All guests come from different starting points, with diversity in their values, beliefs, social, cultural and contextual circumstances.

Their conditions help them to determine the hotels they chose to stay in, the brands they buy from, the restaurants they eat at and the experiences they decide to pursue.

Guests today are increasingly nuanced, with complex needs and desires and they are laden with choice. They give more consideration to where their values align, where they spend their time and to who they afford their attention.

Same and similar experiences have become more commonplace as businesses strive to capture guest attention and as sectors merge together. Once unique, becomes increasingly same.

The digital world creates a deeper level of complexity, creating a global stage for experiences to stand out, emotionally connect and build relationships with potential guests, or to blend in, be bland and lack differentiation and connection.

Unique and meaningful experiences put guests and ‘human first’ thinking at the centre of decision making. They make guests a part of an experience, not just a spectator of them.

These type of experiences change people. They stand apart for having their own identity, weaving consistent creative storytelling through every moment and interaction. They’re not interested in trends, they transcend them, becoming “The Only” of their kind. They build relationships with their guests, reaching hearts and minds and evoking emotions.

Building meaningful connections with guests is becoming more of a challenge. Experiences exist in hotels, on high streets, in museums, attractions and art galleries. They exist in restaurants, in activations and pop ups. Experiences permeate the world and guests compare the experiences they have, to each they have had before . The bar for experience anywhere, sets the bar, everywhere. Becoming “The Only” removes any need to compete and connects guests, with you, in a way, that only your experience can.

Experiences are about creating magic, evoking guest emotions and reaching, hearts and minds. They are about designing unique memories and building relationships across multiple channels of digital communication and in-person relationships.

Experiences also have to make commercial sense and human first thinking can be a challenge to understand and integrate with this. I help clients to navigate this, balancing optimal guest experience with commercial objectives

Traditional approaches typically begin with profit first thinking. For the guest of today, there are many more moving conditions to consider.

To create guest desire, spending and eventually loyalty, businesses first need to reach their guests hearts and minds, authentically, by doing things in radically different ways and with better human behavioural understanding.

Balancing human understanding with commercial objective and creative thinking is essential for reaching the guest of today.