Defining your hotel’s North Star

If you walked into an independent hotel with a solid product but flat demand, what's the first non-obvious place you'd look for missed opportunity—and why?

First—a solid product is not nothing. Flat demand rarely means a bad hotel. More often, people just don't know it exists yet, and that can happen for reasons that have nothing to do with quality.

When we come in post-opening, it's usually one of two things. The property is too close to the brand—what they're putting online isn't aligned with the soul and story of the place, so they're not resonating with the right guest. Or it’s distribution. Playing the OTA game in the age of AI is no joke. You will get penalized if your rate distribution is off or you're not using the right keywords and targeting tools to reach the guest who's actually looking for you. Both are solvable, and both are good reasons to bring in fractional or agency-level support to build a real strategy.

Where do independents most often undermine their own brand—not in marketing, but in day-to-day decisions?

Owners and managers frequently get in the way of building the advocate army they actually need—the employees, partners and regulars who share genuine love for the property with others. Stepping back, even when the team does things differently than ownership would, is part of the job. Proper training and the right tools require a tapered time and support investment over months to actually take hold.

The other pattern I see constantly is an obsessive focus on 100% occupancy at the expense of optimizing the revenue streams that actually make a business profitable. Events programming, retail, F&B sales, experiential upsells—a s'mores package, a stay-late offer, a guided neighborhood walk—these aren't extras. They're the margin. The properties that figure that out early are the ones that stay viable long-term. 

Many hotels talk about "sense of place," but few operationalize it. What does that actually look like when it's done well—and what does it never look like?

Sense of place is the North Star guiding how a space makes a guest feel. You can’t say it or read it. At ODE, our best work happens when we’re engaged early enough to craft that story as a waypoint for the entire project. It runs through the brand narrative, the architectural vision, the OS&E, the uniforms, and the tactile details a guest touches and remembers. That feeling equals revenue.

We continuously see why early alignment matters so much. The perfect example is our partnership with The Beck Group, we mutually know how powerful it is when brand strategy and the design and construction team are working from the same North Star from day one. It’s the thin thread that ties the concept to a profitable end result that will resonate for decades and hold greater value for the owners long term.

When done well, “sense of place” anchors team culture and clarifies which marketing channels and voices belong to the brand. It becomes the decision-making filter that guides everything.

I can tell you this: it’s not a mood board. It’s never decorative. It’s not a local map in a frame or a cocktail menu that says “locally inspired” with no real story behind it. You have to earn a sense of place at every layer, or guests will feel the gap.

Let's talk service design and emotional payoff. What's a moment in the guest journey where independents have the most power to surprise, and the least excuse not to?

Hospitality is genuinely endless when you approach it that way. One of the highest-leverage moments is pre-arrival—taking the time to build real guest profiles that the entire team can access and act on. Knowing a guest loves a particular drink, or that they're traveling with young kids, allows you to create moments of recognition before they even check in. That Coke waiting at the desk. The little detail in the room that shows someone paid attention.

For this reason, Mews is a PMS we actively recommend. Their guest profile functionality genuinely changes the way operators can anticipate needs, and anticipation is what separates a good stay from a memorable one.

After two decades working with service-based businesses, what's a belief about hotel branding you've completely changed your mind about—and how should independents rethink it now?

From a visual brand perspective: not all brands are created equal, and the best visual brand is the one that looks like you, not like what's trending. There are real cycles in the visual branding world, and if you follow them, you risk blending in.

It is absolutely worth the investment to develop a brand story—visually and in writing—that resonates deeply with your purpose, your property's history and your specific ethos of care. That brand becomes a through-line for every decision that follows. Without it, you're decorating. With it, you're building something that lasts.

Anything else you'd like to share?

We've talked a lot about story and operations, but I'd be doing a disservice if I didn't say this plainly: hospitality is hard. It is a cyclical, humbling, financially demanding industry and the operators who survive the long game are the ones who go in clear-eyed about that.

Travel trends shift. Demand has highs and lows that can feel personal but are often just the nature of the business. The properties that weather those waves well aren't necessarily the most beautiful or the most creative—they're the ones who prepared for them. A proper P&L that reflects reality, a PIP plan that keeps the asset competitive and a CapEx fund that doesn't catch you off guard—these aren't glamorous conversations, but they are the ones that keep the doors open.

The dream is worth building. Just build the infrastructure around it, too.