How is the industry’s shift toward experience-based booking reshaping hotel revenue strategy?
10 experts shared their view
Guests, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, are no longer booking the cheapest room or even the best view. They are choosing based on experiences: a wellness package, a chef-led dinner, a sustainable stay, or a curated local adventure that feels uniquely theirs.
For revenue leaders, this evolution changes the game. The traditional room-centric model is giving way to value-based packaging and personalized monetization, where emotional connection, purpose, and story define price elasticity more than comps or BAR grids ever could.
Winning hotels are already experimenting: dynamic bundling inside booking engines, AI-driven personalization that surfaces experiences in real time, and cross-departmental collaboration where marketing, F&B, and revenue teams design value together.
The challenge is not just setting the right price but pricing the right experience. When perceived value becomes the guest's starting point, not the hotel's ending one, the real question becomes: how do we measure and monetize experiences as effectively as we once did rooms?
The shift toward experience-based booking is absolutely transforming the game. AI can finally solve the paradox of choice. Hotels can now showcase everything they offer but in a way that's targeted and relevant. Don't sell me a romantic getaway when I'm traveling alone. Show me what fits my context and purpose of travel. That's real personalization.
But this shift exposes a deeper issue: we need a new language for experiences. As long as hotels manage their core asset (rooms) in static, generic categories, they'll never deliver true experience-based bookings. A "Deluxe Room" says nothing about emotion or purpose.
The future is Dynamic Inventory — where the same physical room can be presented differently depending on guest context, emotion, or bundled services. It could be Verana's favorite corner room for one traveler and the cozy retreat for another.
Dynamic Inventory turns hotels into true retailers. It allows performance to be measured by dynamic products, not categories. Pricing becomes individualized by travel context, and revenue is optimized per square metre.
It even changes operations. When you stop thinking in rigid categories and start matching dynamically, allocation becomes intelligent. What used to be a Tetris game turns into strategy: connecting the right room with the right guest at the right time.
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There is a massive industry gap here. Full stop.
Discussion about this capability in the industry is topical.
- Those in a position to enable it are few, if even thinking about it.
- Packages are a clumsy solution to the underlying problem of being able to successfully deliver rooms digitally.
- The other products for the most part are not on the digital shelf. Not from a real time pricing and inventory perspective.
- For some, they probably never will be.
Beyond this fundamental capability, the commercial engines, distribution environment and revenue optimization tools essentially support none of this capability. Also the operation.
From direct personal experience leading these enterprise transformations, if this is a reality you want to realise some very big decisions must be made. It requires stepping away from industry tropes and 'same olds' to an entirely different structure of tools and manpower. Fundamental change in business and enterprise architecture underlies this goal.
However, all the business reasons are there to take this valuable step.
Are you willing to have the red pill - blue pill moment? Or just continue on the worn path that delivers none of the capability or upside for your business.
Fortune favours the informed!
If the game has shifted...so must our KPIs. Today's revenue leaders must zoom out and focus on TRevPAR, capturing not just what happens in the room, but around it.
Whether you're luxury or budget, you can take advantage of experiential revenue, something that thanks to digitalization, every hotel can play (and not only ultra-luxury resorts). Whether it is a €15 local tapas crawl or a €500 wellness retreat, what matters is relevance and ease of booking.
Guests don't just want to sleep. They want to feel, taste, connect. If we're not surfacing those options at the moment of booking or during their stay...someone else is.
Then again, this means breaking silos: revenue, F&B, spa, marketing...everyone must co-create value. And critically, we need tools that track and optimize these touchpoints just like we do with ADR or occupancy. Because...why only apply revenue management to the space where there is a bed?
Millennials and Gen Z are inheriting a world where everything costs more. Housing, food, even free time come at a higher price. There's less money left for travel, so when they do travel, it really counts. They'll skip smaller trips to afford one that feels personal, purposeful, and worth sharing. They're careful with budgets but willing to spend on meaning.
For hotels, the product is no longer just a room. It's the intention behind the stay. Guests now choose experiences over amenities: a chef-led dinner, a sunrise hike, or a stay that reflects their values. But experience can't just be a marketing word. It needs to be designed, measured, and priced with the same discipline as rooms.
Revenue, marketing, and operations must work together to understand what truly drives conversion and loyalty. Connecting spend from spa to story and from restaurant to repeat booking reveals where value really lives.
The future of hotel revenue belongs to those who can measure and monetize emotion, designing experiences that make every story worth paying for.
The move toward experience-based booking is changing how hotels think about revenue. Guests - especially Millennials and Gen Z - aren't just picking rooms based on price or view anymore. They're choosing stays that offer something meaningful: wellness packages, chef-led dinners, or unique local adventures.
