Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast
This show is for the builders and backers of boutique hotels.
Hosted by operators who made the jump from short-term rentals to boutique hotels, this podcast documents the real journey of acquiring, renovating, and operating boutique hospitality assets.
We share lessons learned in real time and sit down with experienced operators, lenders, designers, and industry professionals who bring practical insight, hard-won advice, and unfiltered perspective. If you’re serious about boutique hotels, hospitality operations, or scaling beyond short-term rentals, this show is for you.
Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast
27 - $80K Over Budget — And We'd Do It Again with Micah & Adam
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In this episode, Adam Walls and Micah Thomas take you behind the scenes of transforming a boutique hotel in Page, Arizona. They dive into the real challenges of the process—from handling returns and managing material overages to finding creative ways to maximize space and elevate the guest experience. Packed with practical insights and hard-earned lessons, this episode is a must-listen for hospitality entrepreneurs looking to turn vision into reality.
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The crazy part about a hotel is when you've got to multiply it times 50, 50 times 1600 if the math jacks out. That's $80,000. So that's an overage that again, we had to kind of look at each other and go, is it worth it? Hey everybody, I'm Adam Wallace, and I'm here with my co-host Micah Thomas. We're short-term rental operators who made the jump into boutique hotel. And we're in it right now, raising capital, renovating the 50-room property. We're figuring it out as we go.
SPEAKER_01This is the Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast, and these are secrets.
SPEAKER_02Hey, welcome in everyone to another episode of the Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Walls, the co-founder of Comeback Hospitality. This is a show where we talk about making that treacherous leap, that bold leap from short-term rentals into the commercial boutique hotel space. It's not just me, thankfully. So let me welcome in my mister from another sister, Micah Thomas. Micah, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_03Another day in paradise, brother. Another day in paradise. We are currently juggling the infamous return issue. And let's just say it's an arduous task. We've ordered so many samples, A-B tested things for our sample rooms, but the decision is to keep some things or get rid of some things. And things we're getting rid of, they have to be returned to sender. So while I'm back in the great state of West Virginia, our wonderful general manager has had the fun of returning items and finding them in the storage container and cursing me out in the meantime. So it's been fun. Today's been very fun. I think listeners will really get a good idea of kind of some of the behind the scenes of what it takes to create the number one hotel in Page, Arizona. And just a reality check. Some of it is fun and funny, and some of it is just you gotta put your rubber to the road and get the task done. So excited to be on with you today.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's awesome, man. And the hair's looking sharp today. Uh maybe you got recently trimmed. They're looking good over there in the great state of West Virginia. Let's just talk uh for a second about returns because I mean maybe you've got one highlight item, something that you didn't want to go back. Remember our mirrors? I thought do you want it gold? Do you want it silver? Do you want it black? Oh, good. We want it black. Oh, need I've now I've got extra mirrors. So we did that with chairs, we did it with lights, we did it with just all these different things. The single item that I'm most sad to see go is our outdoor chairs. I was obsessed with these. I don't even know how to call them. It's almost like bungee cord or something. They're like corded or braided chairs, and we didn't want anything with cushions, we didn't want anything that was, I don't know, overly plastic that would feel cheap or break. And so I just I think when my wife and I went to Sedona, we just were visiting different kinds of upscale spots and just noticed a trend of some of those. So we ordered some, they were ridiculously expensive. People commented on them as in they love them, but they were $750 per chair. And I think when we did the math, I think it's like 26 or 36 of these chairs that we need across our interior courtyard. Like that's thousands of dollars. And anyways, we went back. This is what they call value engineering in the game, where you find something that you love, but can you find it cheaper without getting a cheap, crappy, breakable version? So you're always got you got this tension between kind of durability and performance and guest experience and wow factor. So, anyways, that was mine, the outdoor chair. But any returns that you're either glad to see go back or were hard to let go of.
SPEAKER_03Let's see. Hard to let go of, I would say, is probably the mattress. There, there was uh there was some back and forth on which mattress was better. But then the other side is how do you return a mattress? What does the process look like to get a mattress that arrived in a shrunk wrap box back to the sender? How do you return that to sender? And I think we've just decided it'll either go in one of our suites or we'll sell it secondhand versus managing the return. But that would probably be the big one for me if we were to ask our general.
