There’s a great line in writer-director Cameron Crowe’s autobiography in which music journalist Lester Bangs takes him aside after a rough encounter with a band and says: “You made friends with them. That was your mistake. They make you feel cool, and I met you. You’re not cool.”

Eagle-eyes viewers will recognise the line from Crowe’s film “Almost Famous”, but it’s fancier to quote the book. For those of us who cut our teeth on music journalism it’s a common enough mistake, and we’ll not mention the Frank and Walters anymore. We grow and learn to be wary of cool. 

But cool is still out there, tempting us with its ways and, increasingly, trying to stray into capitalism, which is so uncool it still lives in its parents’ basement (to save money and get that extra margin). 

When deployed in capitalism, making things look cool has historically been a great way to stitch your staff up, and nowhere has this been more visible of late than in the technology sector, where cults abound. Long hours, terrible pay (only the founder and first 50 get shares) and probably mention of a “mission”. All these should ring alarm bells on interview, but thousands still apply and most will only get a branded backpack and a hernia out of the experience. 

Back in our sector, there is the occasional run-in with cool, although in hotel land, we are aware that one of our many flaws is being unable to scale it. Brands such as Ace Hotel and The Standard may have started out cool – depending on your views of thrice-cooked chips – but it can’t be done in any volume. In an attempt to attract cool people, who often travel and have money, hotels have tried to be cool, even allowing staff to have tattoos. 

But it can’t be done. A former development director for cool-adjacent brand W once told this hack that it was only aspiring to cool, and that’s how it sold it. We agreed that neither of us knew which brands were cool, cementing a lifelong friendship around inadequacy. 

And why is that? Because we’re not cool. It is particularly confusing in this sector, where we have venues where cool things happen. They really do. But we are the backdrop to cool. We are not the cool. It must be imported.

But cool remains powerful. Can it add a premium to your brand? Only if it also attracts rich nepo babies (and it will do, at least in its dying days). But it has strength as a tool and not just a marketing one. Witness BrewDog. 

The cracks were there from the beginning. Nothing cool comes with the word “cask”. It just doesn’t. But if you’re going sell yourself as a disruptor, you must go with cool, because the appetite for cool is such that a few people will buy it for a short amount of time, hopefully long enough for you to build a decent foundation for a more long-term business. Airbnb’s founders have been going without ties for years in the hope that we’ll think staying in other people’s spare rooms is cool, although the wheels rather slid off that bus after co-founder Joe Gebbia joined Elon Musk at DOGE. 

But BrewDog called it Punk IPA, so it must be cool (assuming you live in the 1970s and you want to annoy your nan). The punk theme continued – it is the antichrist, etc – when it went to get funding, using a crowdfunding model that at the time was pretty innovative (although sometimes a little too similar to timeshare for comfort), with the participants known as “Equity Punks”, entitled to some free beer, discounts (higher discounts with a BrewDog tattoo) and ordinary shares. 

For those who still haven’t picked up the thread, you can’t put “equity” in any context and hope it’s still cool. This is why so much cocaine was consumed in the City in the 1980s. If you want to feel cool and you’re within half a mile of anything finance, you must be on drugs. Actual, weapons-grade drugs.

However, the cool continued for BrewDog, with tanks on the streets of Camden and beer names like Dead Pony Club. There were a lot of stunts that involved being naked, which, in this country, is often cool. 

It became less cool when private equity got involved – and don’t let their white trainers tell you otherwise – and even less cool when TSG invested £213m and got preference shares in return. The shorthand being that, in any future scrabble for cash, it would be preferred. 

In the event, ordinary or preferred, punk or not, everyone was punked. So next time you think something looks cool, remember Lester.

Let's not dress this up. The national living wage increase isn't a surprise. It isn't a conspiracy. It is a number that has been on your P&L roadmap for long enough that if it's still catching you off guard, we need to have a different conversation entirely.

 

And yet, I keep sitting across from senior hospitality leaders who are bracing for impact rather than engineering a response. Hoping that footfall holds. Hoping that menus reprice without resistance. Hoping that somehow the margin maths works out. Hope is not a strategy. Instead, ask yourself three tough questions.

First question – Are you charging for the experience, or just the product?

Prices must move. But whether your guests accept those prices is entirely about whether they feel the value.

 

The businesses that can take price increases without haemorrhaging covers are the ones that have invested, deliberately and obsessively, in what I call memory makers. The moments woven into a visit that create disproportionate emotional value. The dessert that genuinely surprises. The team member who takes a photo worth keeping. The small, unrequested gesture nobody saw coming.

 

This isn't about gimmicks; it’s about engineering the feeling around your product. Because in a world where every price increase demands justification, the experience is doing as much heavy lifting as the food. Don't just engineer the product on the menu; engineer how it is delivered.

