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- [00:10]
A
Hello and welcome back to Slate Money Travel, the bonus miniseries from Slate Money. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios, talking all about the business of the travel industry. And this week we have Colin Nagy, who is a man of many talents. Colin, do a quick list of who you are, because you wear many hats and you're quite good at all of them.
- [00:36]
B
Yeah, I run strategy for an ad agency called Fred and Farid, and we're Paris, New York, Shanghai, and Los Angeles.
- [00:45]
A
So you travel to all those places?
- [00:47]
B
Yeah, and I also write a hospitality column for skift, and I'm very interested in hospitality, guest experience and the idea that hospitality is a creative act.
- [01:03]
A
So we are going to be talking all about exactly that. And specifically, we're going to translate this term, hospitality, which is an industry term. What we are talking about is hotels, and we are going to talk about what makes a good hotel, why people pay extra to stay in a good hotel, and what builds loyalty and all manner of other super gnarly, interesting things. Even the texture of the couch in the lobby. This is. We're gonna get. We're gonna get super detailed here.
- [01:35]
B
With good ghosts as well.
- [01:36]
A
With good ghosts. We're gonna talk about ghosts here on Slate Money Travel. Talk to me about ghosts.
- [01:43]
B
Ghosts create the intangible magic of a place sometimes, and it could be a location a la. I think Chamonix is a place that has good ghosts.
- [01:54]
A
Good ghosts.
- [01:55]
B
It has the ghosts of people trying to do something difficult in terms of mountaineering or blah, blah, blah. But when you go to that place, you feel something beyond the space. Right. And then ghosts in terms of a particular location. You and I were just talking about how you could have the most magically designed perfect hotel or room. But, like, they're the intangibles that actually make or make a place. And it comes down to not just ghosts in a literal sense, but some deeper subconscious feeling that you get out of the space. And I think that that's what makes a hotel really addictive to people. You know what I mean?
- [02:39]
A
So, Colin, you stay in many hotels.
- [02:43]
B
Yes.
- [02:44]
A
And you are kind of a hotelologist. You have, like, a column which writes regularly about hotels, and you are. You are going to have a podcast about where you talk to hotel general managers.
- [02:57]
B
Yeah. So I've been writing a hospitality column for three years, and a lot of it is kind of dissecting the nuances and the magic that goes into creating really interesting experience for someone. And that might come from the design of a space. It might come from how the staff interacts with guests, things like that. And because of all these conversations I've been having for several years, I've wanted to do longer form things. So I have four or five in the can and I'm just going to be rolling it out pretty soon. But it's going to be longer conversations with GMs, really interesting hospitality thinkers, stuff like that.
- [03:37]
A
Cool.
- [03:39]
B
So watch this space.
- [03:40]
A
So yeah, we will definitely hang out and wait for that. But in the meantime you can give us a little sneak peek of what you've learned. And the thing which, the number, the main thing which I just want to understand here is I am traveling to a certain place, I need a place to stay for the night. And there's a certain amount of convenience involved in staying in one location rather than in a less convenient location. So obviously I'm willing to pay for location. And then so my question is above and beyond just that, like you know, the shelter and the location, what goes into the price of a hotel room and what can a hotel do that's going to make me like willing and even possibly eager to pay more so that I can stay in their hotel rather than someone else's?
- [04:37]
B
Sure. I think a lot of it is context, right. I think we all have the situation where we just need a bed and a shower, right. And we're leaving at 6:30 the next morning and blah, blah, blah. But as all these hotels, as the space is getting more competitive, as the monster brands develop more brands and the boutiques try to retain their interesting, you know, niche, I think it really comes down to say, design. How do you make something unique, comfortable, inspiring. But also I think that a lot of it is the interactions with staff. And when you stay at a truly exceptional hotel, when you stay at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, it's almost as if it's everything runs as a Swiss watch, you know, the arrival, the way things just kind of magically happen for you, the greeting, kind of moving into this, into a check in and everything is just so meticulously polished that you almost feel like you're ahead of state, even if you're just some like person that used Hyatt points. And I think that that is the, that is the intangible of a great hotel is to make you feel welcome, to kind of sand down any of the friction points and to have this empathy, anticipation and attention to detail. And I think that the hotels that do that the best, that welcome you almost like a friend rather than a transaction are the ones that create what I think is actual loyalty.
