What If We’re All Competing for the Same Thing?
Blue ocean strategy may be a hospitality industry mantra, but most hotels still compete in crowded markets using the same formulas. This article explores how to operate more intelligently in a red ocean—standing out without becoming the cheapest or the most similar.
For years, the “blue ocean” metaphor has been repeated ad nauseam at conferences, in books, podcasts and strategic coaching sessions: a competition-free, unexplored space where innovation flows and profitability is possible without cannibalising one another. And while the image is powerful and the concept brilliant, I have reached an uncomfortable yet revealing conclusion: in the day-to-day reality of our hotels, we are still navigating red oceans.
I have attended hundreds of presentations on hospitality innovation that, in practice, amounted to changing the colour of the lobby walls, adding a vegan option to the breakfast menu, or implementing a new CRM without an underlying strategy. Cosmetic changes that do not transform the model, but rather perpetuate traditional competitive logic. The logic of the red ocean: we are all fighting for the same guest, with the same tools, in the same saturated market.
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