SPEAKER_02Do you want to tell people which one it was? Because again, you and I both have this mattress in our short-term rentals. And so we thought, okay, you're looking at these commercial grade mattresses, or if you obviously go to a physical store. You can spend thousands of dollars on mattresses. But the question is, once again, like limited budget. What do people want? I haven't had anybody really complain about this. So do you want not to out them? But we had a very real conversation, right? With Noah, our sourcing partner in concierge and with our designers. But which one is staying and which one's going?
SPEAKER_03The infamous Zinus mattress is the one we decided against. We actually are not using the Zynus mattress, which is again, it's crazy because, like I said, these are the mattresses that it's a no-brainer in the short-term rental. I'm going Zynus, I'm gonna get it in the box, take it out of the shrink wrap, throw it on the bed, it'll be ready in 24 hours, we'll be good to go. But that's not the mattress we decided to go with. We're actually going with the Lisa mattress, which is a hybrid between a memory foam and memory gel or some type of solution. Much comfortable, much more comfortable. I think nine out of 10 people who tried the mattress liked it more so than the Zionist mattress. So it's a little bit more durable, it should last a little longer, and that's the one we're gonna go with. But it's been a process, it's just one of those things that you buy a hotel, nobody thinks about returns. You just think we're gonna get furniture, we'll throw it in there, bam, we're good to go. That's exactly right. But no, it was very important, and I think we absolutely needed to do A-B testing, and it was very important that we actually saw items in the space because there's many things that we order, like bar stools, for example, that were rated commercial grade, and there is no way I would put somebody over 250 pounds over that thing and trust that they'll be able to hold up. So we just wanted to see things in the space. That's exactly what we were able to do. And now, after making decisions, we have to return some items. So that's been fun. But that takes me to our next topic, and that is $80,000 for tile. It has come to our attention that we may or may not have overspent when it came to designing our tile bathrooms, which are beautiful, by the way. But maybe you could talk a little bit about what that process looks like and if we're gonna keep this layout of our bathroom or if we'll just throw the whole idea away and get a different tile that's cheaper.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. And maybe and maybe just to connect these two storylines, if you think about what does the Hyatt do, Marriott, Hilton, IHG, like all the big brands, they typically use what are called case goods. But case goods, best case scenario, it's an eight-week lead time. And oftentimes it's really 12 to 16 weeks. And so if you want to do model rooms, you make all these selections, you got to wait 16 weeks just to try it. You A B test then, and then it's another 16 weeks to get your stuff. So when people pull up to these independent shops or boutique, again, you've got to be a little bit scrappy, a little bit eclectic. You're shopping locally, you're shopping nationally. Again, you're trying to get that like aesthetic old timey plus kind of new and modern, but you want it to perform. So, anyways, we had a budget with our contractor on all the different sub-projects, let's say, and a healthy portion of our spend on construction for each room is actually in the bathroom. And talk about I didn't know that. Did you know that, Micah? That we're gonna spend 80% of our money in the bathroom.
SPEAKER_03No, I actually did not know it, but it makes sense once you hear and you see what we're actually doing in the bathroom compared to the rest of the room. It makes total sense. But on the front end, nobody's thinking, oh, we're gonna spend 80 grand just for additional tile in bathrooms. No, I had no idea about this. That's right.
