Creating A Storied Experience: The Key To Engaging Modern Travelers With Samantha Hardcastle

The concept of a storied experience goes beyond traditional travel. It’s about creating moments that inspire, connect, and transform. In this episode, Tony Martignetti sits down with Samantha Hardcastle, founder of The Storied Experience, to explore the power of immersive storytelling in hospitality and tourism. Samantha shares her journey from marketing to experience design, revealing how she helps destinations craft transformative, deeply connected guest experiences. Get ready to have your travel paradigm shifted as they unravel the magic of story, novelty, and play, and discover how to trade fleeting entertainment for truly transformative adventures that redefine how we explore the globe.

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Creating A Storied Experience: The Key To Engaging Modern Travelers With Samantha Hardcastle

It is my honor to introduce you to my guest Samantha Hardcastle. Samantha is the Founder of The Storied Experience, an experienced designer in the hospitality and tourism industry. She helps hotels, attractions, and destinations create meaningful immersive journeys for guests. She has developed a unique process to create compelling moments for connection inspiration and transformation for the travelers. She lives in Upstate New York in the Catskill. She is a fanatic travel and is big into cultural experiences. Now you know why I invited her on, because I am so aligned with what she's all about. It’s truly an honor to welcome you to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Tony. I am a big fan and looking forward to continuing our conversation.

This is going to be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to having people understand the work that you're doing because I find it to be interesting and impactful. I think it’s needed now that we need to have a deeper experience and deeper connection with the world around us. That's at the heart at what you do.

Yes, travel has always been what they say a cure for what ills you. It's a very powerful force if we know how to take advantage of it.

Journey To Experience Design And Meaningful Travel

We're going to start with what we always do here. We start with this process of revealing your journey to doing this work, what got you started and how you get to be doing this and the things you're doing the world through what's called flashpoints. These are the points in your journey that have ignited your gifts into the world. With that, I'm going to turn over to you in a moment and let you share what you're called to share and start wherever you like. Along the way, we'll pause and see what themes are showing up and go from there. What do you say?

I love it. Let's start at the beginning. In childhood, I lived in a very traditional suburb of New Jersey, and I was bored out of my mind. I had a lot of friends. We did a lot of things, but I was always longing for something deeper. I was usually finding that through a story. I was a huge nerd. I loved to read and obsessed with all the sorts of fantasy novels and places that would take me to a new world. That was my escape from the most boring place on Earth, in my opinion.

Sorry, New Jersey.

It did spark in me a desire to create something that was just different. I went to school for marketing and I became a copywriter. I started doing what most people do when they go down that path, which is I started a social media marketing business. This was in 2011, so right at the very beginning of social media becoming a tool for businesses and it was very successful. I was very fortunate to come in at that time but I still felt that hole from the before, where I was working with hotels, tourism operators, and  all kinds of different experiential businesses.

I could see this very clear opportunity to move from the mundane into the magical. I was confused as to why they had this opportunity to create something that was more inspiring or to foster real connection and intimacy. They were not taking advantage of it. This is what set me on my path to becoming an experienced designer. That word wasn't even a thing in my mind. I didn't know what to google. I didn't know what to search for. There was no experience design 101 back when I was looking for this. That was incredibly frustrating.

I just hobbled my way through to this point where I took some classes here and some classes there. This was right before COVID. This was 2018-2019 where I was like, “This is a thing. This could be a thing,” then COVID happens and the whole travel and hospitality industry got completely turned upside down, which was horrible timing.

I said to myself, “This is my passion. This is what I know is important, so I'm going to keep at it,” and I did. I was very fortunate to get to a place where I was comfortable with all the different threads that I had woven together to create my own process. Finally, years later, the rest of the world was ready to play. That's brings us to now.

I love what you shared. There's a couple things that I want to pull out here because when you have that conviction, you have to continue to say, “Somehow, I'm going to make this work. I'll bring all the pieces together.” A lot of people give up, because they're just like, “This is too hard, or how do I get into this?” Let's think about it as an exclusive club because the people who you're going to be working with may say, “Why do we need this? Why is this person coming to us with these ideas?”

