The AI Rule Every Hospitality Marketer Needs to Know Now
Why AI-generated content puts hotel guest trust at risk
I use AI myself, so this isn't someone shouting at AI to get off my lawn. But there's a point where the tool crosses the line from helping your marketing to making the content less creative and harder to believe.
When the content started to look the same
For me it was the moment we could tell photos were synthetically generated. Copy started to sound alike. Images were technically beautiful but strangely sterile, and every feed had the same polished tone and the same dramatic language.
That sits on top of a problem the industry already had. Luxury and lifestyle hotels have become risk-averse, so their feeds look and sound alike, often filled with the same airbrushed photos from the website. Those photos are fine on a website, but guests come to social media for something authentic.
Guests already check what you show them
When a guest lands on your website, they know the pictures are edited, and they accept that. It's the reason they go to TripAdvisor, Google and Yelp. They want to see what the room will look like when they show up, and traveler photos do that job.
So hotels were already fighting an uphill battle on trust. Using AI to generate the lobby or the gym makes that battle harder, and I don't see why anyone would choose to do it.
Where I draw the line with AI
If AI can get me somewhere faster, I'll take that. It shouldn't decide where we're going. I'll happily use it for research, organization, brainstorming, analysis and transcription. The original observation, the opinion, the taste, the story and the final judgment still need to come from a person.
A quick example. If I have an idea and use AI to sharpen it, that's the tool doing what it's meant to do. If we post a picture, ask AI for 10 Instagram captions, pick number four and publish it, the tool has become the creative. You've handed your brand's voice and personality to the same machine everyone else has access to.
AI should be the assistant. The author has to be a person, because if everyone uses the same prompts and the same models, all the content starts to look the same.
Hotels sell something real
Hospitality sells a real place and a real experience. We ask people to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars based on what we show them. If the pool isn't that blue, the room doesn't have that view, the rooftop isn't that lively or the people enjoying the property don't exist, you've created a gap between expectation and reality.
We've always had to manage that gap. We used to joke about the wide-angle photo that makes a 220 square foot room look like Versailles, and AI takes that problem to another level. I'd rather see an imperfect, real shot of the bartender making a drink than a flawless synthetic image of an experience that never happened.
Real beats perfect when perfect isn't real.
What Meta's AI label changes
Meta now applies an AI info label to AI-generated content. Before, a brand could use AI content and most people wouldn't know. Now the platform tells them.
The label doesn't mean the content is bad. But picture a hotel that sells itself as authentic, locally rooted and experiential, with a note under its best image telling the audience AI was involved. You've put a question in their mind about what exactly they're looking at. Once someone has to investigate whether your marketing is real, you've weakened the emotional connection you were trying to build.
Skepticism is becoming the default. When people scroll past something that looks unbelievable, the first thing they ask is whether it's real.
Imperfection is becoming proof
If everyone else gets more synthetic, real people, real rooms and real stories stand out, and real personality becomes more valuable. Imperfection may become evidence that humans are behind the marketing, and hotels should lean into that.
One of our properties in New York City posted a reel with the sounds of the city behind it. We filmed the property, the neighborhood and the walk up to the building, which is what a guest sees as they arrive. We added no music. We didn't hide the construction sounds or the crane down the street.
The property was hesitant at first. The reel got over 2,000 views within an hour, on a fairly small hotel account.
It worked because it was authentic. When you come out of the subway and walk to that hotel, that's what it looks and sounds like. People have seen New York in movies and TV shows for most of their lives, and the energy and sounds of the city are what they're looking for. They'll hear taxis and horns, and near Central Park they'll hear the clip-clop of the carriage horses. Nobody needs a Taylor Swift song playing over that.
Doubt spreads to everything
One of my biggest concerns is that synthetic content makes guests question everything else about a hotel. A guest sees one AI-generated post and starts wondering whether last week's room photo was real, and whether the reviews are real. Once that doubt is in, you risk them not trusting anything you post.
Big cities are competitive. There's no shortage of hotels, Airbnbs and vacation rentals where people can spend their time and money, so don't make it harder on yourself. When someone starts questioning the credibility of the brand, you have a much bigger problem than one post underperforming.
Hospitality is a trust transaction, because guests usually buy the product before they get to experience it. Don't give them a reason to question the evidence you're using to sell it.
We go through all of this in the full episode. Watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Calvin and the Revpar Media team build hotel marketing that drives bookings, from social media management to influencer campaigns.
