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On the day prior to LondonHouse Chicago’s opening in May 2016, a quality insurance inspector completed a walk-through, only to announce that the hotel would not, in fact, be able to open the next day. In the final scramble to get everything ready for the grand reveal, the crew had forgot to install light bulbs in all of the rooms.
At 5 p.m. that evening, all available staff (and any willing spouses, partners, and friends) were called in to screw on thousands of lightbulbs—approximately three to five per room across 452 guest rooms. The job was completed at 3 a.m. with mere hours to spare before the inspector’s next walk-through. At 10 a.m. that morning, the hotel opened as planned, with guests none the wiser.
Hotel openings are exciting—and exhausting—affairs. Months and years of preparation often include construction woes, delays, staffing conundrums, and unexpected snags, all of which are dealt with behind the scenes so that, by the time the first guests arrive, everything appears just as savvy travelers have come to expect.
There are countless people involved in an opening, from owners and managing directors to the hotel’s GM and staff, not to mention the publicists responsible for telling the story of the new hotel to potential guests. And a hotel isn’t ready for its close-up until all of the nitty-gritty—ensuring the liquor licenses have been approved, the staff uniforms fit correctly, and, of course, confirming that the lamps actually have light bulbs—has been attended to. In 2022 alone, this delicate dance was performed for 1,842 hotel openings worldwide.
Adrian Aguirri, the vice president of operations for Dimension Hospitality, a hospitality management group that counts several Hilton and Marriott brands among its clients, says opening a hotel is both a daunting process and an adventurous one. When you open the doors and welcome your first guest, “it’s like having your parents over to see your first home,” Aguirri says. “You’re excited, you’re nervous, and their approval means so much to you.”
Taryn Scher, founder of TK PR agency, says that her role of public relations can include “everything from local awareness—initial announcements, groundbreakings, and ribbon cuttings—to hard-hat tours during construction and grand opening celebrations.” But it can be a “messaging headache” to manage the expectations around an opening, says Scher, who recalls the chaos surrounding the much-delayed opening of Wake County, North Carolina’s first boutique hotel, The Mayton Inn, in 2016. “In smaller towns like Cary where the hotel is located, locals get just as excited about having a new restaurant/bar to patronize [as overnight guests],” says Scher. “But you have to be careful of false starts [and delayed opening dates]—that pre-opening buzz is great until you cry wolf enough that people lose interest and make other plans.” Getting—and keeping—people’s attention is essential to the success of the business. Though of course, that’s just part of the battle.
Often, as with the missing light bulbs, the chaos lies behind the curtain, and it’s up to the opening team and staff to scramble to fill in the missing pieces. Before the Lake Nona Wave Hotel opening in Orlando in 2021, the team discovered an issue with the lobby’s centerpiece: The Pink Dogwood tree which the hotel had been advertising as 45 feet high in renderings turned out to be a mere 5 feet tall. James Tattersall, director of sales and marketing, says “panic ensued” as they quickly removed all images of the lobby’s pièce de résistance.