Breaking through the noise is something that you probably had to push towards. Also, this idea of like building connections. I'm sure you can't just do this by brute force. You have to make connections and find people willing to listen and give you a chance. I'd love to hear more about that and say what you say.

Giving up was something that was on my mind on a regular basis. It was pushing a very heavy boulder of a very steep hill. The traditional model of tourism and hospitality is entertained or relaxation, or R&R and to come in and say, “What about all these other things that people care about their wellbeing, intimacy, and feeling a sense of belonging? What about those things?” It's like, “Those things are difficult. They're not easy. Entertainment is easy. We can just hire someone's to place some music or tell us a story.”

It's just this whole idea of using hospitality, tourism, and even just third places and spaces as a force for meaningful impact. It just was way too much for a lot of people. I was very fortunate early on to have a few people put their faith in me who did have a bigger vision and who saw something in society that was broken. They were like, “This can easily be fixed. We want to be the people who fix it.”

They knew that they had that vision. They knew that they wanted to move forward with it, but it also felt very heavy. It's one person alone. That's a big task. That's when they would come to me and we would work together, collaborate, and bring something to life that was about something more. It took a few people who were real visionaries, and at the forefront of what they were seeing to take a chance and say, “We can do this together.”

The Meaning And Impact Of Samantha Hardcastle’s Work

I have this desire to lean right into sharing with the audience what it mean to have what might be called the storied experience versus a regular experience. Before we do, there’s a sense of when we think luxury, we think exclusive. It has to be this fine touch and very much like expensive. The reality is, it's more about creating meaningless and you said earlier a meaning to every experience. This things that create more of an intimate experience as opposed to an expensive experience. I'm sure you're going to get into that, but why don't you share what does it mean to do the work that you do? What did it do for the people you’re working with?

There's so many layers of complexity to this. The first one I’ll touch on the idea that luxury means opulent or fancy or whatever the image that people get in their heads when they think of a luxury experience. When you think of the luxury consumer, it’s someone who can pretty much afford whatever they want whenever they want. They're already living their most opulent life. They have a sauna, a stunning pool in their backyard, and access it whenever they want. They can go to the Spa whenever they want. They can do these things. They have that privilege.

When you create a destination that has those things, it's not novel to them. It's just more of the same. How do you create novelty in someone's life? You have to give them something they're not used to. That's what I believe stories have the power to do. Flashback to me as a ten-year-old girl. I found novelty in those books because it was a completely opposite world of what I was used to. We almost have to use story as a framework for the experiences that were creating.

Story is a very complicated thing. People use it as a word all the time to describe things that have character or personality like, “That hotel has such a great story.” Oftentimes, it's not following the story framework. What makes the story different than just a string of occurrences or a string of events is usually some conflict or challenge that creates those peak moments. When you think of pleasant experiences, hospitality, tourism, and travel, the idea of introducing complex or challenge goes against everything that these industries have come to represent attainment, fun, joy and pleasure.

What makes a story different than just a string of occurrences or events is typically a conflict or challenge that creates peak moments.

A lot of times, it's these budding heads like, how do we introduce story in the true sense of the word into something that is all about joy, fun, and pleasure? It doesn't make sense. Contrast is how we get to that point. If you are exposed to more the same experiences, you're going to experience that baseline emotion. If you go out to fancy restaurants once a week or twice a week or maybe every night and that's what you do on vacation. There's no barrier.

There's nothing dividing that from your regular life. You don't have that novelty. You don't have something that's heightening those emotions. When we look at how we introduce heightened emotions, we have to look at the story framework and say, “We need to introduce a little conflict. We need to introduce a little challenge to get to that point where people feel like something's worth striving towards.”

It's so beautiful what you share it. It had me thinking. A lot of work that I do is coaching people and advising people is breaking patterns and having a pattern interrupt. Jolting them out of their existence as it is and saying, “This is different,” but what you got into there is something that's a little bit even more interesting. It’s this idea that we need to create that tension first. Make sure that they feel a sense of like, “I'm feeling something building up,” then you're going to have a climax or a peak experience of some sort that will allow them to say, “This was all worth it.”

