Happy National Coffee Day! View some of the Coffee Day promotions for your own sanity, or use them as inspiration to come up with an on-the-fly on-property coffee promotion for your team.

In this week’s version of Hotel Marketers You Should Know:

Laurean Sahilices
Lauren and I had followed each other on LinkedIn for a while before officially connecting earlier this year, and we recently caught up again. Laurean has built an incredible career across some of the world’s most iconic destinations, from the Maldives to New Zealand, leading openings, activations, and photoshoots. She also founded The Hotel Marketing Lady, a community for hotel marketers, and regularly shares insights on LinkedIn, like her recent post that went viral (and a follow-up case study on the why behind it going viral).

Follow Laurean on LinkedIn or at The Hotel Marketing Lady.

Record-Breaking Fun Facts:

Thanks for reading.

If this newsletter was useful, consider forwarding it to a hotel friend or team member.

⚡️ The State of Visual Communications // Canva

“Spectacular! Give me fourteen of them right now.” ‘Tis the season of trend and “State of” reports, and I eat them all up.

The Canva State of Visual Communications report highlights how visual communication has become the most valuable workplace skill, shaping clarity, creativity, and collaboration across industries. It emphasizes that 90% of decision-making happens subconsciously, which makes visual clarity critical for influencing audiences.

⚡️ TikTok Provides Tips for Luxury Brand Marketers // Social Media Today

TikTok’s latest survey of luxury buyers shows that luxury is shifting from status signaling to identity expression, with purchases increasingly tied to emotion and personal meaning. Over half of TikTok users have bought a luxury item in the past four months, and TikTok advises brands to focus on storytelling, cultural remixing, and authentic creator collaborations to engage this audience

Trending news, marketing news, and reports:

▶️ The Best New Hotels in the World // Michelin
↳ Radar: Michelin will launch its new global Key distinctions on Oct. 8, 2025.
↳ Did you know? If not a Global Key hotel, you can still be listed on the Michelin website. Their OTA functionality is part of the Tablet Hotels integration. Direct booking access is required, so your brand has to approve Tablet/Michelin as a distribution channel. I had to research this as part of a client request and found it interesting, so I'm sharing it with you!

▶️ Expedia Trend Report: 100-Day Countdown to Christmas // Expedia

▶️ Hard pass. Cold brew. Dad bod. Merriam-Webster adds over 5,000 words to ‘Collegiate’ dictionary // AP News

▶️ Marriott Taps Loyalty Members at HQ Event, Tests AI Chat // Skift

▶️ YouTube Labs: Shape the future of AI on YouTube // YouTube

▶️ Even More News: Instagram hits 3B monthly active users. Moodboards, while never out of style, are officially trending, with Google and Adobe launching their own versions this week. And speaking of trends, the newly optimized horizontal reel on Instagram is having a moment, and IG is also testing scheduling of stories. Meta launches Vibes, a tool for discovering and creating AI-generated videos. And TikTok lives on, likely to be bought by a new trio of billionaire owners, including Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX.

I usually share remote hospitality marketing job postings, but I also include a few other roles to highlight which companies and locations are actively hiring.

Remote:

🌎 Social Media Coordinator | Remote | BCV

🌎 Digital Marketing Analyst | Remote | Springboard Hospitality

🌎 Digital Strategist | Remote | Crestline Hotels & Resorts

🌎 Corporate Director of Commercial Strategy | Remote | Welcome Group

In-Person:

🌎 Director, Brand Marketing, Luxury Brands | Plantation, FL | Marriott

🌎 Account Director, Lifestyle - Travel & Hospitality | Los Angeles, CA | PURPLE PR

🌎 Senior Director, Paid Media & Digital Marketing | North Bethesda, MD | Choice Hotels International

🌎 Area Director of Marketing | Phoenix, AZ | Denu Hotel & Spa & Ko’a Kea Resort on Poipu Beach

🌎 Task Force Digital Director | Norwalk, CT | HEI Hotels & Resorts

🌎 Corporate Director of Marketing | Newport Beach, CA | Quorum Hospitality

🌎 Corporate Director of Marketing - Luxury & Lifestyle Division | Miami, FL | Driftwood Hospitality Management

Tracking the agencies shaping the hospitality industry’s biggest moments while building an ever-growing resource list for hotel marketers. Did your agency land a new client, or are you working with a new hospitality-focused agency at your hotel that you want to highlight? Reply directly to this newsletter.

