MEININGER Hotels

Anja Keplin is a marketing and communications professional with nearly two decades of experience in branding, hospitality, and customer engagement. She began her career at leading advertising agencies including DDB and Scholz & Friends, working across PR, event marketing, entertainment marketing, and brand strategy.

In 2009, she joined MEININGER Hotels as a Marketing Coordinator, when the marketing team consisted of just two people. She played a key role in building and expanding the department alongside the company’s rapid growth from around a dozen hotels to nearly 40 properties across Europe.

Her expertise lies in brand development, storytelling, customer experience, and creating authentic, experience-driven marketing strategies.

How Hospitality Brands Earn Trust in a Sceptical Digital Age

Branding is extremely important for customers today, especially younger generations. They have access to vast amounts of information, are highly informed, and often sceptical. Because of this, a brand cannot be designed only from the inside out or exist on paper. It must be genuinely lived and experienced at every touchpoint across the entire customer journey, from pre-stay to post-stay.

A strong brand should come from within the company itself. Brand purpose is not something you can simply define at the top and then hand down to employees. It has to be developed, understood, and lived by the people who deliver the experience every single day.

At Meininger, we followed exactly this approach. Around eight years ago, we worked with a brand agency to define and capture the brand DNA of Meininger. It was not created in a room and then applied across the company. Instead, we conducted a full 360-degree analysis to understand who we truly were as a brand. This helped us identify our authentic DNA, which became the foundation of the brand experience we deliver today.

The Evolving Expectations of Today’s Experience-Driven Travelers

Technology plays a major role today. AI may sound like a buzzword, but for younger generations, it is simply part of everyday life. They expect convenience and want friction removed from their experience, whether in booking, check-in, or general communication with a hotel.

This means hospitality brands must offer solutions such as precheck-in, booking management tools, chatbots, and other seamless digital services. For younger audiences, these are no longer extras but expected as part of a smooth customer journey.

At the same time, younger generations are seeking meaningful moments and authentic experiences. They want to explore, connect, and exchange ideas. Tangible, real experiences are becoming increasingly valuable, reflected in broader cultural trends where authenticity and physical experiences are making a comeback.

From a brand perspective, this must be reflected across every touchpoint, not only in marketing and communications. The brand experience should also be evident in interior design, hotel structure, and public spaces. These spaces should encourage interaction, connection, and exchange among guests, creating an experience that is both seamless and meaningful.

The Role of Authenticity in Effective Brand Narratives

Storytelling is extremely important today, although in many ways it always has been. The same applies to customer experience. What matters more than ever is authenticity. Everything a brand communicates must be real, and it must genuinely deliver on its promises. The same principle applies to storytelling.

The most powerful stories reflect who you truly are as a brand. They need to be meaningful, relevant, and honest, showing what you stand for so people can genuinely connect with and be drawn to your brand.

At Meininger, we have a very diverse audience, including backpackers, business travelers, families, and school groups. While these groups are different, they all share a desire to explore the city and experience something new. This shared motivation is central to our storytelling.

Effective storytelling happens when you connect what matters to your audience with what matters to your brand. When these align, the story becomes far more impactful. A big budget is not essential; what matters is that the story feels relevant and authentic to the audience.

Honesty and truthfulness are essential. Authenticity is widely discussed in branding, but it is not a trend or buzzword. It is the foundation of strong branding and meaningful storytelling.

Creating Hospitality Experiences Guests Choose Again and Again

We pay very close attention to guest feedback and what our guests are saying about us. We use a tool that analyzes feedback across multiple channels, helping us understand what guests appreciate and where improvements are needed. Based on these insights, we continuously evaluate how to enhance the overall guest experience.

“A strong brand should come from within the company itself. It has to be developed, understood, and lived by the people who deliver the experience every single day.”

This is not only a marketing and communications exercise. In marketing and communications, close collaboration with other departments such as operations and customer care is essential. This enables us to gather direct guest feedback while also sharing insights internally to improve different areas of the business.

Social media also plays a very important role today. Younger audiences, and increasingly consumers in general, no longer rely only on Google as they did in the past. They turn to platforms like Instagram and TikTok for inspiration, recommendations, and information. Over the past one to two years, AI has also become a key way people search for answers and discover brands, with many using AI chatbots and other AI-driven tools for inspiration and guidance.

For marketers and communicators, this means ensuring visibility, relevance, and engagement across all these platforms.

Creating Brands That Last

When it comes to building a brand, every touchpoint matters. A brand is much more than marketing or communication. It is the complete customer experience with a company. This includes the physical environment, guest welcome, staff interactions, digital channels, and interior design. Every aspect contributes to the overall brand experience.

That is why it is important to understand the business as a whole. If you work in marketing and communications, you also need a strong understanding of operations, HR, procurement, revenue, and all other functions. Only then can you create and deliver a consistent, strong brand experience.

On a personal level, curiosity and passion are equally important. The world is changing rapidly, with new developments in digital platforms and technology happening almost every month, sometimes even more frequently. Staying aware, adapting quickly, and continuously learning is essential.

One final piece of advice, especially because I’m a strategist at heart, is that whatever you do, make sure you have a clear strategy in place. Without a strong strategy, nothing works in a sustainable way.