The Discourse, Abridged

In May, Tractorbeam hosted Riley Nail, Head of Brand & Lifestyle Experiences at Makeready. A leader at the intersection of hospitality, creativity, and brand experience, Riley has a knack for making spaces feel meaningful and memorable and has made a career of bringing these places to life.

Here’s a snippet of the conversation hosted by Tractorbeam’s Partner, Digital Division Head Chris Miller and Riley as he lists his top three factors of the perfect hotel lobby, along with input from The Discourse’s rowdy audience.

We’ve been expecting you.

Chris Miller | Partner, Head of Marketing at Tractorbeam:

So we've been asking people three words to describe the perfect hotel lobby. You have three.

Riley Nail:

Lighting. Lighting is everything. I will say that. I think that you always have to have the perfect course for your lighting.

I think sound is another really big one because it's… there's nothing worse than… setting or walking into an awkwardly quiet space. Even if it's your own hotel room, I'm the guy that always has music playing in the background.

And then I think the other one is really well-designed spaces that you could find yourself getting comfortable in because also, you don't want to have a place you can't tuck in with a buddy and go chat for like six or seven drinks. Right?

CM:

..to start!

RN:

So, to start here. Yeah. So, you really want those spaces that you can kind of like just truly feel comfortable in physically versus, like, just always a warm, welcoming place, you know?

CM:

Yeah. So we asked you. I'd like to introduce Emily Edwards, our Head of Strategy, who has all of your crowdsourced answers. You can take my mic, Emily. I would love to hear what the people have said.

Emily Edwards, Head of Strategy at Tractorbeam:

No walk on? No walk-on song? Okay. Okay. All right. Are you ready to hear what everyone had to say? Riley and everyone?

CM:

Okay, this is for your next hotel.

EE:

Yeah, this is crowdsourcing. Okay, so: good-looking gals (babes). You know what? I…

RN:

They helped me develop Zaza.

EE:

Yeah. I mean, they are an important part. Okay. I thought this was interesting. “Clean, but unique style.” Clean but unique style. I actually read that as vintage style and was like, “oh, it's vintage, not clean?” Anyway, down-to -earth service. Service is super important.

So babes, clean service. And then, their favorite hotel lobby is Hotel Van Zant–and I'm assuming the Austin location. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good one. Okay. Because people are everything, too. People's important people!

Okay, next one we had cozy, artful, good AC. Do you have any hot sports opinions about the temperature in your lobbies?

RN:

Yeah, it should always be cold. Yeah, you can always warm yourself up. Can't cool yourself down.

EE:

Very true, very true. Oh, and then they shouted out the Adolphus.

CM:

Someone’s sucking up!

RN:

Love that.

EE:

And the Ludlow.

RN:

And I love Ludlow. Ludlow is amazing. Yeah.

EE:

I fell asleep in one of their bathtubs once.

RN:

Yeah. It happens. I'm glad you were safe.

EE:

Oh, it was my own room.

CM:

Wait, why do you assume that?

RN:

Okay. I don't know. You can't fall asleep in water.

EE:

It was a friend. Yeah, no, it was empty–we put all the pillows in it. Okay, so next up is: spacious, coffee, cozy, warm. And then. This is weird. “Chris. Don't tell Chris about the Clermont.” What does that mean?

CM:

My home away from home.

RN:

I love The Clermont.

EE:

Okay. I picked this [question] for a reason. The perfect hotel lobby: smells amaaaazing, has really comfy couches, and has a good, chic, fun concierge. My question for you, concierge, what are your opinions? Dying art or?

RN:

I think I love the, like, nostalgia of a concierge. I don't feel like people use them as much as they used to. But if you have a really good one, it's somebody that's just engaging, that could carry on conversation. It's not about getting reservations anymore. We can all get reservations. It's more about the human connection piece that I was talking about earlier.

EE:

Yeah, connection is luxury. Ok, this one is also interesting: dark, sexy soundtrack. Yeah, yeah. That could also be adjectives for the soundtrack as well.

CM:

That was a TLC album.

EE:

And then if you flip it over, it says The Standard LA. So I like that they wrote it upside down. I wonder, who's that?

RN:

Yeah, that's brand integrity–The Standard's always upside down.

EE:

I wonder who wrote this one. Lighting, check, sound–check! Places you can tuck into– check! It's everything pointing to lighting. And then, I did “the lobby the Junto.” I grabbed this one because I have stayed at the Junto in Columbus, and it is a very good lobby. I was there at like 8 am on a Thursday, and it was buzzing.

RN:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's really weird what people like. People love to be with people, and I think that's what at the end of the day, hospitality is about: connecting and being with others, and having those experiences and having those conversations, like what we're doing now, like just having a conversation.