✅ Tambourine wins seven Viddy Awards from the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals

✅ REYA Communications named US PR Agency of Record for Cheetah Plains in South Africa and Cabane Tortin in Switzerland. (via O’Dwyer’s)

✅ SuitePad, an In-Room Tablet Provider, Opens US Office and Signs 10 Hotels Ahead of US Expansion

✅ The Staffing Agency launches, incorporating its portfolio of hospitality-focused recruitment agencies, including The Chef Agency, The Estate Agency, The Resume Agency, and The Supermarket Agency.

There are less than 100 days left in 2025! To be exact, 93 days as of today.

30 // 60 // 90:

Up Next:

How are your Q1 plans looking?

If you’ve hung out with revenue leaders long enough, you may have heard that “pace is won in Q1.” That means your ability to shape the year’s performance often depends on how well you execute in the first 90 days. To make sure you’re not scrambling mid-year, here’s a strategic checklist and rationale to include in your Q1 push, which you should start planning for now.

In short: If your Q1 strategy is vague or under-prepared, you’ll give up control over how the rest of the year unfolds.

Agency & Vendor Contracts

If you wait until 2026 to change agencies, they enter on a learning curve, which can cost you performance against goals when expectations are highest.

Budget Allocation

Loyalty & Partner Scheduling

High-visibility placements and partner promotions get scooped up quickly. If you leave this until Jan, you risk availability or cost escalations.

Campaign Planning & Creative Framework

Web & Landing Page Audit

Pace & Forecast Sensitivity Preparation

Ensure you are aligned with your revenue and commercial teams, whether via regular meetings, check-ins, or reports, where you can identify signals based on goals you’ve set with your teams.

Cross-Functional Readiness

If marketing drives demand that operations can’t support, guest experience suffers. Or campaigns stall due to missing approvals.

Testing & Learning Plan

If every campaign is full-scale with no room for testing, you lose the ability to optimize midstream.

Contingency / Backup Plan

Q1 has calendar quirks (weather, holidays, slower demand), so allow for some buffer room to adjust.

A weekly round-up of fresh inspiration and a closer look at experiential design, sensory branding, and the quiet details that define unforgettable spaces.

festive // A Holiday in Oz at Hotel del Coronado
Generations of families return to The Del each year, and for 2025 the landmark reimagines the season through the lens of Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum, who once called the resort his muse. Guests can stroll the “road of yellow brick” to a new Oz-inspired light show, skate by the sea, savor Victorian teas beneath Baum’s crown chandeliers, and marvel at thousands of holiday lights. With daily resort credits, a Holiday Concierge, and festive programming from November 21 to January 4, The Del creates a holiday tradition where nostalgia and magic meet.

community // PURE Life Experiences
Billed as the world’s leading experiential travel show, PURE brings the industry’s most visionary minds together each year in Marrakech. More than a marketplace, it is a community built on the belief that travel can transform lives, communities, and the planet. Through collaboration, storytelling, and relationship-building, PURE champions experiential travel as both an ethos and a movement, igniting ideas that go beyond business to truly Change Worlds.

design // Naviva, A Four Seasons Resort Immersion: Return to Stillness
Naviva brings its philosophy of slow, soulful luxury to Design Miami with Immersion: Return to Stillness, a bamboo pavilion inspired by its Punta Mita retreat. The installation layers cinematic forest and ocean visuals, wind and wildlife soundscapes, and a signature scent to create a multisensory pause from overstimulation. Rooted in biophilic design and crafted with Mexican artisans, the pavilion redefines luxury as simplicity, presence, and emotional connection. After Paris and Miami, it will return home to Naviva as a living part of the guest experience.

Based on a communication method by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, the 5.15 is a weekly format designed to synthesize key insights in 15 minutes or less and be read in five. This newsletter applies the same principle to hotel marketing: concise, actionable trends and opportunities curated for industry professionals.

I’m Rachel Watroba, founder of ADCOTO Hospitality Marketing and publisher of The Hotel Marketing 5.15.