 

If your memory makers aren’t strong enough, your price increase won’t hold. So, before you reprint your menus, ask yourself: what do guests go home and talk about? What brings them back? If you don't know the answer with conviction, that’s your value gap – and it’s more urgent than the cost per cover.

Second question – are you stimulating your teams, or just delegating at them?

The living wage increase raises your cost base. Which means every single hour of your people’s time just became more expensive. Which means how your managers use that time matters more than ever. Most managers think they’re developing their teams. They aren’t. They’re offloading tasks to people they don’t really know, calling it delegation and wondering why it’s not sticking.

 

Generation Z are not disengaged. They are growth hungry. They leave not because the job is hard, but because nobody is stretching them in a way that feels intentional. Your costly hourly resource is walking out the door not for more money, but for more meaning.

 

The question I’d ask your managers isn’t “what have you delegated this week?” It’s “how are you stimulating your team?” Delegation without relationship is just pressure. And pressure without investment produces exits, not excellence.

 

Your wage bill just went up. Your expectation of what good management looks like should go up with it. Stop using the word delegate, and instead, start playing with the stimulate concept.

Third question – are you using artificial intelligence (AI), or are you actually AI-enabled?

There is a difference, and it isn't small. Using AI means you’ve played with ChatGPT. Being AI-enabled means your team has fundamentally reduced the time it spends on administrative friction and redirected it to guests.

 

Scheduling. Briefing notes. Training resources. Guest communication. Reporting. The list of tasks consuming your managers’ time that AI could be doing instead is not short. Every hour a manager spends on administration is an hour they’re not on the floor – not coaching their team and not creating a memory maker for a guest. In a labour cost environment this brutal, that trade-off is simply unaffordable.

 

The question isn’t whether AI has a place in your business. It does. The question is how quickly you can move your teams from AI-curious to genuinely AI-enabled – and whether your leadership is modelling what that looks like.

 

The wage increase is the pressure, but pressure only destroys businesses that weren’t building resilience in the right places. If you’re not engineering emotional value that justifies your pricing, start today.

 

If your managers are handing out tasks rather than developing people, change the question you ask them. If your team is drowning in admin that AI could handle, that's a leadership decision, not a technology problem.

 

The operators who will come through this period are not the ones who absorbed the cost. They’re the ones who used it as a forcing function to build something better.

 

Which one of these is your most uncomfortable truth right now?

King’s Cross’ ongoing multibillion-pound transformation has resulted in the widespread gentrification of the area and the opening of many smart new eating and dining establishments, welcoming a more moneyed clientele. But for something a little grittier and grounded in reality, I’d frequently eschew the glitz of the newer places and instead relax in the undemanding requirements of Irish pub McGlynn’s, which stands almost in the shadow of that gothic marvel, the St Pancras Hotel.

 

Over the 20-plus years I’ve been visiting McGlynn’s, it was always something of an oasis of calm away from the melee near the mainline stations, and during the working week, it largely catered to construction workers from the north of England, who would disappear to their families at the weekends. In recent years, its inclusive, welcome-all approach had contributed to it becoming rather popular, especially among younger workers in the new offices around King’s Cross who wanted the warmth of a traditional pub. A hidden gem, no less.

 

However, the place was then suddenly boarded-up in late 2023 following the death of long-time licensee Gerry Dolan, and a price tag of £3.2m placed on the pub, which led to grave concerns that its days were over and that it would be swept-up as part of the area’s redevelopment. 

 

But then in early 2025, it was announced it had been bought by renowned artist Peter Doig, who owns a gallery opposite and who supposedly once lived on the nearby estate. The plan is to continue running it as a pub, and importantly, to keep the traditional style that had attracted customers during Dolan’s 40-year custodianship. 

 

It’s a positive story, but also a sad one in a way, because it seems that in a growing number of cases, local pubs are only being saved because they are fortunate enough to have benefactors with deep pockets who do not wish to see them lose their valuable place in their local communities. There’s a whole new level of philanthropy taking place around pubs, which is good, but arguably, we shouldn’t really be in this place.

 

Lady Loretta Rothschild rescued her local, the Seven Stars Inn in Bottlesford, Wiltshire; H&M’s major shareholder, Stefan Persson, owns the Bell Inn in Ramsbury; former Blackstone financier Chad Pike bought the Three Daggers in Edington; and Michel de Carvalho-Heineken and his wife rescued the Woolpack Inn in Totford with a view to it retaining its community relevance.

 

Meanwhile, technology billionaire Larry Ellison’s Ellison Institute of Technology bought the historic Eagle and Child pub in Oxford after it closed in 2020 and was facing a doubtful future. The grade II-listed pub is famous for hosting the Inklings literary group, which included JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, and is currently undergoing major works to save the structure and will reopen next year.

