoming more intentional.
When guests take the time to hunt down management contact information, they are signaling something important: they are trying to escape commoditization. They are looking for assurance that their stay will be treated as an experience, not a transaction.
Online Travel Agencies optimized for frictionless efficiency.
Large brands optimized for consistency and risk control.Neither optimized for listenership.
So guests are routing around the system, searching for a human with perceived authority. Not because they expect exceptions—but because they want to know the brand is real.
These Messages Are High-Intent Signals
From a strategic perspective, these inquiries represent:
- Guests willing to invest effort before arrival
- Guests who have emotionally framed their stay as meaningful
- Guests open to engagement beyond price alone
In other words, this is unstructured first-party intent data—offered voluntarily.
Most organizations treat it as an operational nuisance. The smarter move is to treat it as a trust surface.
The False Binary Brands Get Wrong
Many hospitality leaders believe they face an impossible choice:
- Grant personal exceptions, which don’t scale and create internal friction
- Enforce rigid policy, which erodes goodwill and loyalty
There is a third path.
It doesn’t involve personal involvement from senior leaders, and it doesn’t rely on ad-hoc generosity.
It involves structured listenership.
What Structured Listenership Looks Like
Structured listenership means designing a system that does three things consistently:
-
Acknowledges intent
The guest feels heard—not indulged, but respected. -
Clarifies boundaries
The brand remains fair, consistent, and scalable. -
Offers designed choices
Guests are invited into curated experience paths rather than informal favors.
This transforms “Can you do something special for us?” into
“Here’s how we help guests celebrate moments that matter.”
A Small-Scale Example With Large-Scale Implications
At a small independent motel I co-own, we made a deliberate decision years ago to make ownership visible.
There’s a simple “contact the owner” page on the website. A business card with a direct number. Even a voicemail answered in my own voice.
What matters is this: I rarely handle the requests myself.
Most inquiries are routed through trained agents or virtual assistants who respond using clearly defined options—standard discounts, modest amenities, or experience-based upgrades when appropriate.
The system does the work. The presence does the trust-building.
The outcome has been counterintuitive. Guests don’t become frustrated when they don’t hear from me personally. They become more loyal. Many return repeatedly.
Once, while traveling more than a hundred miles from the property, a stranger struck up a conversation with me in a coffee shop as though we were old friends. It quickly became clear they assumed I knew them from the motel. They were a repeat guest.
I didn’t correct them. I stayed present and appreciative.
That interaction didn’t happen because I remembered them.
It happened because they felt remembered by the system.
The Strategic Opportunity for Larger Brands
Large hospitality brands do not need personal involvement from general managers or executives to achieve this effect.
They need:
- Clear acknowledgment language
- Transparent experience pathways
- Public signaling that listening is real—even when the answer is no
Trust is not built by personalization alone.
It is built by making listening legible.
Guests don’t need exceptions. They need to understand how the brand hears them, how decisions are made, and where meaningful options exist.
The Brands That Win Next
In a commoditized market, differentiation will not come from faster check-in or marginally better loyalty points.
It will come from something more fundamental:
the ability to receive intent without breaking trust or scale.Inbox Zero is over.
The brands that learn to design for listenership will inherit loyalty that no platform can manufacture.