SPEAKER_02And this is a line item because our GC, for example, broke it out, and I want to say like our 50 bedrooms and bathrooms were about 10K per key, right? So that kind of gets us. There was a separate line item, I guess, for like wiring electricity, HVAC, plumbing, etc., but about 10K per room to get us some new flooring, new paint, and then really to attack the bathroom because we had this old original cast iron tubs, 350 pounds. They've been reglazed a zillion times, just rickety, slow water. It felt like you were staying in a $30 hotel. When you go into the bathroom, you can really differentiate is this a budget spot mid-scale? Is this getting more upper to luxe? And so we decide we want to go all in. Courtney and Olivia, our designers who have been fantastic through this process, decided on a tile package, and we decide to go a little splurgy. Nothing crazy, by the way. I live out here in the Bay Area and I walk into some friends' houses, and their cost per square foot on tile is through the moon compared to what we're doing. But for just for reference point, our splashy tile was $7.99, I want to say, per square foot. Well, we didn't really think anything of it because we didn't really know our GC's kind of breakdown. After we start installing, he starts putting together these rooms. Then he's able to come back with receipts and go, here's my labor, here's my costs, where are we at? I only had budgeted, gang, eight hundred dollars for a tile in each bathroom. What's the reality based on what our designers picked out? 2400 per room. So you know it's sixteen hundred dollars overage. And look, if this were my primary house or I'm doing an Airbnb, it's one or two bathrooms. Pretty easy to absorb $1,600. It's not bad. But the crazy part about a hotel is when you got to multiply it times $50, $50 times $1,600. If the math checks out, it's $80,000. So that's an overage that that again, we had to look at each other and go, is it worth it? And I think this is one of them where it's absolutely worth it.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. We I don't, it was a no-brainer for us, just reactions off of people seeing it for the first time, for us seeing it for the first time. It's such a cohesive element to these rooms, and our rooms aren't much to rave about, they're small, so we're trying to find ways to stand out even in a small area. And the bathrooms, I think, do just that. We've talked about maximizing space. There's a rainfall shower head in the shower. So we're really thinking about ways to elevate the experience, even though we're dealing with such a small square footage. And this was one of those things. There's been plenty of things we've had to decide for or against. And this is one of those things that I think it was a no-brainer, a non-negotiable for the both of us. And I'm overall happy with the decision. And we've made sure we've made some cuts in other places where we could afford it and been more frugal in areas to make sure we can have the bathroom come out the way we want it. So I'm absolutely excited and no, no doubt in my mind, this will be a focal point of each of the rooms.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And you mentioned the rainfall showers. Again, it's interesting because we ordered these things blindly. I think they're, I can't remember if they're Delta or whatnot, but it's pretty beefy, kind of like on-off dial to get your shower going. I desperately wanted it on the back wall so you didn't have to get wet and cold and all of that. And then we found out, oh man, it's all concrete, it's all cinder black. You can't really go under it, can't go over it. Guess we got to go through it, is how the song goes. But in this case, it just wasn't worth it. We'd lose another like five, six, seven inches of space. Our bathrooms are already small. So again, you have all these ideas. We ended up going on the front side, but in relation to that handle, our rainfall shower actually looks small, which was I just wouldn't have known that like a nine-inch or I think it said 10 inch wasn't gonna be big enough. So we expanded that now to a 12-inch. So I think that's gonna proportionally look right. And then the other one, okay. Again, admittedly, this one's a little bit of an atom project, but opening up the doors. I honestly, I don't know if I'm just not I'm trying to work out, I'm trying to be a good boy, less chipotle burritos. But like I the last time I was in page, I hit my shoulder twice on the door, and I didn't notice it the first time or the first couple times I was there. I knew they were small, but when you actually measure our doors, they're 24 inches wide. That's tiny. A standard door, by the way, is 30. I think ADA is 36, right? To get a wheelchair in. So you're talking 24 inch doors. Now the kicker, though, is a couple inches in is electrical. And so if we wanted a 30-inch door, it would cost weeks, maybe months of time. It would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. All this stuff seems super easy, but it is a game of inches at the end of the day. And so when we found out this is more in the range of 10 to 15,000 total, all in to move every single door two inches, but more importantly, gives new door frames, new door jams, and new doors. I think it's worth it. So this was a little bit of an Adam project. I know Micah's got some projects as well. The Nori designs, our didn't our designers have some projects. It's funny, I think throughout these projects, you never know which hill you're gonna die on, but for whatever reason, this is this is one of them. I was like, I just want two inches more on a door, no one will notice for me.
SPEAKER_03Hey, as long as it makes you happy and we stay in budget, I'm totally fine with it. But yeah, that's exactly right. Can we do it? My biggest concern is it in but is it within our budget, and is can we keep our current timeline? So once our general contractor said he didn't have a doubt in his mind that he can make both of those things happen, it's okay, cool. If Adam wants 26-inch doors, then we'll get 26-inch doors. But it's very interesting, especially as we slowly approach busy season, we start seeing spring break guests come through. We start seeing more of a summer crowd start to roll in town. You see the tour buses coming. And for those who don't know, Paige gets about 50 to 60 tour buses per day during busy season. So, in the back of your mind, you're like, I would really love this project to be done sooner than later, so we can start capturing some of that revenue. So you're just juggling all of these thoughts in your head to make sure you put out the best possible product, but also to make sure you stay on time and capture some of that much-needed revenue. Because right now, money's going the wrong way. There's no doubt in our minds that we need to make money, but with a two million dollar renovation.
