When Authenticity Becomes a Trend
When Authenticity Becomes a Trend
There was a moment when authenticity meant truth.
It was quiet, unpretentious, and deeply human.
It was not a marketing asset, but a way of being – natural, unpolished, and full of presence. It was the reason we travelled: to meet life as it is, to feel something real, not something rehearsed.
Today, the word authentic has become a costume the industry wears when it wants to look honest.
It appears in every brochure, every campaign, every sales pitch.
It promises connection but often delivers choreography.
What once reflected sincerity has turned into a tactic – the same way sustainability did – a convenient label to make the same things appear new again.
Both words, once alive and uncomfortable in their truth, have been softened and stretched until they have lost their spine.
Now they serve as decoration for a business that still moves too fast to mean what it says.
We live in an era where even honesty has become performative.
The industry does not lie – it curates.
It stages truth as a product, selling it to travellers who crave meaning but are given mood boards instead.
And that, perhaps, is the most dangerous illusion of all.
The Paradox of the Real
Hotels now design “authentic corners” or pretend to be authentic by hanging old tools and rustic objects on the walls, as if decoration could replace essence.
Objects once used by real hands have become props for storytelling, displayed to signal a past that no longer exists – a past as curated as the décor itself.
Across the world, hospitality brands build “authentic villages,” entire hotel complexes designed to look centuries old but conceived on a drawing board.
They borrow from local architecture, customs, and crafts to construct a version of culture that feels safe, photogenic, and perfectly controlled, and then call it luxurious.
It is authenticity reimagined by outsiders, built not from belonging, but from the pursuit of profit.
For them, communities become scenery. Traditions that do not belong to them become assets. And what once had meaning turns into merchandise.
The more they replicate the local, the less local it becomes.
This is not evolution. It is an imitation.
Modernisation is natural when it grows from within a community, from businesses built by local families, from real history and lived experience. But replicating authenticity, manufacturing heritage, and packaging identity into a product is cultural theatre – a performance of belonging staged for those who will never truly belong.
We have learned to simulate honesty, to choreograph imperfections so perfectly that they no longer feel genuine.
All carefully calibrated to create the illusion of connection, not with the destination, but with the idea of one.
Authenticity cannot be curated.
It lives in emotion, not execution.
It happens in the unplanned, the unscripted. In the silence between expectations.
The Cost of Performance
Behind this stage of orchestrated sincerity, people are tired.
Hotel teams spend weeks learning how to look real – rehearsing gestures of warmth, studying how to appear effortless, whatever and whenever the guest wishes, attending workshops on how to “tell a story”.
If there is any story to tell at all…
And when there is none, authenticity is replaced by vision and inspiration. Carefully staged and endlessly rehearsed.
In the process, they lose the time and sometimes the courage to simply be real.
DMCs rewrite their narratives to fit the latest trends, filtering out what is raw or uncomfortable, polishing every word until the truth no longer fits, as if the word uncomfortable itself had only negative connotations.
Yet discomfort (I do not mean the extreme one – I love comfortable rooms and nicely plated meals) is where meaning often begins; it is what makes a destination real, human, and unforgettable.
The space for honesty has almost vanished.
Every edge must now be softened, every imperfection covered with a smile.
They no longer protect the soul of their destination – they edit it to please a buyer who has never seen it. It is like shouting to the travel agents – “take me, take me, choose me!”.
Isn’t that humiliating?
When everything is branded as authentic, nothing feels authentic anymore.
The experience becomes a performance – familiar, predictable, and strangely hollow.
The industry keeps selling emotions but has forgotten how to feel.
The Lost Courage to Be Simple
Realness has no logo.
It does not come with a franchise manual, a scent collection, or a globally recognisable tone of voice.
It cannot be scaled, formatted, or trademarked.
It simply is when people have the courage to let it be.
Today, international hotel networks move from one region to another, applying identical formulas in different climates.
The same or similar architecture, the same colours, the same storytelling lines – all shaped to fit a brand identity, and to keep guests enclosed within a familiar comfort zone that follows them from continent to continent.
Each property becomes instantly recognisable, yet increasingly detached from the land that hosts it, and what once told the story of a village, a valley, or a culture, now tells the story of a marketing team.
The louder the message, the less it means.
Authenticity cannot be replicated; it can only be respected. And respect requires restraint, the ability to stop before the essence disappears.
Simplicity, in this sense, has become the rarest form of luxury.
It takes courage to be simple.
To resist the urge to overdesign, to overpromise, to keep adding in fear of being overlooked. To trust that silence, space, and sincerity can be enough.
Authenticity is not a marketing direction. It is a responsibility.
A promise to remain true to what already exists: the stories, people, and landscapes that do not need embellishment to be meaningful.
Luxury should not imitate life, but it should reveal it.
It should strip away what is unnecessary until only the essential remains – clarity, emotion, and connection.
And perhaps this is where the next chapter of hospitality begins: not in louder campaigns or reinvented slogans, but in the quiet confidence of those who choose to be real.
