Did Revenue Management kill hospitable in hospitality?

Let’s talk about the elephant in the lobby. It’s this:

Revenue Management made hospitality… kinda less nice.

Ouchy....strong words Fabi!!! Ok, i agree just maybe a little bit of clickbait in the title...BUT, I do have a point no? Remember when hospitality was about… people?

A smile. A welcome drink. A cheeky late check-out because "of course, Mr. Bartnick, we’ll take care of you." Even just because that person was nice or maybe you felt like it, OR because they pretend flirted with you and you fell for it ;-) (some of you know what I mean lol) Now?

“We can offer late check-out for €38.40… plus VAT.” Romance is dead. And it was killed by RevPAR.

Here’s how we got here:

1. The Weaponization of the Welcome A guest walks in. Instead of a warm “good to see you,” the front desk now plays pricing Tetris: → Did they book direct? → Did they buy breakfast? → Do we upsell them into a better room or charge them for early check-in?

It’s not hospitality. It’s a CRM-powered interrogation. Oh and only of course if booked direct, the rest....

2. Every Guest is Now a Transaction You’re not a guest. You’re a data point. You’re an average spend. You’re a conversion rate.

Hospitality used to be “make someone’s day.” Now it’s “optimize the wallet before check-out.” .... so the make someone's day comes with "BUT" or "IF". PS: This is not math homework

3. Flex Pricing Killed the Friendly Deal Used to be: “You’re staying 5 nights? I’ll throw in breakfast on the house.”

Now? “I’d love to, but the algorithm says no.”

And let’s not even talk about how we treat return guests unless they book direct, opt into the newsletter, follow us on TikTok, and sacrifice a goat to the meta search gods.

4. Personalization Became Predictive, Not Personal “Welcome back, Mr. Fabian. We saw you viewed a suite once. Would you like to buy it now?” Cool. Thanks for stalking my behavior.

You know what feels personal? Remembering how I like my coffee. Not reminding me I abandoned cart at 2am while doom-scrolling in bed.

5. We Trained the Team to Sell, Not Serve Don’t get me wrong: upselling is beautiful when it’s done right. But too many hotels trained their staff to close the deal, not open the relationship.

We replaced instinct with scripts. Empathy with “If you’d like to upgrade for €25, I can assist you now.”

But now the Real Talk:
Revenue Management isn’t the villain. But somewhere along the way, we forgot that revenue is a by-product of great experiences ... not a substitute for them.

We made things efficient. We made things optimized. But we also made them cold.

It’s time for the comeback. Bring back the warmth. Let the tech support the people, not the other way around. Use Revenue Management to enable generosity, not suppress it.

Let’s make “nice” profitable again.

Question for the Tribe: What moment made you think, “Wait… are we still in hospitality?” Reply, vent, share. I want to hear the heartbreak.

Love, Fabi