- [06:20]
A
So it's fascinating. You picked out the Park Hyatt Tokyo because that, of course, is the hotel from Lost in Translation. And that movie was mostly set inside the Park Hyatt Tokyo and portrayed the hotel as this kind of empty, soulless, vacuum sealed bubble where the real world barely impinges.
- [06:49]
B
It's actually the opposite of that. It's. It's this place that I think is representative of hospitality at its, like, highest form because you have a beautifully designed space which is, you know, John Morford designed back almost 25 years ago. Then you have Japanese hospitality, you know, operating at the highest levels. And then you have the sort of how Japanese traditional hospitality is interacting with like a Western operating system. And, and the thing is, is as time has passed, the hotel has kind of developed this patina, has developed this feeling that is really special. And I think it's like the aggregation of all those moments over time. Makes it interesting. But it was used as a device.
- [07:42]
A
In the movie, was the movie version of the hotel maybe how it felt in the early days. And now it's kind of got a few layers of years on it.
- [07:54]
B
I think there's the reason why Sofia Coppola used it is it was like one of her favorite hotels. But what she was using it as a device to almost kind of show like jet lag, being disoriented, being kind of removed in an alternate time zone in this sort of like liminal state. So she almost used the hotel as a device to tell that. But. But when you look more closely, there are little subtle love letters to the hotel threaded out through the film that kind of show me that she has a great affinity there. And when you actually talk to, she's one of their longtime treasured guests. So it was used as a device to kind of show this liminal state, but I don't think it was an alluding to anything negative.
- [08:44]
A
Do you think that there's something universal about the appeal of the Park Hyatt Tokyo that, like, you love it, Sofia Coppola loves it? Would just about anyone staying there love it or is there an actual genuine range of the kind of hotels that some people like and some people hate?
- [09:03]
B
You know, I think that there's a range, you know, I think people that have a meticulous attention to detail and like the, like the lines and almost like the math of that place and also how everything is like just so precise all the time, it probably appeals to them. Whereas there's other hotels that are like, the flip side.
- [09:22]
A
I'm thinking, like, if we're gonna stay in movies here. Something like the Grand Budapest Hotel, which is kind of crazy and ramshackle and goes off in all directions.
- [09:30]
B
I think some people like the whimsy or like being part of something from a film or something out of that's a little strange. But I think if I recall, you like the San Jose or some of the Liz Lambert hotels in Austin, I think we were talking about.
- [09:47]
A
I like the grand hotels from a hundred years ago, which are a little bit shabby but still show they're full of what you call ghosts. And I like the ghosts.
- [09:59]
B
Yeah. And I think that some of the raffles, these grand old hotels, what's interesting to me about them is they don't make any concessions to modernity. Like I was, I think I was at a raffles in Siem Reap in Cambodia and it was almost as if I could look around and be in completely another time. You know, there was not iPads anywhere. Like all of the furniture was elegant. They were still doing things in a very analog way. And I thought it was quite comforting. Right. So I think some of the grand hotels in that regard are amazing because they know what their brand is and they don't make like petty concessions to modernity.
- [10:38]
A
They also just tend to have much larger physical footprints. They're often just sited on like these five or six acre sites. I'm thinking, you know, like the El Camino in Mexico City or something like that. Like you could never buy that kind of a plot right now. And there's a feel of like the.
- [10:58]
B
Savoy, you know, in London.
- [11:00]
A
Right, exactly. When you're in a hotel and it's always got a name like the grand or the Excelsior or something like that. And it really is just there's this.