There's a great book called The Power of Moments and they talk about how peak moments are nine times more valuable than if you were to spend your time creating or responding to issues that arise within the business. There's always that opportunity to say, “We're going to pivot and focus our attention away from responding to every little issue. We're going to focus on creating these peak moments.”

That's going to not only increase your ROI, but also people are going to talk about those things. When they have an experience that blew them out of the water, those are the things that people go on to say, “You have to go here. You have to experience this because it was so profound.” You don't say that about just anything.

That's a dark example, but you may be think of the movie the Menu. Have you see that before?

No. I'm too scared.

It's worth watching because there's this element of like, talk about a story to experience. There's an element of building this whole meal that was theatrical in nature, but had story weaved within. That's what came to mind when you're trying to describing this. It has a very dark ending.

It's funny. I'm working on a project for a property in Iceland and I have not been introduced to too much Norse stories or Viking stories because they're not as common in the states. I think also, they probably skew a little to a different audience than me like someone who's not terrified of reading about some of the crazy things that go on there. Part of my process is to learn about the cultural narratives and the cultural stories, which Iceland is rich in.

I'm learning quickly that a lot of the stories are dark and don't have happy endings, which is so opposite of what we're used to in America, where everything has a happy ending. It's giving me an interesting new perspective on story and its power. You look at Iceland and it's one of the happiest countries in the world, according to research. It makes you question like, what is the power of story if it's not the happy ending? It's that perspective shift. It's that lesson learns that I think is oftentimes the most powerful. The thing that we want out of our stories is that.

The power of a story is that perspective shift. It's that lesson learned that is oftentimes the most powerful.

It's interesting. Hearing you say that and it's like, that's what we need more o and it shouldn't be just so exclusive. A lot of people want to feel that sense of connection to something different and novelty, as you say, in this feeling of like you don't want people to be scared. You want people to feel alive through these experiences. The more that we can have a powerful story that also leads people feeling like, “I learned something through this. I learned something about myself.” It’s the true gift of travelling anyway. We always learn more about ourselves by getting out, doing different things, and being part of other cultures.

The Role Of Play And Storytelling

It reminds me of the idea of roleplay. I have been studying play for years. It plays a huge role in my work. I love learning about how play moves us into different ways of being. I think stories give us the greatest opportunity to step into a new role and trout. It parallels between travel and story. When you are exposed to something that you're not used to, there's that moment of like, who am I going to be in this moment?

You have to choose, are you going to continue doing something the way you've always done it or are you going to try something different this time? When I look back on my travels, the best moments, the moments that are most potent in my mind are the ones where I completely surprised myself. I did something that I didn't think was possible or I did something that was completely uncharacteristic of myself.

There are a few things that factor into this. A new environment helps us step into a different version of ourselves, but it's also the people around you. The industry has a tendency to put a lot of weight in design like thinking, “If we design a place that's beautiful enough, that will do all the heavy lifting for us.” There's so much more. It's not just about the way the environment engages with you. It's the way the people to come together and the way you're invited to step into a new role. You can do everything right, and if you don't offer up that invitation, then a lot of people will continue plugging away like they always have.

The way you're describing this has been thinking about, have there been organizations who have said to you, “We want you to design a stories experience that allows our employees to go on a journey that changes them?”

Not really. No one's thinking about all the poor employees. They're the front line of your narrative. One of the things that I want to do more of is help launch these story days. Once we get the story established, have that narrative, and it's infused into the guest experience from start to finish. We need to make sure that your staff and your team is vested and truly enamored with the story that you have created and invite them to have a role in shaping it.

I believe every business should have a story day. Maybe once a year. You come together with your staff and with your team and you explore the narrative, the different themes, the nuances of it, and you invite people to think of new ways to bring that story to life. If you don't have a story to begin with, then it's time to create one.

It's not something that you create once and you walk away from it. It's something that you're always tweaking and finding ways to extend it or make it create more peaks in that moment across the narrative or the journey. There's a lot of opportunity there too for the staff and the team to play a role in that because if they're not bought in, it falls flat.

This expansiveness of like, it's not about Hospitality. There's a lot of other ways that what you've created can be applied. That's the beauty of what you're doing. You're thinking about how this affects people. How do we create meaning in their world? Ultimately, it's about thinking through all these elements so that people have that experience.

