Bonus Buzzwords That Will Likely Be Abused (and Already Are)
Published 29.05.2025 - Michael A. Di Palma
I was listening to Barry Diller the other day—you know, the guy who turned QVC from a sleepy shopping channel into a slick, data-driven commerce beast. He didn’t invent anything new. He just gave it a better name. He rebranded “home shopping”as interactive retail. And suddenly—people started to care.
That’s what good innovation does. It doesn’t erase what came before. It reframes it so people can see its value again.
But here’s where I start twitching:
In hospitality right now, we’re drowning in buzzwords: Augmented. Regenerative. Biophilic. Algorithmic. Experiential.
Half of them sound like they were written by a marketing intern with ChatGPT while drinking a kombucha.
And most of them? They’re describing things we’ve already been doing for decades—only now they’ve got filters and a playlist.
So no—I’m not anti-innovation. But I am very much anti-bullsh*t.
So for the next few weeks, I’m breaking down a handful of these trendy terms:
What they actually mean
Where they’re showing up
And how we can talk about them like human beings—without sounding like we’re pitching crypto over brunch.
Starting next week, we’ll be digging into these culprits of trend fatigue:
Food-as-Media
Immersive Menus
Ingredient Transparency
Algorithmic Ordering
Let’s separate the helpful from the hype—and maybe even reclaim a little common sense along the way.