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Calvin Tilokee Here's the irony of AI marketing. The easier it becomes to create perfect content, the more valuable real content becomes. Consumers are already questioning whether the photos, videos, and even reviews they see online are authentic. So what happens when your hotel starts feeding into that skepticism? AI is an incredible tool, but when the tool becomes the storyteller, I think brands have a problem. Today, we're talking about why AI sucks when it replaces the human. Let's get into it So to start, I wanna talk about when we first realized that generative AI had crossed the line from being a useful marketing tool to making the content itself less interesting, less creative, and less believable. And for me, it was when we could tell that these photos were synthetically generated.
Copy started sounding the same. Images were technically beautiful, but somehow strangely sterile. Everyone suddenly had the same polished tone, the same dramatic language, the same concepts in all of their feeds. And this is part of a larger issue we have in the industry in general, especially in the luxury and lifestyle space. We've become increasingly risk-averse, which has led to all the hotels looking and sounding the same as far as their marketing feeds. Uh, the same photos from the website that we know are photoshopped and airbrushed and, and edited, which is totally fine on your website, but guests come to these sites, they come to social media for authenticity.
Think about how you use social media. Think about when you're scrolling your feed, and you can obviously tell that a picture is photoshopped or, or AI-generated. How do you feel? Does that make you want to learn more about the hotel or, or whatever property you're looking at or whatever product you're looking at? It doesn't even need to just be hospitality. The issue we have is we don't do enough thinking of what the experience is gonna be for the end user. When someone sees your piece of content, what is that gonna make them feel? And we already have an issue with being authentic in our marketing in the hospitality industry across social media in particular, where we're selling a story.
However That story still needs to be based in reality somewhere. I've used this analogy many times. When a guest approaches your, your website, when they go on your website, they know that that picture is airbrushed, it's Photoshopped, it's edited, and that's totally fine. But the reason they look at TripAdvisor, Google, Yelp, these websites that have become such a huge part of the success of a hotel, it's because they want to see something authentic. It's because they know those pictures are not the real... They know those pictures is not really what the room is gonna look like when they show up, not necessarily, unless you show it to them, or unless they go find traveler photos on TripAdvisor. So we've already had this problem. Now we're exacerbating that by bringing AI into the picture.
We're gonna AI generate what our lobby looks like or the gym looks like. Why would we willingly do that when we're already fighting an uphill battle that the guests don't trust what we're putting out there? I wanna make it clear, I use AI myself, so this is not somebody screaming at AI to get off my lawn. However, it's a tool that should be used to elevate your marketing efforts. It's, it's a tool that should make your job easier, but not something to rely on for how you wanna present your property. If everyone is using the same prompts and models, then all the content starts looking the same. So how do you stand out in that world?
Hey, let me ask you something. If you're running a hotel and you know social media matters, but you just don't have the time to figure it out, you're not alone. That's exactly why I built Revpar Media. We work with hotels to create marketing strategies that actually drive bookings, not just likes. From social media management to influencer campaigns to full creative production, we've been in the room, we've managed the revenue, and we know what moves the needle. If that's something you're looking to solve right now, scan the QR code on screen or click the link in the show notes. Now, back to today's conversation. So again, I use AI myself, so this is not an anti-AI podcast or an anti-AI argument. Uh, but where I draw the line is when the tool becomes the creative.
So my line is pretty simple. If AI can get me somewhere faster, I'm gonna take that. However, it shouldn't decide where we're going I will happily use it for research, organization, brainstorming, analysis, transcription. However, the original observation, the opinion, the taste, the story, and the final judgment should still come from a person. If you don't think that your guests and your audience can pick up on that when they read it, when they see it, we got news for you. People are not that stupid. They can see through these things. We are now conditioned. We live in a world where we have to question every piece of content that we see whether this is real or not.
AI is getting really good at masking the truth, but we don't want ... That's not the feeling you want your guests to have, you want your audience to have when they're perceiving your hotel on social media. You want them to be able to feel that they can trust what they're seeing. And the opportunity now is that because so many hotels are relying on AI-generated content, your organic real content is gonna stand out even more. So for example, using AI as a tool. If I have an idea and I use AI to sharpen it, that's great. That's using the tool for what it's intended for. But if we're saying we're posting a picture and asking AI to give us 10 Instagram captions that we can use, we select number four and then post it, that's allowing the tool to become the creative and tell the story for us, which is going to be easily seen through by your audience.
So what that's really doing is that's outsourcing your brand's voice and personality to the same machine everyone else has access to. AI should be the assistant, not the author. So ultimately, the way we wanna look at this is hospitality is selling a real place and a real experience. What happens when a hotel now starts using synthetic imagery, AI-generated video, or generic machine-written copy to represent something that a guest is supposed to experience in real life? And this, for me, is a really dangerous road for hospitality to go down because our relationship with synthetic content is, is gonna be tough because we're selling a reality. We're not selling a hypothetical concept. So what we're doing in hospitality is we're asking someone to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars based on what we show them, right?