SPEAKER_02Do you want to talk? Speaking of time, literally this week. So, again, just for context, we're recording this kind of mid-March. Daylight savings has popped, it's finally feeling like spring again. Baseball's in the air. Let's go twins, let's go giants. I'm I'm bipolar that way. But we've got our first, let's call them influencer or micro influence. Someone showing up this week that saw our project online, wanted to be part of it, wanted to tell the story, and you why don't you tell the rest of the story?
SPEAKER_03Oh man, you put the pressure on me. But yeah, that's exactly right. So, influencer reached out, she saw some of our videos on Instagram, and she's documenting her entire road trip on a motorcycle with her husband through the southwest, one of the places she's going to stop. Who would have thought? Page, Arizona. So she reached out and asked if she could have a place to stay in exchange for recording content and featuring the hotel. We said, perfect, we would love to have you. We'll have a few rooms done by then. We even thought about putting her in a king room and then upgrading her to our suite. And then the week before rolls around, we didn't get glass in for our showers yet. So that was one caveat. And the main caveat is we don't have our mini splits installed. So we had decided to move away from the window units, probably a much needed upgrade just for people's peace of mind and silence, but they're not installed yet. So while this may only take 30 days for the HVAC company to do the entire property, they haven't started. And the chances of them having a HVAC unit in her room before she gets here is slim to them. So what we'll unfortunately have to do is put her in our older room. Everything's clean, everything still works. She's got a wall unit that she probably will hate, but we'll put her in the old room. We'll politely explain the situation. This is a very fluid and evolving project. So while we can host you, it'll just be in the old room and we'll give her a tour. We'll show her what the suite looks like, we'll show her what the king room looks like. But I think this is the reality of working on a timeline and then being very cautious to what you promise and put out that you're going to do because some things are just out of your control. If you would have asked me a month ago, I would have said we probably will have 20 rooms ready by now. While we're very close to that, we're just not there yet. So a little bit discouraging because of us not being able to put the influencer in a new room. But I think this is just one of many people who will come and stay and document their journey through the Wesley.
SPEAKER_02If you're getting value from this, follow the show and share it with one person who's ready to move beyond short-term rentals.
SPEAKER_03And if you want to learn more about the boutique hotel secrets community, the link is in the show notes. I'm motivated to get this project done for sure, especially knowing that things like that are happening in the background. But I'm wondering what your thoughts are on us not being able to put them in the best room possible.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's a bummer. To me, I like options. Again, if we could buy her a box and she wants to stay in the suite without HVAG, go for it. If she's cool with that, fine. Or if she wants to stay in the old room, at the end of the day, we're gifting her basically a free room. And even if it this is not a finished product yet, I think realistically, like so many people coming to Page, the real story, the real Instagrammable moments are going to Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend and Lake Powell and just some of the beautiful hikes and the natural scenery around. Look, if she gets 30-second clip from the Wesley just showing the transformation, it's not done, but it's underway, and these guys are pretty cool. I think that's a win, man. So for sure. But it is interesting thinking about uh as hoteliers, and I think as you get a little bit of notoriety or a little bit more exposure, I think lots of people are gonna be hitting you up, right? Saying, hey man, like would love to stay at your place. Some people are just content with just get me a room and I'm good. Other people are like, here's my rate, it's gonna be five grand. Or I think when we were in Boston at one of the boutique hotel secrets meetups, which happened quarterly, by the way. So if you're looking for like an in-person event to get around coaches, other operators, etc. Again, we can leave some information down below. But I want to say somebody paid like 50 grand for someone with millions of followers, and then we had this really rich and robust conversation about actually that's not a great tactic.