Written by Leanne Naughton, Managing Partner, Retail Media Monetisation
Why hotels, restaurants, pubs, venues and travel businesses are becoming valuable media owners
Hospitality businesses have spent years looking for revenue beyond the room, seat, table or ticket. Yet many still overlook the media value already sitting inside the customer journey.
That journey stretches from discovery and booking to travel, ordering and spending, across everything from business trips and weekend breaks to dinners, concerts and nights out. What makes it valuable is not simply the number of people passing through. It's the context of why they are there.
Where is someone going? What are they celebrating? What would make the experience easier or better? Booking patterns, loyalty data and previous spend offer clues, but the test is simple: does a brand have a credible reason to appear at that moment?
A hotel might connect a guest with an airport transfer. A pub could introduce a drink that suits the occasion. A venue might make the journey home easier. Get it right and commerce becomes part of the service, not an interruption.
It is tempting to treat this as retail media with different screens. That misses what makes hospitality valuable: the experience people came for.
Hospitality media networks are taking shape
That shift is already under way. Marriott Media, launched in June 2025, uses Marriott Bonvoy data to connect partners with travellers across websites, apps, in-room touchpoints and beyond. Early partners included Visa, Uber and PepsiCo.
In September 2026, McDonald’s highlighted a US media-network pilot in around 450 company-owned restaurants, testing third-party ads on drive-thru screens. It sees potential for $1 billion in annual revenue. But the more revealing point was its commitment to doing this without disrupting the customer experience.
OpenTable Media, launched in February 2026, brings the same logic to restaurant discovery and booking. Early partners including Diageo and Cobra Beer have explored ways to connect campaigns with dining experiences. Airlines are moving too: United’s Kinective Media reaches travellers across digital channels, airports and seatback screens, supported by first-party loyalty insights.
These businesses have different customers and touchpoints. Their propositions are strongest though when they feel less like an ad network and more like a better concierge.
The physical estate matters as well. Screens in pubs, restaurants and venues can respond to an occasion, a location or even a live event. In a 2024 Stonegate Group survey, 72% of guests surveyed said in-venue screen content had influenced their order. That is reported influence, not proof of incremental sales, but it shows why advertisers are interested in the moment of choice.
Better technology, higher expectations
AdTech is making these propositions easier to build. First-party data can help businesses understand intent, while privacy-safe data collaboration and stronger links to transactions create opportunities to demonstrate value to advertisers. But technology alone does not create a compelling reason for a brand to be there.
AI adds another challenge. Search, recommendation and booking are beginning to merge into conversational journeys. A customer could ask an assistant to plan a weekend, compare hotels, book dinner and arrange transport in one exchange. Hospitality brands will need connected, well-structured information to remain discoverable, and experiences distinctive enough to compete on more than price and availability.
There is an uncomfortable tension here. Travel and dining signals can be deeply personal. If an offer feels intrusive, clever targeting will not rescue it. Consent, clear governance and restraint have to be designed into the proposition from the start.
Measurement matters just as much. Clicks are not the prize. Advertisers will want evidence of bookings, reservations, upgrades, orders and repeat behaviour. Not every outcome can be perfectly attributed, but hospitality media needs to demonstrate more commercial value than a conventional sponsorship package.
Start with the guest, not the screen
My concern is that some businesses will start in the wrong place: count their screens, package the inventory and recruit a sales team before deciding what the proposition actually does for the customer. McDonald’s scale makes the revenue case compelling, but its customer-experience guardrail is arguably the more valuable lesson.
A better starting point is the journey itself. Identify moments when a customer has a genuine need, the business shapes the experience and a relevant partner could improve it. Test a few. Understand what customers welcome, what operations can deliver and which outcomes advertisers will pay for.
The prize extends beyond advertising revenue. A well-designed proposition can support ancillary spend, strengthen loyalty and bring partner funding into the experience. It also offers advertisers something increasingly scarce: attention attached to a real occasion. The risk is equally clear. Commercialise the wrong moments and the experience becomes cluttered, fast.
So the ambition should not be to monetise the guest, diner, traveller or fan. It should be to earn more value by being more relevant to them.
At dentsu, we see this as a connected challenge across commerce, media, customer experience, data, technology and creative. Through New Stream Media, we can help hospitality businesses make those choices in the right order: define the customer value, prove the commercial case, then build for scale.
The winners will not necessarily own the most screens or the largest loyalty database. They will understand which moments deserve a commercial layer, and which should be left alone. That's the conversation worth having first.
