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At the Hotel Lucia, one can order a pillow to one’s liking. Let me repeat you can order […]

pillow1.jpg

pillow2.jpg

At the Hotel Lucia, one can order a pillow to one’s liking. Let me repeat you can order your favorite kind of pillow!

After shower quality, I think a bad pillow is what makes me saddest as a hotel guest. Oh, and bad sheets. and crappy mattress. and not enough blankets. and no clock. and old air conditioners and… hmm. A lot can go wrong in a hotel. Bad wall art is low on the list for me, after many creature comforts including a decent pillow. But having a pillow I’d like was one of the things I had given up on (I like very flat pillows). Imagine my delight when I saw the sign.

I’m happy to say that the Hotel Lucia offered

  • drinkable coffee
  • comfy mattress with enough blankets/pillows (plus hte mind-blowing option of ordering a pillow)
  • windows that opened, and a functional thermostat
  • lovely decor, including orginal signed photographs
  • a proper cd player and a big TV
  • wireless phone
  • shampoo and conditioner (I hate hotels that punk out and get that conditioning shapoo. it doesn’t condition and it doesn’t clean well)
    — and it was some of the best smelling shampoo I’ve ever had. Aveda rosemary-mint.

  • BATHROBE!
  • king size bed.
  • gorgeous chrome ice bucket and both highball and wine glsses.
    and much more.

I highly recommend you stay there if you are ever in Portland as a guest, but I especially recommend it for you experience designer types.

But moreover, it’s a good example of ways you can find to delight people, if you just question every single aspect of the experience…

4 Comments

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  1. 1
    ML

    Ok. I know it’s a nice high end hotel if they have Aveda products in the bathroom. Talk about experience design, that company really has their brand wrapped up into the most interesting corporate identity.

  2. 2
    Adam

    Dude, that’s the hotel attached to the fusion restaurant where we all had dinner during Summit ’03. From a two-minute poke through the lobby, I knew I had erred (and not mildly) in allowing myself to be booked into something called the Compass Suites.

    I had the same hotel envy I had had in Austin three weeks before, when I stayed not at the San Jose but at the Omni. Those two experiences taught me the lesson: never again will I settle for a non-boutique hotel if I have the option.

    I still have the Lucia collateral I swiped that night. I could tell from the attention to detail they put into their matchbooks, etc., that the stay experience itself’d likely be pretty swank – and it looks like I was right, huh?

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