Hospitality + Guest Experience Consulting
Hospitality Is How People Feel in Your Presence.
I help hotels, hospitality groups, restaurants, private clubs and experience-led brands create guest experiences that feel more thoughtful, distinctive and human.
Through Emotional Hospitality, I bring together guest experience strategy, cultural intelligence, operational insight and experience design to help organizations turn thoughtful hospitality into stronger relationships, reputation and business value.
Founder & Creative Director of Kesh Events · 15+ years designing high-touch experiences for discerning private clients · Three-time author · Featured in People, CNN, Architectural Digest & The New York Times
Hospitality consulting is the practice of examining and strengthening the guest experience across strategy, culture, relationships and design, so that thoughtful hospitality builds trust, loyalty and business value. I provide it for hotels, hospitality groups, restaurants, private clubs and experience-led brands.
- Focus: how people feel in your presence
- For: hotels, hospitality groups, restaurants, private clubs, brands
- Where: Chicago & nationwide
- Starts with: Hospitality + Guest Experience Strategy
The Philosophy
The Highest Expression of Hospitality Is Consideration.
Beautiful spaces matter. Excellent service matters. Operational excellence matters. But none of them, on their own, guarantee that someone will feel genuinely cared for.
The experiences people remember are often shaped by something less visible: whether someone anticipated what they needed, understood the context, removed unnecessary friction, recognized what mattered and made them feel considered without requiring them to ask.
I call this Emotional Hospitality: the deliberate practice of creating the conditions for people to feel seen, understood, welcomed, cared for and remembered. It is the philosophy behind my consulting work and the lens through which I examine the entire guest experience.
The Opportunity
Guest Experience Is Business Strategy.
Hospitality is not simply a service function. It influences why people choose you, how they talk about you, whether they trust you and whether they return. The opportunity is rarely to add more. It is to understand where greater consideration can create greater value.
My work helps organizations identify the moments that influence:
Guest Satisfaction · Loyalty · Reputation · Return Intent · Word of Mouth · Brand Differentiation · Revenue · Relationship Value
Because what a guest feels is not separate from the business outcome. It is part of what creates it.
My Method
The Felt Journey™
Guest experience is not one moment. It is the accumulation of moments that shape how someone feels before, during and after an experience. I examine that journey through six stages.
Arrival
How am I received?
The experience begins before the formal welcome. Arrival should create clarity, confidence and an immediate sense of care.
Recognition
Do you see me?
Recognition is more than knowing a name. It is understanding context, preferences, expectations and what may matter to this particular guest.
Comfort
Can I relax here?
Physical comfort matters, but so do emotional ease, accessibility, discretion, clarity and the removal of unnecessary friction.
Participation
Is there a place for me?
The strongest hospitality does not simply present an experience. It creates thoughtful opportunities to engage, discover and participate.
Connection
What will I feel connected to?
People. Place. Culture. Story. Community. Brand. The most distinctive experiences create relationships beyond the transaction.
Departure
What remains afterward?
The farewell is not the end of hospitality. It is an opportunity to create appreciation, memory, advocacy and the desire to return.
Arrival → Recognition → Comfort → Participation → Connection → Departure
A Supporting Thesis
The Feeling Is the Luxury.
At the high end, beautiful surroundings and excellent service are expected. What distinguishes an experience is increasingly how intelligently and personally it responds to the person experiencing it.
Time protected.
Friction removed.
Preferences remembered.
Culture understood.
Access thoughtfully created.
This is where Emotional Hospitality becomes tangible. The luxury is not simply what the guest receives. The feeling is the luxury.
Where I Work
Capabilities
Guest Experience Strategy
I examine the complete guest journey to identify friction, missed opportunities and moments where greater consideration can materially improve the experience.
Emotional Hospitality
I help organizations translate Emotional Hospitality from philosophy into standards, decisions, behaviors and experiences that teams can actually deliver.
Culture + Sense of Place
Culture should never be decoration. I help organizations consider how food, design, art, makers, traditions, neighborhoods and local creative communities can deepen a guest's relationship with place.
Experience Design + Programming
From signature programming and cultural experiences to private-client moments, partnerships and live experiences, I help organizations create reasons for guests to engage more deeply.
Service + Human Experience
Technology can make hospitality more efficient. It cannot replace judgment, empathy, discretion or genuine human connection. I help organizations identify where human interaction creates the greatest value, and where the operation should quietly remove friction behind the scenes.
How We Work Together
Ways to Work Together
Three ways in, designed so one-time work leads to ongoing partnership.
Hospitality + Guest Experience Strategy
Foundational Assessment
For organizations that need an expert assessment of a defined guest-experience, hospitality or brand challenge.