For me, it's about the third places in spaces in the world. I tend to focus on hospitality and travel because it's my passion but like I view any destination anywhere in the world having the ability to create these environments where everyone can come together around something of importance. I don't see it being done.

From my generation, I'm a Millennial. We are lacking in the third places in spaces. There used to be churches and country clubs. They still exist but none of them are speaking to the younger generations. We're starting to see it slowly but surely. The clubs are becoming more youth friendly and that's exciting, but there's a long way to go there.

The Power Of Third Places For Connection

I agree. It's interesting. I was reading a book about third places. I can't remember the author, but it's so important how we need that. That's how we can foster the best connections. We need some place beyond the home or beyond our workplaces that allows us to create relationships and deepen our relationships skills because those skills are what's important for us.

If you only get to take a vacation once a year, you might have a chance at a deepening your connections for 5 days or 6 days or 7 days. How do you ensure that continues? You do need weekly exposure to people who share your values or even don't share your values and are able to offer up a contradictory viewpoint in life in a safe way. That's super important. With all the turmoil going on in the US, we could all benefit from that.

We'll continue to see society suffer until we figure out this component of where can people go? Beyond just the coffee shop where everyone's at their own table with their headphones on, drinking their coffee and doing their work. You're starting to see this pop up where they're saying, “Don't get on your phone come here and bring your crafts or just socialize with the phone.” It's interesting to see these things popping up. It's showing a real need in society.

We've all got to the point where we know that the phones are a problem and we need to do something about it, even if it's a micro-moment. They do so much for us, but they also can be harmful. Anything taken to an extreme is going to be painful. It's important for us to check ourselves from time to time.

I've been tempted to chuck mine out the window a few times. I know people who have adopted the dumb phone's and gotten rid of their smartphone, which I think is incredible. I'm envious of those people. Maybe someday I'll get to that point. We'll see. The experiential world has a long way to go in terms of like how we are developing just in environments but also how we are inviting people to connect in those environments. You can build anything. You can build a beautiful space. You could spend millions putting together a stunning environment for someone. If you aren't supporting people in connection, reflection, creativity, or whatever it is that you believe can help change the world then all you have is a beautiful space.

I hear you. It's like you have to almost lead. You can build the watering hole, but you have to make sure the horse knows what to do when they get there.

You just touched on such an important point, especially for these younger generations. All they know about social ability is social media or school. Those are the two worlds that they are constantly in. Do they know how to socialize? I see articles sometimes and it's like, what happened to the dinner party? All these conventional and traditional ways of gathering just disappeared.

We have to relearn how to engage with the role again. I truly believe that. Hospitality and tourism can play a big role on that. If people don't know how to engage with the world and they can't use their imagination and disconnected from their sense of play. It becomes hard to get real value out of that experience.

Challenges And Lessons In Business Growth

It's amazing. I'm going to turn the table a little bit back to you and think about what some of the biggest challenges that you face. Maybe the lessons you've learned in the process of building this business that you're in. I know you're building it out. There's still a lot of runways to make this amazing thing come to life in the way you want it. Tell me about some of the challenges you face, because this is not an easy thing to get into. Anyone who started a company knows it's not easy.

The hardest thing for me was putting all the pieces together. I was learning about story structure and play while being human behaviors like college and social science. I was learning about aesthetic intelligence and neuroscience and all these different things. I was like, “I know that they all have a place together and feed off of one another. How do I create a framework that  easily connects them all?”

I think that was until I could get that feeling good to me, I didn't feel comfortable going out to the world and saying, “I have something. I can help you.” It took me several years to be able to piece it all together and once you do it, you have to get people to buy into it. That was hard because again, the traditional way of business was, let's put a cornhole game out in the fire pit and call it a day.

I was challenging people to go beyond that and think more creatively. Not everyone wants to think creatively. Some people are just happy with the status quo. The biggest challenge from that point on was, how do I find the visionaries? How do I find the people who are born with the current model and are ready to go beyond that? There may be 5% or 10% of the industry of the population maybe. I'm not sure, but once you find them and you connect with them. It's magical, but until then, every day is still a hard uphill battle with this.

