On a recent trip, I was looking for a hotel. Like many travellers, I began with the photographs. One five-star property caught my attention. The rooms were elegant, the lighting carefully judged and every detail selected to make the choice easy. I was almost ready to book. Then I scrolled down to the guest reviews.
The hotel had not changed, but the picture in my mind had. The reviews were not bad, yet they did not quite live up to the promise of the photographs. Several four-star hotels looked less impressive on screen but more convincing through their guests’ experiences.
It made me wonder: who had really shaped my perception of the hotel? The hotel, with its carefully chosen images, or the guests who left behind a few words about their stay?
A fifth star may confer status. But it cannot write the fifth review. People do that.
This is where the modern brand story begins. A company can choose its logo, colours and images, and carefully craft its promise. But once it opens its doors to customers, it is no longer the sole author of its story.
I have come to think of a brand as the distance between what you promise people and what they actually experience.
That distance is no longer silent. Every customer carries a camera, a publishing platform and a review channel in their pocket. A few minutes with an employee or an app can become a story that remains online for years. The customer has become a media outlet.
That thought returned to me during the Arab Media Summit in Dubai, where artificial intelligence featured prominently in discussions about media, communications and branding.
What if, on my next trip, I simply ask an AI assistant: “Where should I stay?”
A third narrator has entered the story.
The brand says: this is who I am. The customer says: this is what I experienced. AI can now read both accounts, alongside a wider trail of commentary, and turn them into a single answer.
For years, companies learnt how to rank in search results. Now consumers can increasingly turn to AI for answers. Between the brand and the customer sits a new intermediary, processing experiences, reviews and other signals before producing a recommendation.
This changes the economics of reputation. Marketing can create awareness, but AI may draw on what marketing departments do not control: reviews, media coverage, third-party commentary and the gap between a company’s claims and people’s experiences.
A company can optimise a website. It is much harder to optimise away a disappointing stay or an unanswered complaint.
So who tells the brand story now — the company that makes the promise, the customer who lives the experience, or the algorithm that interprets both?
When I search for a hotel today, I still scroll down. At the top, I see the hotel as it wants to be seen. At the bottom, I see it through the eyes of those who stayed there.
Tomorrow, I may simply ask AI. The contest for brands is shifting. It is no longer simply about controlling the image people see, but about the story the machine can credibly tell from the evidence people leave behind.
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