 

It was for similarly philanthropic-type reasons that art dealer and collector Ivor Braka bought The Gunton Arms in Norfolk and the nearby Suffield Arms. He states: “A pub provides a vital stage for social intercourse, which has been lost in an age of increasingly virtual contacts. Social media is anathema to me. In a pub, you can stave off social isolation and loneliness, particularly in rural areas.”

 

It seems that a growing number of people are coming to the sensible conclusion that pubs are manifestly more than vehicles to sell alcohol, and some of these individuals are in the fortunate position of being able to support their belief in the community value of pubs through money. Sadly, all too many pubs are not in anything like such an exalted position and are little more than an unloved asset on a balance sheet, with a financial value attached to it that would be bigger if it were redeveloped as flats or anything other than a pub.

 

I’ve worked in hospitality long enough to know that tight margins are part of the industry. But the pressures operators are facing today feel more intense than ever. Rising labour costs, volatile energy prices and limited ability to increase menu pricing are all hitting at once. Add in higher business rates and regulatory costs, and many businesses are being forced to make difficult decisions about their future.

 

The data reflects what I’m seeing across the sector. One in seven venues are expected to close. Nearly two-thirds of businesses are planning to cut jobs, while many are cancelling investment or reducing trading hours just to stay viable. These aren’t small adjustments – they’re signs of an industry under real strain.

 

Naturally, much of the focus has been on cost control. But I believe there’s a more important question that’s often overlooked: what is the real cost of not using artificial intelligence (AI)? Because while AI is still sometimes seen as an investment – or even a luxury – I see it differently. In many cases, operators are already paying the price for not having it in place.

 

One of the biggest hidden costs is missed demand. Every missed phone call, unanswered email or delayed social media reply represents lost revenue. In hospitality, speed matters. If a guest doesn’t get a quick response, they move on. Today’s guest expects immediacy, yet human response times can still stretch to hours. AI responds in seconds. That gap directly impacts demand capture. If you’re not responding quickly enough, you’re simply not in the consideration set.

 

At the same time, rising wage costs are forcing operators to rethink how teams are deployed. Too much time is still spent on repetitive tasks: answering booking queries, handling calls, replying to emails and social messages and sharing basic information that doesn’t require human judgement. That’s not where hospitality teams deliver their greatest value. Their real impact is in the in-person experience – the moments that shape how guests feel.

 

This is where AI changes the equation. By handling up to 95% of guest enquiries, it frees up teams to focus on what drives experience and revenue. For me, it’s not about replacing people – it’s about using them more effectively. AI takes care of repetitive work, allowing teams to focus on service.

 

Modern AI is also far more capable than many assume. It can communicate in multiple languages, adapt tone of voice to reflect a brand and adjust responses in real time based on context. That level of consistency is difficult to achieve manually.

 

There’s a long-standing belief in hospitality that improving efficiency comes at the expense of guest experience. I don’t think that’s true anymore. AI enables both. It delivers instant, 24/7 responses across every touchpoint while maintaining a consistent brand voice. It doesn’t have off days or knowledge gaps. Every guest receives clear, accurate communication every time.

 

Where I see many operators struggling is in how they implement AI. Too often, it’s introduced in silos – separate tools for voice, chat, email and social. The result is fragmented data and a disjointed guest journey. The real opportunity lies in unifying these channels. A single platform creates one source of truth, one inbox, and one consistent voice across the entire guest experience.

 

That’s the approach we’ve taken at HeyGuest – connecting all communication into one ecosystem to ensure every interaction is aligned and effective. This is where the commercial impact becomes clear. AI isn’t just about reducing costs – it’s about driving revenue.

 

Channels like WhatsApp, with extremely high open rates, offer a powerful way to engage guests before they arrive. If a booking is flagged as a birthday, AI can automatically suggest add-ons like drinks or decorations. These are simple, high margin upsells that are rarely delivered consistently by human teams, but AI can execute them every time.

 

In practice, faster response times and better engagement translate into more bookings. Even a modest improvement in capturing missed demand can quickly outweigh the cost of the technology.

 

Despite this, misconceptions remain. Some operators still see AI as expensive or complex. In reality, modern platforms can be deployed quickly and start delivering value almost immediately. The real barrier isn’t technology – it’s mindset.

 

Right now, too many businesses are over-reliant on manual processes, underperforming on response times and missing revenue opportunities. These issues are happening every day, quietly eroding margins.

 

AI isn’t a silver bullet, but it is one of the few levers operators can control. It reduces operational pressure, improves revenue capture and enhances the consistency of the guest experience at scale – while freeing up teams to focus on what matters most.

 

Costs will continue to rise. But how operators respond is within their control. For me, the question is no longer whether hospitality businesses can afford to invest in AI. It’s whether they can afford not to.