Building the XP Community
Our first XP Hospitality event at The Crown wasn’t slick or polished - but it was alive. A month earlier at BrightonSEO, Michelle Goodall reminded me that communities aren’t accidents. They’re built with intent, pride and people at the centre.
October 2024. Our first XP Hospitality event at The Crown. Eight weeks from idea to reality, and suddenly there we were, park teams, partners, ideas, laughter, nerves. It wasn’t seamless, polished, but it was ours...
At BrightonSEO a month before, I heard Michelle Goodall talk about her Community Periodic Table. We spoke briefly afterwards and it stuck...
Her framework made it clear: communities don’t just happen, they’re structured, intentional, and built to last.
She used LEGO as an example in her talk. The LEGO Foundation talks about play as the root of creativity, agency, and social connection.
“Learning environments are intentionally designed to maximize opportunities to foster creativity, social interaction, experimentation and a love of learning.”
— The LEGO Foundation
And outside the corporate story, you see it in the fan world too… LEGO User Groups where adults meet to build, share ideas, even host things like “Brickfast” breakfasts. That’s community as friendship, not just fandom.
Reddit shows the opposite flavour. It’s messy and unbranded, but it works because people own it. Pew Research found almost 80% of Reddit users say they get their news from the site, and millions use it daily as a social lifeline. It proves you don’t need polish to build belonging.
Even in B2B, the patterns repeat. The CMX Community Industry Trends Report shows how brands are investing long-term because community delivers retention and growth. The Salesforce Trailblazer network has become a career path in itself. HubSpot’s own forums log tens of thousands of peer-to-peer support posts every month. The point is simple: even the most corporate spaces thrive when people feel seen and supported.
Hospitality has always been about people. XP is about holding up a mirror so the sector could see itself with pride . Not a show. Not a sales pitch. A support system. A reminder that what we do matters.
And maybe it makes sense that people like me are behind this, millennials raised on glittery profile pages, endless group chats, LiveJournal threads, late-night Reddit scrolls... We learnt young that connection isn’t tidy. It’s awkward, funny, sometimes chaotic, but real.
That’s why The Crown felt different. Not corporate. Not curated. Just ours… all of ours.
Join the HXP community here: https://www.holidaymakerapp.co.uk/xp-hospitality/
Holidaymaker XP at The Crown, Blandford
