In this episode we speak to Jamie Power, general manager at The Great Southern Killarney. He spoke about his experience working at a major New York hotel and the lessons this taught him in leadership, the repositioning of The Great Southern, and how the history of the site was preserved and honoured whilst elevating it to a modern luxury experience, and how hospitality is now more than ever returning to its core values of connecting with and celebrating the people who make it.

In most industries, the principle is to understand your customer, understand what drives their business, and design your product around those needs.

Hotels are slightly different.

We talk constantly about guests, room nights, occupancy, ADR and RevPAR in our hotelier conversations, but we do not always treat the person staying in the room as a customer in the broader commercial sense. Once the booking is made and the guest arrives, much of the commercial focus shifts back to operations: check-in, housekeeping, service recovery and guest satisfaction.

But the relationship does not end at check-in. In many ways, that is where the opportunity actually begins.

A hotel guest can generate value through room revenue, upgrades, breakfast, dining, parking, meetings, experiences, loyalty and repeat stays. More importantly, the quality of the experience influences whether that guest chooses the hotel again, recommends it to others or moves to a competitor.

The question is therefore not simply whether we delivered the room we sold.

It is whether we created a customer relationship worth keeping.

Revenue Management has become exceptionally sophisticated at understanding demand and optimising the room.

But the guest relationship is much broader.

A corporate traveller may stay 20 nights a year, eat breakfast 15 times, use the hotel restaurant several times, book meeting space for their team and influence where their colleagues stay. A leisure guest may return annually, recommend the hotel to friends and purchase additional experiences during their stay.

Yet hotels often measure these interactions separately.

Rooms sits in one report. F&B sits in another. Guest satisfaction sits somewhere else. Loyalty is managed by the brand.

The result is that we can become very good at optimising individual transactions without necessarily optimising the total value of the customer.

Customer experience is not about making every interaction extraordinary.

It is about identifying the moments that disproportionately influence how a guest evaluates the hotel.

For a hotel, these might include:

A guest may forgive a minor imperfection.

They are less likely to forgive a major service failure that is handled poorly.

This is why hotel managers should identify their own moments of truth and understand which ones have the greatest impact on reviews, repeat business and customer value.

Trying to improve everything equally can spread resources too thin. The better approach is to identify the interactions that matter most and execute them consistently.

Customer experience and commercial performance should not be treated as competing priorities.

A better guest experience can support retention, direct bookings, ancillary spend, loyalty and pricing power.

But the reverse is also true. A hotel can spend heavily on guest experience initiatives without creating meaningful commercial value.

The discipline is understanding which improvements actually matter to customers.

Sometimes the answer is not a major renovation or an expensive new amenity. It may be faster Wi-Fi, easier parking, better breakfast execution, simpler communication, more flexible check-in or a faster resolution when something goes wrong.

The best hotel managers understand the difference between adding features and removing friction.

The industrial property sector is increasingly discussing occupiers as customers rather than simply tenants, recognising that understanding their businesses can lead to stronger relationships and long-term asset performance.

Hotels have an even more direct relationship with their customers.

We interact with guests every day, often across multiple touchpoints and increasingly across multiple stays.

The opportunity is to understand not just who is staying, but why they stay, what they value, what frustrates them and what would make them return.

For corporate guests, that might mean understanding travel policies and booking behaviour.

For leisure guests, it might mean understanding the purpose of the trip and what experiences matter.

For long-stay guests, it could be convenience, flexibility and a sense of familiarity.

The hotel that understands these needs better can design a stronger proposition—and ultimately build a more valuable customer relationship.

Often these questions are being asigned on to hotel sales team, but this should be everyone’s task on a daily basis. From Front of House, F&B, housekeeping and Hotel Manager who walks past the reception every now and then. It’s a collective effort to collect information through a completed guest journey.

Guest satisfaction remains important, but satisfaction alone is not the commercial objective.

The stronger question is: Did the experience make the guest more likely to spend, return, recommend and book directly?

That moves the conversation from operational service to commercial performance.

Hotels have spent decades becoming better at managing rooms.

The next opportunity is becoming better at managing the guest relationship.

Because the most valuable guest is not necessarily the one who pays the highest ADR tonight.

It may be the guest who comes back ten times, books directly, upgrades, eats in the hotel, brings colleagues, recommends the property and remains loyal for years.

Hotels do not simply sell rooms. They build customer relationships. The commercial opportunity is to start managing them that way.