Skift Global Forum 2025 Expert Roundtable: Understanding the Evolving Hotel Guest

This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner.

The pace of change in the hospitality industry has never been faster. New generations of travelers, advancing technology, and shifting definitions of value are reshaping what meaningful experiences look like. The challenge for brands is to keep pace while maintaining clarity, consistency, and relevance in every interaction.

It was with these topics in mind that Skift and Brookfield co-hosted a guided roundtable session at Skift Global Forum 2025 to explore the future of the evolving hotel guest. The session, hosted by Jennifer Rutkowski, senior vice president, commercial strategy, asset management at Brookfield’s Hospitality Investment Platform, brought together a group of travel experts to discuss how brands can adapt to this new era of personalization and data-driven insights. Below are key takeaways from the conversation.

The discussion opened with a clear consensus: today’s travelers are not only more diverse but also more discerning. Their expectations have shifted from comfort and convenience to experiences that resonate with individual values and ways of living.

Participants highlighted that while digital tools and AI offer powerful ways to reach these audiences, success still depends on understanding the human at the center of every data point. Knowing how guests prefer to be communicated with has become just as important as knowing who they are. Even the most advanced marketing technology cannot perform effectively without accurate, optimized data and content.

The conversation highlighted a growing need for alignment among marketing, commercial, and operations teams to ensure consistent messaging and coherent brand storytelling. The executives noted that agility and collaboration now define competitive advantage, especially as consumer preferences shift faster than many organizations can adapt.

Personalization emerged as a defining theme of the roundtable. Participants agreed that consumers now expect every interaction to feel tailored, relevant, and emotionally resonant. Yet achieving that level of personalization requires both technological capability and organizational readiness.

Several attendees pointed to the constraints of legacy systems and fragmented Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms, which limit their ability to deliver the same level of personalization seen in leading retail and e-commerce brands. Such limitations have a deeper impact in travel and hospitality, where the guest experience itself is the product and directly shapes satisfaction and loyalty.

The discussion highlighted that personalization is not only a marketing function but also a holistic business strategy that relies on high-quality data, agile infrastructure, and empowered teams. When organizations integrate insights from multiple departments, they can anticipate guest needs, refine their offers in real-time, and build meaningful, long-term relationships with their audiences.

Data, Storytelling, and the Future of Marketing

Authenticity emerged as another central theme. Modern travelers are moving away from generic marketing and looking for stories and experiences that align with their aspirations. This requires data-informed creativity that combines quantitative insight with qualitative understanding.

Roundtable participants emphasized that future-ready marketing teams must blend analytical precision with emotional intelligence. Data should guide decisions, but storytelling remains what connects with people on a human level. The most successful brands will combine these strengths to create experiences that are both personalized and purposeful.

The discussion also highlighted the importance of agility and continuous learning. Brands must be willing to experiment, test, and adapt as new technologies, channels, and audience behaviors evolve. Remaining relevant will depend on how quickly organizations can translate insight into action.

The roundtable concluded with a call for a more strategic, data-driven, and holistic approach to marketing that begins with a deep understanding of the consumer. Investing the time and resources to build this foundation will enable hospitality brands to personalize at scale, deliver authentic experiences, and strengthen emotional connections with guests.

For Brookfield and its partners, the opportunity lies in using data to deepen relationships. The future of hospitality belongs to brands that listen carefully, act intelligently, and communicate with authenticity across every touchpoint.

To learn more about Brookfield, visit brookfield.com

This content was created collaboratively by Brookfield and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.