Personal Touches Go a Long Way

Yeah, at the time we were writing the book, there was a hotel that ranked in TripAdvisor's top 3 hotels of Los Angeles. And it's called the Magic Castle Hotel. Now, the number 1 hotel is the Hotel Bel Air, which is a Hollywood boutique hotel. Their massive pool has its own weather system because it's so large. The rooms have bespoke wood furniture, high thread count sheets. You can control everything in the room, the drapes, a $3,000 stereo system with an iPad controller. The floor is heated, which is absolutely critical in those terrible, horrific Hollywood winters. So that's the Hotel Bel Air. Number 3 is the Four Seasons. And what's not in the top 3 is the W, the Ritz, all kinds of brands that have their own Los Angeles hotel. Number 2 is Magic Castle Hotel. You look at it, and it looks suspiciously like a 1960s apartment building, because it is a 1960s apartment building, painted canary yellow. The pool is nowhere near the size of the Hotel Bel Air. The rooms are not particularly— I mean, it's more IKEA than bespoke wood furniture. There is a controller that you can use to control the lights and the drapes. You say to your child, honey, could you get up and get the lights going? Voice activated works. But the Magic Castle Hotel is is not nearly the physical plant that you would expect from a number 2 hotel. But what is true is that if you go to the snack bar in your room, there's a long list of things you can order from the front office. And it has Kit Kats. It has Cracker Jacks. It has grape soda. It has cream soda. It has much longer— about 30 things that are available, all for free. And if you've ever had the mistake— made the mistake of eating, having the salt craving at night and having the cashews and realizing you wasted a sixth of your tuition for that quarter. This is a very different experience. But the thing that people always remark on is by the pool, there's a phone, a red phone. Looks like a Cold War era relic that the President of the United States could use to call the Premier of the Soviet Union. And if you walk over and pick up the red phone— well, above the red phone is this sign pinned. It says Popsicle Hotline. And so you walk over and you pick up the red phone. And a voice on the other end says, "We'll be right out." And a few minutes later, somebody walks out of the front office with white gloves, carrying a silver tray, and they pass popsicles around the pool. And the kids are beaming, the adults are beaming. There's no better recipe for happiness than a cold popsicle on a warm Los Angeles afternoon. And what's remarkable about that, and what's remarkable about the snack foods, is for less than the Hotel Bel Air spends on chlorine tablets for their massive pool, They are creating happiness, and they do it reliably and systematically. If you check into the Magic Castle Hotel, the desk clerk is primed to ask you, "Is there a special event that you're celebrating here?" And occasionally people say, "Oh, we're here for John's birthday." Well, in the back, there's a person who's eavesdropping, and if they say something like, "We're celebrating John's birthday," there are a set of cakes in the back and some cake decorating equipment, and so they quickly scrawl "Happy Birthday, John" they grab some of the balloons that are already inflated there, and they practice this. They do room dashes. You know, practice getting to the room with the cake and the balloons without spilling anything. You walk into the room, you know, and the couple that has just introduced themselves 5 minutes earlier to the front desk, they walk in and there are balloons there. There's a cake that says, "Happy birthday, John." And they go, "How did they do that?" Right? And that's magic. That's magic. And that's what they're going for, those wow moments. And the amazing thing is, once you see what they're doing, it's so easy. And yet I walk into hotels all the time, and the Hilton, the Marriott in San Francisco looks just like the one in New Orleans, looks just like the one in Austin. Why don't we walk into every hotel room and there's a drink and a snack that exemplifies local cuisine that you'll only get there? I mean, why shouldn't we have a sense of place? About things. And so the Magic Castle is doing stunning work very inexpensively just by thinking about moments of elevation.