Have you ever been to a beautiful dinner that changed absolutely nothing for you?

We’ve all done it. The food is fantastic. The ambiance is stunning. The service is impeccable.

But the meal is…. instantly forgettable.

Or worse: Forced. A restaurant leaning on theater to disguise the fact that there’s no real experience underneath. In luxury, those tricks might feel novel for a month, but they have no staying power.

That’s the epidemic right now: flawless service with zero impact.

Too many brands confuse service with experience. Or mistake extravagance for meaning. They engineer with a sledgehammer instead of a paint brush: garish, overblown, tone-deaf to modern luxury consumers.

Here’s the truth:

Five-star service? Baseline.

Hospitality? Elevated service.

But an experience? That’s strategy in motion - crafted, layered, and designed to unlock something new for the client.

Yesterday I told a client this:

"Perfect service doesn’t crown you, it camouflages you. In a sea of polish, only brands that engineer resonant experiences surface as unforgettable. Service is the cost of entry. Experience is the currency of growth. Stop at service, and you’re maintaining. Master experience, and you’re compounding."

By the end of the conversation, they realized what they thought was leadership was actually inertia. Now they see the opportunity to leapfrog competitors before those competitors even notice the shift.

Lots of luxury brands claim to deliver experiences, but when I audit them, I feel fatigue, not wonder. Too many are just safe variations on a tired theme - predictable, derivative, indistinguishable. The tragedy is that they believe they’re creating something special, when in reality they’ve blended into the crowd.

This isn’t just about dining. It’s every luxury category. Consumers don’t need more polish. They want texture - moments so interwoven with their own story that they create memory density, not fleeting approval.

Beautiful service is forgettable.

Engineered experiences are unforgettable.

Which one are you building?