From my perspective, this shift means hotels need to rethink how they price and package their offerings. It's not just about selling rooms—it's about selling moments. With the right data, we can see which experiences matter most to guests and adjust in real time.
The key is collaboration. Marketing, revenue, and operations teams must work together to design and deliver experiences that feel personal and valuable. When we do that, we're not just setting prices - we're creating value that guests are willing to pay for.
The hospitality industry's pivot towards experience-based booking is transforming revenue strategy as we know it today. The future of revenue optimization lies in AI-driven experience design, not just in pricing a room but in packaging and personalizing value across the guest journey. Companies like MyHotelConcierge.com address this challenge head-on by enabling properties to instantly create, brand, and sell curated onsite and offsite experiences such as yoga, chef's cooking classes, local sightseeing adventures, and more. The platform dynamically bundles offerings, surfaces real-time recommendations, and measures conversion on experiences as easily as rooms.To thrive in this new era, hotels must evolve to consider experience orchestration, where emotion and purpose become the new currency. The question is no longer "What's our best available rate?" but rather "What are our most meaningful moments, and how do we scale them to drive guest satisfaction and improve profitability?"
This represents a natural evolution in pricing, and our industry is uniquely positioned for this transformation. However, there are several critical hurdles we must overcome to implement it effectively.
First, we must capture the right data from our guests to curate experiences based on real customer insights, rather than assumptions about what we think they want. Second, we require advanced technology stacks capable of seamlessly delivering offers that align with current demand forecasts, resource availability, seasonality, and other external factors. Finally, measuring the success of this initiative is non-negotiable. Simply offering experience-based pricing is insufficient; we must be able to demonstrate clear, measurable profitability.
If executed correctly, this will be a game-changer for our industry, setting us apart from competitors and giving us a clear advantage over third-party operators who might attempt to do this on our behalf.
How to maximize your property's experience-based bookings? Make your hotel the "hero of the destination"! Smart hoteliers realize that travelers do not visit their destinations just to stay at their hotel. This is why they aim to position their hotel as the "hero of the destination" by positioning their property as the "gravitational center" of the destination.
How do you do that? By creating, focusing on and expanding the content (textual, visual, merchandising) about nearby attractions, places of interest, activities and experiences:
- on the hotel website
- in your social media posts
- in your PR and digital marketing initiatives
Your marketing content has to become a valuable resource about the destination and everything travelers can experience while staying at your hotel.
You can position your hotel as the "hero of the destination" by launching enticing packages, special offers and campaigns that promote:
- Experiences in the destination: attractions, museums, activities, festivals, local happenings, tickets to local attractions and sporting events; local dining, passes for public transportation or Uber. Introduce "live like a local" messaging in your marketing efforts.
- Experiences at the property: packages/special offers for family stays, spa, golf, tennis, F&B, friends getaways, family rates for suites/adjacent rooms, etc.
Hotel room is a commodity, and successful hoteliers create experience packages for guests where the room is essential but not the primary focus of the hotel stay. Hoteliers need to consider the following items when designing and pricing experience packages:
- The Cost. The price cannot be lower than the costs associated with the room and all included elements.
- The Value. The price should not simply be the room rate plus the retail price of the experience. What prevents the guest from purchasing it separately?
- The Uniqueness. The more unique the experience the hotel can offer, the higher the premium it can charge.
- The Competition. What other hotels offer, and what is the price?
- The Feedback. Solicit guest feedback, review production numbers, and adjust packages accordingly.
- The Flexibility. Guests should be able to add different package elements to the room and be part of the creation process.
The modern revenue leader's role extends far beyond managing room rates. A growing number of travelers are motivated by meaning, connection, and individuality, not just price or view. They want experiences that feel personal and purposeful, and they are willing to pay more for them. This shift requires thinking less about inventory and more about perceived value, where the story and emotion attached to an offer are as important as the rate itself. It is Maslow's hierarchy of needs rewritten for travel: once guests have a bed and Wi-Fi, purpose, not pillows, is the key.
Smart hotels are embracing this. Instead of competing on discounts, they add personalization such as a wellness add-on suggested in a pre-arrival email for a returning yoga enthusiast or a "locals only" dinner offered exclusively to direct bookers. Even small touches create exclusivity that third party sites cannot match, adding value without breaking parity.
For revenue leaders, the future lies in uniting marketing, operations, and F&B around experience design. Technology such as AI personalization and dynamic bundling make it possible, but mindset drives it. The real opportunity is not just optimizing price, but elevating value and emotion into the center of every booking.
Revenue Optimization
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