- Guest Journey Assessment
- Experience + Friction Audit
- Emotional Hospitality Assessment
- Competitive + Experience Review
- Cultural + Sense-of-Place Opportunities
- Programming Recommendations
- Strategic Leadership Session
- Prioritized Recommendations + Roadmap
Experience Strategy + Creative Direction
For Growing Engagements
For organizations ready to move from assessment into development. I work alongside leadership and internal teams to translate strategy into a distinctive experience.
- Everything within Strategy
- Experience Concept Development
- Guest Journey Redesign
- Signature Programming
- Cultural + Local Integration
- Partnership Concepts
- Creative Direction
- Leadership + Team Workshops
Full Experience Design + Production
For Full-Scale Programs
For significant hospitality programs, guest experiences, private-client experiences, brand activations and live experiences requiring strategy through execution. Through Kesh Events, my team and I can lead the experience from concept through production.
- Experience Strategy
- Creative Direction
- Guest Journey + Programming
- Vendor + Partner Strategy
- Production Management
- On-Site Execution
- Post-Experience Review
Not Sure Which Tier Fits?
Tell me about your business, and I'll point you to the right starting place.
Email MeWho I Work With
Built for Experience-Led Organizations
My consulting work is designed for organizations where guest experience, reputation and relationships materially influence business performance.
Hotels + Resorts
Hospitality Groups
Restaurants + Culinary Concepts
Private Clubs
Branded Residences
Developers + Real Estate
Destinations + Tourism
Premium Retail + Lifestyle
Private-Client + VIP Programs
Experience-Led Organizations
Engagements may support an existing operation, opening, repositioning, renovation, new concept or broader guest-experience transformation.
Proof & Recognition
A Perspective Built Through Experience
My approach to hospitality was not developed in a boardroom. It has been shaped by more than 15 years of designing and producing high-touch experiences, working with discerning private clients, navigating culturally complex celebrations and studying the hundreds of small decisions that determine how an experience ultimately feels. That work has taught me that the most memorable hospitality is rarely about doing everything. It is about knowing what matters.
Gene & Georgetti
A paid consulting engagement with the full restaurant and events team to define the ideal client experience, closing with a hands-on flower-arranging session.
Viceroy Sugar Beach
Elevated the guest experience across every touchpoint: arrival and property transfer, check-in, and the event spaces.
Featured In
People · CNN · Architectural Digest · The New York Times · Forbes · Essence · Brides
Why Akeshi
Strategy Informed by the Real World
My perspective sits at the intersection of hospitality, live experience, cultural intelligence, design and business strategy. That matters.
I do not approach guest experience only as a strategist. I have spent more than 15 years responsible for delivering experiences in real time, where expectations are high, conditions change and the smallest detail can alter how someone feels.
I understand both sides of the equation:
The experience we imagine.
And the operational reality required to deliver it.
About
Akeshi Akinseye
For 15+ years, as founder and creative director of Kesh Events, I have designed and produced high-touch experiences for discerning private clients alongside leading hotels, resorts, chefs and creative partners around the world. That work has shaped a simple belief: the details people may never consciously notice are often the ones that determine how cared for they feel.
High-end celebrations are among the most demanding forms of live hospitality. There is one opportunity to get it right, expectations are deeply personal, and hundreds of decisions must work together in real time. I bring that same discipline, judgment and attention to hotels, restaurants, clubs and experience-led brands.
The feeling is the luxury, and it's what brings guests back.
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a hospitality consultant do?
A hospitality consultant helps organizations examine and strengthen the guest experience across strategy, service, culture, operations and experience design. My work uses Emotional Hospitality and the Felt Journey™ to identify friction, uncover opportunities and develop practical strategies that strengthen how guests feel, engage, remember and return.
How much does hospitality consulting cost?
Engagements begin with Hospitality + Guest Experience Strategy, followed by optional Experience Strategy + Creative Direction or Full Experience Design + Production. Investment is scoped to the size and goals of your organization and shared on a short fit call.
What types of businesses do you work with?
Hotels and resorts, hospitality groups, restaurants and culinary concepts, private clubs, branded residences, developers and real estate projects, destinations, premium retail and lifestyle brands, and private-client and VIP programs.
What areas do you serve?
I'm based in Chicago and work with organizations across the United States and internationally.
What is a guest-experience audit?
A guest-experience audit is a structured, outside-eye assessment of a business experienced as a guest, mapped across the Felt Journey and delivering a prioritized plan to improve how guests feel and what they spend.
How is this different from a typical hospitality consultant?
Most consultants focus on operations alone. I focus on Emotional Hospitality, how every touchpoint makes guests feel, drawing on a global career designing and producing high-touch experiences for discerning clients.
Let's Begin
What Should Your Guests Feel?
Every hospitality organization makes promises through its brand, design, service and positioning. The real question is whether the experience consistently makes those promises felt.
If you are opening, evolving, repositioning or rethinking a hospitality experience, I would love to hear what you are building.
Hospitality Consulting · Guest Experience Strategy · Emotional Hospitality · Experience Design