Blogs, Insights
At HGEM, we're always looking beyond our own data to understand the broader forces shaping the guest experience landscape. On 16th April, members of our team attended KAM's Informants event — one of the industry's sharpest forums for consumer insight and hospitality trends.
What emerged was a clear and consistent picture: the way guests form loyalty, make decisions and expect to be treated is shifting. And the gap between brands who respond to those shifts and those who don't is widening.
Here are the nine signals we think every hospitality brand should be paying attention to right now.
The conversation has moved well beyond "engagement." Katie Jenkins from KAM's marketing team made the point compellingly: brand loyalty is like a long-distance relationship.
You have to put more in to keep it strong — and if you don't, customers will start looking elsewhere.
That figure reframes the entire loyalty conversation. It's not about repeat visits alone — it's about whether guests feel something when they think about your brand. Hospitality businesses that invest in genuine relationship-building, rather than transactional engagement, are building a fundamentally more resilient customer base.
Most operators understand that personalisation matters. Fewer are applying it across the full guest journey — and that gap represents a meaningful missed opportunity.
But the ambition being discussed at The Informants went well beyond pre-arrival messaging. The most forward-thinking brands are shifting from static loyalty schemes to a "living score" — a dynamic model that responds to guest behaviour and signals in real time.
The example shared was vivid: knowing that a guest loves Malbec, offering them a glass on arrival and waiting ten minutes before checking in while they browse the menu. That's not marketing. That's hospitality. The technology to do this exists — the opportunity is in applying it thoughtfully across booking, follow-up, loyalty and the front-of-house experience itself.
One of the starkest moments of the event came from an anonymised operator example that put real numbers on a problem many brands underestimate.
Missed calls aren't just an inconvenience — they are a direct lost-sales issue. As AI-powered phone and chat solutions become more accessible, the bar for availability is rising. Guests expect to be able to reach you when they're ready to book, whether that's via phone, social channels, or online. Brands that aren't available at that moment of intent are simply handing revenue to someone who is.
The influence of social media on hospitality decisions is well-documented — but the data shared at The Informants adds important texture.
Twelve per cent of people have made an impulsive visit to a venue based on a post from friends or family. One in five check reviews as part of their decision journey. Thirty-five per cent left a review in the last three months — rising to 54% among 18–35 year olds.
"You're talking to a person on socials — connection matters more than broadcast content."
Social channels that feel human and responsive build the kind of emotional connection that drives both visits and reviews. Channels that feel like broadcast marketing do neither.
This was perhaps the theme closest to HGEM's own work — and one where the room was candid about the gap between what's available and what's actually being acted on.
Structured guest feedback, social listening, recurring themes in comments and reviews, and the emotional signals embedded in guest language all represent powerful operational and commercial intelligence. Individually, each source is useful. Combined with booking and visit data, they become something much more powerful.
The main point made was direct: feedback should not sit separately from marketing or CRM. It should become part of the relationship — not just a score. When a guest tells you something isn't right, that's an opportunity to respond, recover, and demonstrate that you were listening. Most brands are still not doing this consistently.
This isn't a new idea, but the scale of the difference is easy to forget when acquisition is the default focus of marketing budgets.
The value of being able to connect behavioural signals across the guest lifecycle — particularly in the space between visits — was highlighted as a key opportunity. Knowing when a loyal guest is drifting, and being able to act on that signal before they leave, is one of the highest-return investments a hospitality brand can make. The challenge, for many, is that those signals currently live in disconnected systems.
One of the more forward-looking discussions of the day centred on how guests find hospitality venues in the first place. The shift from traditional search engine optimisation to AI-optimised content (AIO) is already underway.
Customers are doing less manual research and trusting AI-generated recommendations more — particularly for lower-cost, spontaneous experiences. Discovery is broadening beyond Google into AI search assistants, voice search, visual search, and third-party trust platforms like review sites. Brands that structure their content for how AI systems read and surface information will have a competitive advantage that's only going to grow.
There was a clear sense in the room that AI in hospitality has moved beyond the pilot stage. The examples being discussed weren't hypothetical — they were live, operational and producing results.
Among the use cases highlighted: AI chatbots and phone lines reducing missed contact opportunities; AI-driven email segmentation enabling more relevant, timely communication; and front-of-house intelligence tools that surface real-time prompts to help teams tailor the guest experience in the moment. The common thread is that AI is most valuable when it reduces friction and surfaces the right information at the right time — for operators and guests alike.
The final theme was perhaps the most timely. Cost-of-living pressure is pushing more consumers toward loyalty schemes — meaning guests are increasingly receptive to brands that offer clear, personalised value in return for their commitment.
This creates a genuine window of opportunity. Guests who might previously have been indifferent to loyalty programmes are now actively looking for reasons to choose and stay with particular brands. Those that respond with relevant, flexible, personalised schemes — rather than generic points-based systems — are likely to emerge from this period with meaningfully stronger retention and emotional connection.
Looking across the themes from The Informants, a consistent thread emerges: the most effective hospitality brands are building systems that connect guest signals to meaningful action. Whether that's a personalised pre-visit email, a well-timed loyalty offer, or a front-of-house team armed with the right information — the gap between brands who are doing this and those who aren't is measurable and growing.
At HGEM, this is the challenge we're focused on. Our Guest Experience Management platform — and specifically Halo, our AI assistant — is designed to surface those signals faster and make it easier for teams to act on them before they become missed opportunities.
The Informants event was a timely reminder that the industry knows what needs to change. The work now is in building the systems, habits and tools to make it happen consistently.