What you're tapping into is interesting as it makes me think of the adoption curve. You have the early adopters and you have the laggards. The key thing is getting those visionaries, the people who are willing to try and see the vision and allow you to come on board with them. Once they start to become raving fans and saying, “This made all the difference. This was an investment worth making.”

They can become advocates and the other people look to them and are going to be like, “We need that. That's where we're going.” Before you know it, you start to move up that curve and you see more people seeing the need of what is that you’re doing. That takes some patience and a little bit of a long game and mentality.

It is a long game mentality. In 2025, I'm seeing more people talk about story and hospitality. Everyone has their own perspective, which is great. It doesn't matter so much. I tend to get hung up sometimes where I see something and it gets frustrating. I'm like, it doesn't matter because what matters is we're all trying to push towards the same goal. We all see that stories ignite emotions and emotions have impact on people. Impact is good. We all can get to that same end goal.

Stories ignite emotions that have an impact on people, and having an impact is good.

If you want to call it a story, that's fine. You're probably not using the word correctly, but I'm not going to go crazy on you for using the word wrong. It's not worth time. It is interesting to have the conversation, though, and be like, “What makes you call it a story?” You never know. Your own cognitive biases can get in the way and you might be seeing something totally different than someone else. Having that conversation is important.

Years later, we're getting to a place where this is no longer a nice to have. It's no longer a luxury. You get to a point where it becomes, as you said, mass adoption. We'll start to see that probably over the next five years. It doesn't happen overnight, but we're getting there. I see it a lot now. I see the conversation heating up, which is exciting.

I love that. Part of this is when you see other people who are like on the same vein, that's a good thing. You already know that you're on to something and you're building something that is part of a movement in the right direction. This is probably the worst analogy but I'll give it a go anyways. I think about AI. Every company wants to build himself as an AI company, but are they truly AI or are they like bolting on something that happens to have some tools involved?

There are some tried and true AI companies that are doing amazing work. There's no doubt about it, but the key thing is to make sure that we get to the core of what we're trying to do. We're trying to create this ability to change the way we experience. We want to create novelty which we all have been craving especially coming out of the pandemic. We were all stuck in a pattern for a period of time and then we realize something's got a change.

I would never trade yelling into the void. When you're all alone and you're the only one saying something, going back to what you said, you do start to question like, is this valid? Is this something? Am I just making this up? When other people start to say it and you're like, “We're good. This has legs.” Sometimes that mass critical movement or that moves something forward. When we talk about things like AI and these things, it will be interesting to see where this ends up.

That's the beauty of it all. Years ago, I could have never known what was possible because of the lack of depth in my knowledge. What I was promoting years ago was very surface level. It was very much like the gimmicky Instagram. It's like, “Come on. Take a photo.” That's the experience. That was the extent of my knowledge because I hadn't done the research to understand what an experience could be. I feel like every year, we get closer and closer to like, “Experiences can be anything. We can bring anything to life.”

When I think about that, I'm like, “The possibilities are endless.” If I had gotten the opportunities ago when I first started looking into this, what I created would have been uninspired because I was at the very beginning of my journey. Things happen for a reason. The timing is perfect now. Years from now, who knows what we’ll be creating?

I love that, because there's part of this, which is to say that you're still uncovering what it is that is the true gift of what you're going to be able to offer. That is what we should all be aspiring for. In some sense, you want to constantly be moving your own sense of what this could look like. That's wonderful.

Capturing Ideas And Communicating Your Vision

One of the things I want to point out for the readers because it's so important to know. I love how you capture a lot of these ideas in your writing. I've been reading your blogs and it's well done in terms of your capturing the essence of what you're trying to do and what you are doing. The point comes across clear that this is a different type of experience. Keep going.

I appreciate that. The newsletter I've had since 2020. It's been a long time. It's the one thing that is probably tethering me. Every time I start to think, “Is this worth doing?” I sent out an email and I get all these amazing responses from people who get it, who care about this, and who are so inspired by the work. It keeps me moving forward. That’s so important when you are at the forefront of change and you feel alone. You feel like, is it worth pushing forward talking to people and hearing them say that this is important? It does give you some gas in the tank.

