It’s genuinely not enough for a boutique or lifestyle hotel to just look good anymore. Looks can only go so far, but real, genuine hospitality and customer service are what will convince customers to book, and to return, for years to come.
As we've noted before, while this merger makes sense for a lot of reasons, it's a shame that the Commune Hotels brand is going away, especially since its branding has become so synonymous with leading design hotel development over the past few years.
Commune Hotels' CEO Niki Leondakis could be just the person to shift the lifestyle hospitality discussion beyond the tired "independent spirit" narrative to a more modern focus on personalized, mobile-first, on-demand experiences.