- [11:09]
B
The Campbell in Munich, you know, where a lot of the DLD stuff is happening. It's like out of central casting for like a resplendent palace hotel, you know.
- [11:19]
A
Exactly. You want to.
- [11:20]
B
The Bayescherhoff, right? Yeah.
- [11:22]
A
Or any of those. They're very big. And so I guess coming back to my original question, like they can feel like you're, as you say, you're going back in time, they give you this experience. How does that translate into like, whether it's that or whether it's like a very modern hotel at the top of a high rise, like the Parca at Tokyo. How does that translate into me as a customer being willing and possibly even eager to pay thousands of extra dollars to stay there rather than to stay in some random place with a shop.
- [11:59]
B
I think when you look at it as theater and not just a transaction or a place to sleep, then that kind of opens the door. Right? You're stepping into a stage set that almost changes every day. Right. I always joke about the lobby of a really great hotel and maybe a lot of the ones that you're talking about, the grand hotels, it's almost. It's a coral reef that refreshes with interesting new fish every day. So you feel like you're part of something that's a little bit larger. You feel like you're in a kind of theatrical production. There's a little bit of romance and ambition that, when done well, perhaps could command a little bit more of a price point. I think there's a lot of people that are obsessed with the chateau in la, and the reality is some of the rooms of the chateau are no great shakes. But you're paying for the romance, you're paying for the history, you're paying for the rock and roll, you're paying for the patina. And also the fact that you look around and it's pretty a list. So I do think that you're alluding to the software diplomacy of a place, or what are the feelings that you get out of a place that would actually inspire you to potentially pay up or stay there, as opposed to a bed or a pod hotel or something.
- [13:30]
A
So let me bring this down maybe two notches. I think on one level, it's quite easy to understand what's going on at the super high end of the luxury market and say, this is the best hotel on in the world. And you get this incredible personalized experience and they remember you from when you were last there 15 years ago, and like, what color your toenails are. But when you move away from that and you're just, you know, visiting some city and you're like, should I pay $200 a night or should I pay an extra $50 and pay $250 a night for this slightly better hotel? Like, what is it that makes the hotel slightly better? And what makes me cool with that extra 50 bucks?
- [14:16]
B
I feel like I'll root it in something that, you know, in Munich, you attend and speak at DLD pretty frequently. There's a lot of good sort of solid Germanic hotels. Right? You're just, I can go to this hotel. I know it's going to be okay. Then probably for that $50 more, you have the Cortina, which is a small boutique. There's an incredible bar, there's a fireplace, there's staff that care 25 to 27% more about what they're doing.
- [14:45]
A
They do make extremely good cocktails in that hotel.
- [14:47]
B
And it feels like when you go there, it feels a little bit more intimate. You're not rolling in with your luggage into this austere sort of arrivals area. It feels like you're almost coming back to someone's house. And that cozy feeling that they have, particularly in freezing cold January in Munich, is, is kind of the feeling that you're talking.
- [15:12]
A
And I totally agree with that as well. And I would add like the Tabard Inn in Washington being another great example of this. And these are unique hotels where people go, oh, I really love that hotel and I'm willing to pay a little bit more or sometimes not even pay more. Sometimes they're cheaper and you just get to stay there. But just to make this a little bit harder for you.
- [15:30]
B
Yeah.
- [15:32]
A
You know, we are talking about the mega brands which own like a gazillion different brands in different cities. If you're not staying at something unique and special in boutique, but you are choosing between two different brands and one of them is $50 more, then what makes it worth it or is it not?
- [15:51]
B
I think we're getting into a much more abstract conversation at that level. But what I can tell you is that the big chains are very interested in solving this and they're solving it from like design. They're trying to solve it from reinventing how their common areas and spaces go from day to night. Right. Like how do you create a place that feels not as annoying as the Ace does, where you can't find a seat, but how do you sit in a place that actually feels like it has that nice bustle to it? If I'm taking a meeting or working on some work, how do I have, you know, that nice, almost like coffee house murmur? That is inspiring, you know, because hotels.