So if your pool is really not that blue, the room doesn't really actually have that view, or your rooftop isn't that lively, or the people enjoying the property don't even exist, you create a gap between your expectation and reality. And in hospitality, we've always had to manage that gap We used to joke about the wide angle photo that makes a two hundred and twenty square foot room look like Versailles, and AI can take that problem to another level. I would rather see imperfect real imagery of the bartender making a drink than a flawless synthetic image of an experience that actually never happened. Real beats perfect when perfect is not real. Recently, Meta has now applying an AI generated info tag to all AI generated content. So what changes when AI use is no longer just a production decision behind the scenes, but something the audience may be told about while consuming the content?
So what that's going to do is this is going to change the psychology. Previously, brands could use AI generated content, most consumers would not know about it. Now the platform is going to tell you this is AI generated. So I don't think that the labeling automatically means that the content is bad. However, imagine you're a hotel selling a guest on an experience that you're authentic, locally rooted, and experiential, and underneath your hotel's beautiful image, the platform essentially tells the audience that AI was involved. Now you've introduced a question in their mind, what exactly am I looking at?
Once someone has to investigate whether or not your marketing is real, you've weakened the emotional connection that you were trying to create. So we're now entering a period where skepticism is becoming the default, and what does that require from us? So what that means for us now is when people are going through content and going through their feeds and they see something that looks unbelievable, the initial reaction isn't, "Wow, that's amazing." The initial question is, is this real? And that's a big change and something that we need to be mindful of. If everyone else is becoming more synthetic, then real people, real stories, real properties, real rooms starts to stand out in a positive way, and real personality becomes more valuable. We're entering a strange world now where imperfection may actually become evidence of authenticity, and we shouldn't fight that.
They should lean into the things that prove that there are real humans and real experiences behind the marketing. For example, one of our properties in New York City recently, we posted a reel which had the sounds of New York City behind it. We didn't add any music. We took video of the property, the local area, the neighborhood, and approaching the building, what a guest would see when they, they're approaching the hotel. And There was some initial hesitation and some initial reluctance from the property because there wasn't this facade. We didn't put any music. We didn't hide the fact that there was construction sounds or a, a crane down the street from the building. But you know what? It did fantastically well on social media.
We got over 2,000 views within an hour, and this is a fairly small hotel account as well. The reason is because it's authentic. When you get out of that subway, uh, in, in New York City and you're approaching the hotel, this is what it's gonna look and sound like. And you know what? Guests wanna know that. Guests want to know what that authentic feel looks like. You have to understand, A, what you're selling, but also where these guests are coming from. This is New York City. This, this is a place people have seen in movies, TV shows for most of their lives. That energy of the city and those sounds are what they're looking for, so give it to them.
We don't need to cover that up. We don't need to make it seem like there's going to be Taylor Swift songs playing when they're walking up to your hotel. They're gonna hear the city. They're gonna hear taxi cabs, you know, people honking the horn, and they're gonna hear, if they're near Central Park, they're gonna hear the clip-clop of those horses and, and the carriages. But this is part of the experience. This is part of the New York City experience, and this is part of what makes the destination special and your place within that destination attractive. And one of my biggest concerns with the rise of AI and, and synthetically generated content is that it introduces questioning of everything that goes on with the hotel.
So imagine you're a guest and you're seeing some AI-generated content on the social media platform. You now begin to question, "Well, that post that I saw last week of, of the room, was that real? Uh, are their reviews real?" And this, that's where I think is a really dangerous road for us to go down because once you introduce any sort of uncertainty into your marketing and any question about the authenticity of what the hotel is presenting out there to the world and presenting to prospective guests, you now run the risk of them not trusting anything that you're posting or anything about the hotel, the reviews, the rooms.
You're really going down a slippery slope of being able to lose, just kinda lose their attention and, and lose the audience forever. Um, this is a very competitive landscape, especially in the larger cities with, with large markets and plenty of competition. There is no shortage of, of hotels and other, other venues that, whether they be Airbnb, vacation rentals, uh, things like that, where people can spend their time and money. So why make that harder on yourself? Why, why put things out there that will introduce questions in the audience's mind? So once somebody starts questioning the credibility of the brand itself, you have a much larger problem than whether or not one piece of content did well. Hospitality is fundamentally a trust transaction because you're frequently buying the product before you have a chance to experience it.
So don't give people a reason to question the evidence you're using to sell it.