What you shared there is very valuable. Theres’ so many people out there, we do the work and I say we because I feel this way sometimes, too. It’s a sense of like, you do the work and you’re like, “Is anyone listening? Is this working?” You start feeling this sense of like, “I don't know,” and then you get an email from someone who says, “Yes, this is amazing. This makes all the difference in how I think about things.” You're like, “I know that I'm onto something.” Not only that, but I feel validated that the work is worth it.

There's so many quiet people. I remember I went to an industry conference once. I had five people come up to me and said, “I love your newsletter.” I was like, “I have no idea who you are, but thank you.” There's a lot of people who will never come out and say something who will stay quiet. Doesn't mean they don't appreciate it, but it is nice when they finally do say something. If you are listening to someone or following someone and you appreciate their work, don't forget to let them know.

Embracing Creativity And Following Your Passion

I love that. As we’re coming closer to the end, is there anything you want to share about the work that you haven't already that you’d love to share?

My message has been, has always been, and what it always will be is please continue to challenge yourself and keep your blinders on. Stop looking out at what your competitors are doing. Stop paying attention to what the status quo is and ask yourself what do you want to create. We don't need more carbon copies.

We don't need more cookie cutter experiences out in the world. If you want to build a museum of ice cream, build a museum of ice cream. We mean more of this imaginative creativity in the world and that's what I'm always speaking out. If you are doing something like that, I would love to hear from you and chat because those are the things that inspire me.

We need more imaginative creativity in the world today. If you want to build a museum of ice cream, build a museum of ice cream.

The way you described, it was interesting. At first, I was like, “You're going to put your blinders on. That seems bad but partially, it's maybe about like being expansive first. Experiencing the world and having experiences then take what you've learned and get focused and be like, “Now, it's me. I'm going to do what I want. I want to do what likes me up,” and allow that to be the place where you can start to go deep into the passion that you have now discovered about yourself and what you want.

People are a little afraid to dive into their passion because they think they're the only ones with it. I will tell you, that is not the case. There's always people who care about what you care about. The worst marketing advice that I ever hear is, “You are not your customer.” I will challenge that. I will say that, “If you are passionate about something and you love things. There are people out there who have the same passions, the same loves, and interests. It's okay to create something for yourself because you'll do it with so much passion, attention, and thoughtfulness that people will fall in love with it.”

Books That Have Shaped Samantha’s Perspective

I love what you said. That's a mic drop moment right there. I have one last question for you and that is, what are one or two books that had an impact on you and why?

I always have a few that are just unbelievable. I will say that Immersion by Paul Zak is the one I always Rave about. It's an incredible look into the neuroscience of immersion and experiences. Even just the most subtle things. He talks about story a lot and how story creates some more experience, which is why I love it. I highly recommend it.

The second one I will say, this one can go a few different directions, but The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker is probably the most thoughtful book I've ever read. Anyone that will read it will come away with, hopefully, the inspiration to foster deeper and more meaningful belonging wherever they go, if it's business, business. If it's just life, its life. She's done a good job of showing us that it's okay to break the rules. That's some permission that everyone needs in this day and age.

Those books are amazing. I love what you shared in terms of the insights from them. One of the books she mentioned earlier, which is good to come back to is the Power of Moments by Dan Heath. That book is just wonderful too and so great. Samantha, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a wonderful conversation. I love what you're doing in the world and continue to do this and keep us posted through your newsletters and such. I want to thank you.

Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure.

Before I let you go, I want to make sure people know where to find you. Where can they learn more about your work?

There's TheStoriedExperience.com. There's a lot of resources there. You can subscribe to my email newsletter, which Tony has already mentioned. I also launched a new Substack called Built For Stories and that is geared specifically at hospitality, but who knows? You might get something out of it if you're outside in space.

It's always good to have exposure to things outside of our normal world because you learn something new and you get a different perspective to bring into your work. Thank you, again. Thanks, readers, for coming in the journey. I know you're leaving feeling like you're ready to experience something different out in the world. Let's make that happen.

Important Links

• Samantha Hardcastle on LinkedIn
• Samantha Hardcastle on Instagram
• The Storied Experience
• Built For Stories
• The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact
• Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness
• The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters

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