- [16:43]
A
Were the original third places right before the rise of Starbucks. They were this place which wasn't home and wasn't work, but where people could meet and transact. And, and, and this is in a weird way the commodity that like wework is selling as well. There's like what you find in WeWorks is lobbies. They're one big hotel lobby. And then off in the corner you get these tiny little, I guess the equivalent of hotel rooms which are kind of shabby.
- [17:09]
B
It's a really good point. To answer your question more directly, instead of tap dance around it as I have been doing, I think that with the bigger brands, this is a design brief, right how do we make the design feel like not just guests, but the community want to come, want to linger, spend money, because food and beverage is also important, especially from non guests. And how does it feel like something akin to. And I can't believe I'm saying this, but what you're alluding to with Wework, where it feels like there's a bustle going on and there's people together because we're animals, right? We like being around other people. We like being around these kind of subconsciously comforting scenarios. And I think that that third place vibe, when executed well, is also something that makes someone feel nice about a hotel. But the bigger point here is a lot of our attraction to these spaces. They're not conscious things. Sometimes these are subconscious things. The smell of a lobby when you come in, you know, I love the Langham in London, has a beautiful scent that's like ginger and a few things. And it just, it's familiar and it reminds you of where you are, down to the feeling of, you know, the texture of the couch you're sitting on. There's very, like, subconscious things that are like the flow and energy of a space. And those are the things oftentimes that are actually like the ball game when it comes to. Do I want to spend an extra 50 bucks?
- [18:50]
A
Okay, so now, on which note, I think we can. We're going to come back and look at this at a slightly different angle, which is like, how do you turn this into a brand so we can all. Well, those of us who've, you know, of a certain age, who stayed in a certain number of hotels, there are certain hotels we can remember, and you can say, oh, yes, there's the smell of the lobby in the Langham, or there's the, you know, pool boy at the Copacabana palace in Rio, or whatever. Whatever it was the smell of the.
- [19:21]
B
Capraton, you know, it's.
- [19:23]
A
It the. But then in reality, when you're looking at the hotel industry, it's. There's a bunch of just very large brands. It could be like the ones we all know and hate. It could be like the Sheratons and the Marriotts and the Hyatt and the Hiltons, or it could be like the new, newer brands, which they keep on spinning off. But the whole point about these brands is that they carry with them the promise that what you experience at one of them is something which you can expect to experience at another. And so is there any way in which it makes sense to kind of say, oh, I really love the Park Hyatt Tokyo. It's an incredibly good hotel. So therefore the Park Hyatt in Riyadh is going to be awesome as well.
- [20:13]
B
There's a few points to this question. Number one, I think that the consistency across a known brand is important to people. A lot of people like Airbnb and they're staying there. But what these hotels are selling in many ways is predictability in terms of I know that the water pressure is going to be good, I know the Internet's going to be good. I know that I'm not going to be entering in a dark alley in an unfamiliar neighborhood. That that sort of consistency across a brand, regardless of the price tier is important. But I think the challenge here is there's too many brands and there's too many brands that are competing for almost like the same territories. And thus that's what's confusing to the marketplace right now. But backing up the average consumer, the average buyer of a hotel is not like me. They're not obsessing at the level that I am, because this is something that's very interesting to me. They're interacting with a brand with a number, a price and a little tile that comes up on booking.com right, right. So the notion of brand is not as relevant as a lot of people think it is, because the OTAs, which for those not in the weeds of hospitality, you know, the aggregators of, you know, booking.com, expedia, stuff like that, how you. I'm going to Rio on these dates and with this criteria, I will have something presented to me. And so this is the danger in the same way that it's a danger for a brand, you know, on Amazon to be reduced to tissues. Kleenex was a brand for a reason, because it was like, this is how we differentiate ourselves. But when I say, Alexa, order me tissues, it's like the brand is eroded because of the algorithm and because of the process. Same goes for hotels. There's probably an argument to be made that brand and sensibility is even more important today to actually stand out in the and the morass and not get reduced to just a number and a review and a little thumbnail image of a property. Right.
