Every hotel brand makes a promise on a slide deck somewhere. There's a real gap between what a hotel brand promises and what actually happens at the front desk. I got brand strategist Philipp Mirow, CEO of Meridian Thinking, on the show with Dr. Producer Suzanne to figure out exactly where that promise falls apart.

Philipp ran the Radisson brand while at Choice Hotels, then founded Meridian Thinking, the consultancy behind brand work for Hilton, Starwood, and 1 Hotels, among others. He's also got an unusual detour on his resume that shapes how he thinks about all of it. This conversation gets into:

  • The unlikely operational job on his resume that still shapes how he builds brand strategy today
  • Why a 500-page brand standards document rarely survives contact with an actual front desk
  • A guest-recognition problem he says airlines solved years ago that most #hotels still haven't touched
  • How a brand nobody was excited about turned pure nostalgia into a real growth strategy
  • Where he thinks AI genuinely belongs in guest service, and where handing it to guests backfires

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