Prada just said what hospitality needs to hear.
At The Business of Fashion VOICES event, Prada Group CEO Andrea Guerra said something that cut through the noise of luxury pricing:
“If I’m not able to sell you an emotion, then we discuss pricing.
If we discuss pricing, then I’ve failed on the first part.”
He was talking about fashion.
But he could have been talking about hotels.
Because in luxury hospitality, if emotion isn’t doing the heavy lifting, pricing ends up carrying the blame.
And once you’re explaining your rate, your value proposition, or your concept, the emotional contract with the guest has already broken.
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Luxury isn’t what you charge. It’s what you make someone feel.
Hotels love RevPAR, ADR and upsell strategy.
But the next era of luxury is emotional value.
A guest doesn’t remember the cost of the suite.
They remember whether they slept deeper, felt seen, exhaled fully, or became a calmer version of themselves.
Price is logic.
Emotion is persuasion.
Luxury has always been an irrational purchase.
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Fashion has rebalanced. Hospitality has not (yet)
Guerra’s point was simple:
If luxury loses emotional desirability, it becomes another high-priced item on a shelf.
Hospitality has the same problem.
Too many hotels have raised rates without raising emotional value.
More marble. More amenities. More tech.
But no shift in how guests feel.
Guests don’t want more.
They want meaning.
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How hotels actually “Sell Emotion”
Not fireworks.
Not spectacle.
Not over-service.
Emotion lives in:
• a lobby that regulates your nervous system
• a micro-ritual at arrival
• a team member who read energy, not scripts
• a dining room with emotional cadence
• a memory loop that follows you home
• the feeling of being held without being handled
This isn’t operational design.
This is emotional design, the real product luxury guests pay for.
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If you want to charge More, don’t justify the price
Justify the Feeling.
The world’s best already do this:
Aman = serenity
Rosewood = intimacy
Capella = attunement
The Ned = belonging
Six Senses = recalibration
They don’t sell amenities.
They sell emotional transformation.
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A framework for leaders: Before you raise rates, ask two questions
1. What emotion does our brand reliably create?
If you can’t articulate it in one sentence, the guest cannot feel it.
2. Can a guest describe the change in themselves after the stay?
If not, you’re selling a room type, not a transformation.
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Closing Thought
Guerra wasn’t talking about hotels, but he was talking to us.
Because the moment the conversation becomes about price, emotion wasn’t strong enough to carry the value.
Hotels don’t need to chase higher rates.
They need to chase deeper feeling.
Sell the emotion, and pricing becomes irrelevant.
Fail to sell the emotion, and pricing becomes the whole conversation.
#LuxuryHospitality #BrandStrategy #ExperienceDesign #EmotionalHospitality #BehaviouralScience #GuestExperience #HotelStrategy