- [22:32]
A
But for most people, that is exactly what you are going to be for most hotels. And even the fancy hotels at some level are just going to be a number in the thumbnail.
- [22:42]
B
I think the fancy hotels in many ways are being booked for people through a very trusted travel agent, a high end broker, the Scott Dunns, the Abercrombie and Kent's the kind of old school travel advisor. And a lot of the business of these big hotels is catering to the clientele that has stayed there for 30 years. There's people at the Connaught or the Claridges that have been staying there for generations. And it's up to that hotel to know, maintain these portfolios of people that they know are going to come and spend the money.
- [23:22]
A
So if I'm not a dynast, if I'm not someone who has been going to garages for generations, do you think that normal people just like, let's say that I go to a certain place on holiday every year. There's something about getting into the familiarity of going back to the same place and knowing what to expect. You can find that kind of comfort at much lower price points with much less personal touch, even when the person at the front desk probably has no idea who you are.
- [23:58]
B
And I think what you're getting into is also just the role of loyalty and points with a lot of this.
- [24:04]
A
And so where does loyalty come in? Do you think that people are in any way loyal to actual hotel brands or is it just the loyalty plans and the points?
- [24:15]
B
I would say that in many ways it's the program. And then based on that program it's like, what is the best possible thing that I can get given where I want to go? So if I'm. It's no longer spg, Bonvoy. No, it's Bonvoy. But I think that if you have a cache of points on there and you're looking to go skiing in the wintertime, you're like, okay, well I'll see if I can get the St. Regis. And it's like, hopefully you can. But I think that the loyalty is what is the best possible experience in terms of the tier that I can get for my money or points. So I think that sometimes the loyalty to a program almost subsumes the loyalty to a specific brand.
- [25:04]
A
And then the last thing I wanted to ask you was if you are a pure business traveler, you are on the road, you're like a banker, you're a lawyer, you're high end, it's all being paid, you're flying business class, you have a lot of money and it's not even your own money and your client is paying for it and it doesn't matter. But you always wind up, in my mind's eye, these people always wind up staying in completely sort of bland, yet expensive, anonymous, high end hotels. Is that for a reason?
- [25:41]
B
It really just depends I think what you're alluding to is the corporate contracts that are negotiated with, you see JP Morgan has a deal at the Peninsula Tokyo or something like that. You have the, the big companies that are doing tens of millions of dollars with American Airlines also have negotiated rates with some of these things. But sometimes there is a role for the luxury chains, for the high end business travelers. I know a lot of lobbyists and consultants that basically have lived four seasons in Saudi Arabia or in the Middle east for long extended periods of time. And it isn't like an airless thing. It's actually like they're treated very well for an extended period away from home, down to the even getting more personalized levels of service and more things that you probably wouldn't get as a normal guest. So there is a role for that predictable global chain for people that are always away from home.
- [26:51]
A
I have to say, and this is something back in the day when I used to go to Latin America for Euro money, if I was having difficulty finding a hotel, every so often I would do this thing where I would ask someone at JP Morgan to just book me a hotel room and I would pay for it, but it would be the JP Morgan rate and I would be paying like $99 for the four seasons. I'm like, how on earth do they manage this?
- [27:17]
B
And I think what they're getting is they have quotas in terms of how much business they need to send to the hotel. It's actually not a problem if they're doing it ostensibly for a business partner or a reason like that. It's a volume game. I do think that it is astounding not to dime out too many of these brands. But what rack rate is relative to what someone from a global corporation is paying? It's the same thing with airlines. You can look at someone that's paying $8,000 for a seat to fly to London from New York and then you can look at someone that's paying $1,500 or less because of these same things.
- [28:03]
A
So when people tell me that they're spending 50 or 100 nights a year out on the road staying in these incredible hotels and I'm just sort of mentally adding up like, oh my God, how much does that cost? It doesn't actually cost nearly as much as I probably think it does.
