Fewer industries are as competitive as the hotel industry in Hollywood, California. In this extremely competitive market there’s a tiny little 40 room boutique hotel called the Magic Castle Hotel. In many ways, the hotel could be identified as much by what they DON’T offer as what they do. They do NOT have a workout facility. There is no restaurant on the premises. Their rooms are simple, not luxurious.
And yet…they are consistently rated the number one hotel in Hollywood according to guests.
How do they do it?
I set off on a quest to answer that question, and experienced firsthand their Red Telephone (popsicle hotline). I sat down to interview the founder, Darren Ross, in Hollywood.
Listen to the interview here and learn:
-
How to build a service culture
-
Sprinkling in Magic
-
It doesn’t have to be fancy (humanizing the experience)
-
Helping your customers write a better version of their story
-
Incentivizing Stories (This was REVOLUTIONARY as an insight)
-
The magic of food
-
The more traditionally “boring” the industry, the bigger the opportunity (e.g., construction, CPA firms/ accounting, etc. have a huge opportunity to bring in magic to the service experience because no one expects it).
-
Becoming a Destination experience
(Sorry to say the audio quality isn’t great, I do hope you can look past that and gain some nuggets of gold from Darren)
