I've watched the hotel world change. From the inside.

Up close with travelers

Sure, my Tourism degree gave me the map. But where I actually learned the ropes was in operations, first at a travel agency and then at a hotel. That's where I saw, up close, what travelers asked before booking, what made them hesitate and what finally got them to say yes.

And here's the thing: people don't book a room because it's "pretty". They book the experience they picture having in it.

And who'd have thought Journalism, my other degree, would come in so handy later on? Turns out it was the perfect tool for telling hotels' stories with words that sell.

When hotels went digital

Next stop: Micros-Fidelio and then Oracle Hospitality, where I spent 12 years watching hotels swap paper for systems. I got to know hotels of every size, all over the world, with their processes, their needs and their little quirks. Basically, I learned how a hotel runs when nobody's watching.

The takeaway? Tech helps a ton, of course. But at the end of the day, travelers pick a hotel for what it tells them and how it makes them feel.

Direct bookings, powered by persuasive words

So, with that idea stuck in my head, I started my own company, go visible online. The internet was already packed with hotel websites, social profiles and Google listings saying the same thing, in the same words. Sound familiar? That's why I went for the most overlooked corner of marketing: the craft of standing out through words.

Copywriting.

Two hotels can have the same pool, the same breakfast and the same location. So what makes the difference? How they make future guests feel when they read about them. And how they tell it.

And this is where it all clicked: everything I'd done before, plus my journalism background. I built on that with marketing training and a master's in copywriting, and out came courses like Hotel Web Copy Makeover and Canva Templates for Tourism Businesses (both now retired). Then, in 2023/24, I won Copywriting Training Provider of the Year at the Global Awards. Was I proud? Let's be honest, I was over the mooooon.

Then AI came along

Did I think twice? Nope. I dove in head first.

I was already using AI in hotel marketing before our beloved ChatGPT showed up. And when it became the hottest topic around, I started teaching hoteliers how to use it without losing their own voice, with training sessions, talks, podcasts and courses like GuIA and Crea GPTs de marketing hotelero (both now retired).

But while I was using it and teaching it, something caught my eye. AI wasn't just helping people write. It was starting to decide which hotels to mention when a traveler asked where to stay. And that was seriously shaking up hotels' "visibility".

Then the penny dropped. If AI was picking which hotels to name, hotels needed to know if they were showing up in those answers, keep an eye on them and figure out how to become the one that gets suggested. Bingo! I'd just stumbled on a problem that needed solving.