- [28:20]
B
Yeah, I think it's probably there's a corporate raid or a mates raid going on or they just don't care. There is an echelon of this. There's a great documentary called Inside Clerics. And there's a scene where Thomas, who's the unflappable GM who's now at the Corinthia, it's like, oh, the Saudis are coming unannounced, and they need this and this and this. And they're like, oh, of course, no problem. And the ask is quite significant. It's like, we need to remove this wall. And they only like. And they're like, of course this is what we do. So at that type of price point, it's also very good margins, good business for the hotel, even though it comes with a lot of difficult things to do and achieve. But that's what they're in the business of. And that's relating back to the beginning of our conversation. Like that staff, that attention to detail, that unflappable, you know, classic hotelier is when you experience it and you see it, that is the thing that maybe will make you pay more.
- [29:29]
A
Also, just the idea that I can rock up and they'll be like, yes, we have a room for you. Which is like, not the experience of any normal person where you rock up and they're like, we don't have a room. We're sold out. You're never sold out if you're like, the right person, right?
- [29:41]
B
Yeah. I mean, I think that perhaps if you're in San Francisco during Salesforce or something like that, then you might be sleeping on the street. There are kind of ways around that, yes.
- [29:55]
A
Okay, so to wrap this up, what is the number one way to find a hotel room in a place where it seems to be incredibly hard to find a hotel room? It's not just like, Google hasn't worked. Now what do I do?
- [30:11]
B
I think that there is a. With the amount of. You could do some due diligence. You could send a couple emails. You can find the GM of a property. You can send a personal email. And I think that if you're showing interest in a property, if you're showing that you're not like the average person buying something on booking.com, it's funny, when you appeal to the elegance and hospitality that is inherent in a lot of these people, that magic can happen. And sometimes it could even just be like, the right sentence. I mean, I encourage people to do this when they're going on a trip with a loved one. It's like, send the GM a polite note, just letting them know the occasion, not asking for anything. And the inherent elegance of this profession will kind of come forward and make something nice happen for you. The same thing can be said if you're in a pinch. It's like the polite email or the polite phone call to one of these men or women that are ostensibly in this business to take care of other people. Some doors can unlock for you. And then your idea from before of appealing to the business community or the people that have relationships with the hotel or send them lots of business. That's probably also a decent way in, you know.
- [31:40]
A
Colin Nagy, thank you very much for uncovering the secrets. You are off, literally, on a helicopter.
- [31:49]
B
Yeah, I'm just trying it out just because Blade had a decent deal. So I'm going to take that today.
- [31:55]
A
You're going to take a Blade helicopter from where to where?
- [31:57]
B
Five minutes from the west side to Kennedy. And on a Friday evening, it would normally be a hour and a half, two hours.
- [32:08]
A
Okay.
- [32:10]
B
Actually, to be perfectly honest, this is really only, I would say, $60 more than I would be paying for an Uber. So I'm not living the life of luxury here. I'm just trying to be pragmatic with my time.
- [32:22]
A
You're being a pragmatic helicopter passenger.
- [32:26]
B
I could get screwed if the weather, you know, if the weather falls off.
- [32:29]
A
And you're off to what, to Paris?
- [32:31]
B
No, I'm just headed to the west coast just for a couple days.
- [32:35]
A
And you're going to stay somewhere fabulous.
- [32:37]
B
I'm staying with a friend, actually, because.
- [32:41]
A
I approve of staying with friends. It keeps you grounded.
- [32:44]
B
What I actually love about that is I stay at so many hotels that when I go see my friend Will in la, he's so gracious and I stay with him and it's like a completely different experience. It's so fun, you know, and it's nice. As much as I love hotels, when I have friends I want to catch up with, it's. It's very nice to be hosted and to, you know, do something nice and.
- [33:08]
A
Get together, have a fun time in la. And thanks for coming on. To sleep, money, travel.
- [33:13]
B
Thank you, Felix.