Arnie Weissmann
Tyler Brule is both a journalist (founder of Wallpaper and Monocle magazines) and runs a creative agency, Winkreative, whose three-dozen-plus travel clients include British Airways, Lufthansa, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Le Meridien and Relais & Chateaux.
He moderated a panel at the International Luxury Travel Market (ILTM) last December, and I listened with interest to a challenge he put forth to marketers: "Can you deliver press releases and a campaign without the words 'purpose,' 'experience,' 'mindfulness,' 'authenticity' or 'authentic-self,' 'emotional,' 'natural' or 'local connections'?"
It's a topic he had warmed to the previous October in a Monocle article headlined, "No one buys a holiday for 'mindfulness.' Travel marketing needs a reality check."
In it, he questioned what a speaker at a conference that he attended meant by saying, "Being out in the world allows us to be our authentic selves." Did that mean, Brule wondered, that when travelers are boarding their outbound flights, they are inauthentic?
(An aside: There is one destination where it's true that, upon arrival, you might feel freer to be, for better or worse, your authentic self. Ironically, it's also possibly the most contrived, inauthentic destination in the world: Las Vegas. But permission to be who you are without reservation is, of course, the purpose -- and genius -- of Vegas' contrivances. And, to Brule's point, being one's authentic self is not why one goes to see, for example, the catacombs of Paris.)
The article goes on: "The amount of travel industry guff and gimmickry out there is truly alarming." At the same conference that "authentic selves" was mentioned, he listened dubiously to another speaker who reported that 83% of travelers consider sustainability a key part of their decision-making process when booking a hotel. "I have yet to come across anyone who gives two hoots about a hotel's sustainability measure while scrolling for the best possible price," he wrote.
In the article, he also listed travel tropes he could do without, including, "The lady who throws open the floor-to-ceiling windows in her hotel room, breathes deep and is caressed by billowing drapes," as well as "The lady (possibly the same one) who we see walking along a trail, garden path or babbling brook, stretching out her hand to caress the wheat, ferns or lavender hedge."
And he asks hotel groups, travel boards, cruise companies and airlines "to start showing the real suite that I booked and not a computer-generated image."
Although he asks suppliers to stop enhancing reality, Brule doesn't specifically mention AI in the article. Yet I can imagine creative directors who, after reading his Monocle article or listening to his ILTM challenge, sit down at their computers, open a ChatGPT box and ask, "Can you deliver press releases and a campaign for my client without the words 'purpose,' 'experience,' 'mindfulness,' 'authenticity' or 'authentic-self,' 'emotional,' 'natural' or 'local connections'?"
That would be concerning. Possible AI hallucinations aside, how can a non-sentient intelligence, one without eyes, ears, nose, mouth or skin, meaningfully discern the appeal of something as sense-dependent as travel? It could scrape the observations and opinions of thousands of humans (and likely, thousands of bot-written articles) searching for a consensus of opinion that could be distilled, but the result will be, at best, new variations of old cliches.
Mind you, I've found that human promoters are, without the benefit of AI, adept at repurposing the general climate of opinion into a platitude. If someone who writes press releases for a living notices that something is trending -- "The White Lotus" is a good example -- I and every other travel journalist is guaranteed to receive dozens of releases with "White Lotus" in the subject line and claims that the sender's hotel is the "White Lotus of (fill-in-the-blank)."
It should be clear to marketers that repeating the travel cliches rendered meaningless through repetition is ultimately self-defeating; how can you stand out if your ads are indistinguishable from competitors in all ways but the logo?
So, who among major travel brands are still using the words (or close variations) that Brule would ban if he could?
A short list: Hyatt (Alila), "Experience place with presence..."; Airbnb, "For real local connections..."; Marriott (Bonvoy), "Purpose-filled journeys ... emotional connections"; Intercontinental Hotels Group, "be [your] authentic selves"; Delta Air Lines, "genuine connections ... purpose-filled journeys"; Hilton, "purpose," "emotional motivations."
Some of the hotel examples I found were connected to individual properties, rather than brand, which may explain why IHG is both on this short list and, according to Winkreative's website, a client of Brule.
Much as we might hope it wouldn't be true, Brule could likely revise the list of overused words on an annual basis.
And I'd go so far as to say that he missed a few. So, in closing, permit me to add to the list of words and phrases that are past their use-by date in travel: curated, transformational, lifelong memories, immersive, reconnect and recharge.
On the cusp: Regenerative.