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Yep, that's a good point. And just a little bit on the social media aspect is a lot of the we call them vanity metrics, but a lot of the million follower people, some of them maybe have a great following. But I think what we're looking for in particular are the micro influencers, the people who have a very strong and committed following. If they say that they're going to do something, they can almost guarantee that their followers are gonna do the same thing. So I think it's a lot easier to work with a micro influencer, and their the following may be even stronger than someone with millions of followers. So just a little bit of tidbits on that. I'm no social media expert, I just claim to be one on social media, just becoming one. Exactly. I'm just naturally organically no, but yeah, so a little bit just on on that front. But I would love to transition to one of our shortfalls, more specifically in the suite. I'll touch on it and I'll let you expand on it. This really breaks my heart, by the way, to even say I talked to you about it before the episode is like, man, I'm honestly embarrassed to say it, but it happened and we gotta claim it. And we've promised that we would be open and building public, so this is a part of that. But in our suite, the one with the view of the Red Rocks, our best room or suite in the entire property, we built a kitchenette just to find out that the general contractor cut out all plumbing and didn't install electrical on that wall. So one of these things could be easily rectified, that being the electrical, he could put sockets in pretty easily, but the other would cause him to demo three rooms, rooms that were currently uh remodeled, exactly finished rooms, and tie back into not only plumbing but also sewer or sewage. Yeah, he had capped them off and pretty much terminated plumbings and sewage to one area of this suite, and that that area was our kitchenette. So that means we'll have to pretty much extend out our kitchenette area. We won't have a sink, but we will have a coffee bar and we'll make it into a moment versus a small washing area for dishes or coffee cups, whatever it is. So very heartbreaking that we are missing out on that opportunity. But I think both Adam and I thought it was probably a better idea to find another way to make this work and continue on with the project instead of demoing three completed rooms and delaying the project. I just wanted to hear what you think about that because it breaks my heart.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that one was tough because look, we like printed out copies of hey, this is a single king room, and here's a double queen, and here's what this room should look like. But in retrospect, the pictures we printed out were just for the bedside. Yeah. Maybe the mistake that we made was as we were building out the suite. Remember, this was basically think of two small hotel rooms and we knocked the middle wall down. So all of a sudden you've got twice the square footage, which is great, but you have two bathrooms. So our idea is what do you do with that second bathroom? We knew we wanted to delete it, and then we said, Oh, we're already doing these kitchenettes in these other rooms that might be great places for people sticking around for three, five, seven days, or some people come for a month, right? To film content or whatever, or just digital nomads. And so, anyways, like we knew we were pretty clear this was going to be a kitchenette, and all the kitchenettes were basically going to be the same. So microwave, fridge, sink being it. We're not doing hot plates, we're not doing stoves, there's no ovens, there's no range tops or exhaust. So these are pretty simple kitchenettes that you might find in standard suites. And I don't know where it got lost in communication. Again, RGC is trying to get 20 rooms finished. There are many days where there are 15 plus guys on site. There are multiple trades every hour, right? There are three or four things to respond to. And again, it sucks. It feels kind of like a casualty of war, but when it came to the surface, hey, here's your suite, and it's done. And we're like, where are the outlets for the refrigerator? He's like, What refrigerator? We're like, what are you talking about? Uh the Spider-Man meme where everyone's pointing at each other, and uh, I was definitely on team go back and fix it. And I think he was willing to think the bigger issue was the time frame off of the other room. Every day that we go where we don't have completed rooms to sell to the public, there is a very real opportunity cost to that. So heartbreaking. We won't make that mistake in our other suites, but yeah, just to like document this imposterity for our own project, if people are like, Why doesn't the why isn't the view suite the best room in the hotel not have a sink? This is why.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. That's a heartbreaker. And me being on site, I'm part partially taking responsibilities. Man, I should have caught this. I should have said something before now, and I didn't. So I'm like partially responsible for this. So I don't know. We'll find a way to make up for it on the back end for sure. But it's all good, man.
SPEAKER_02And again, our designers did a really nice job coming up with we modified the kitchen to actually be longer and larger. We're going with a full-size refrigerator, we're doing some wallpaper, so we're changing it up right at the end of the day to make this space more usable, more appealing. I'm sure some people will notice that there's no think, but look, eight feet away in the bathroom. There's it's not like they're completely lost and deserted, but yeah, that one's gonna sting. That's one of those that hopefully guests don't notice, but for sure we will forever notice this one. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03That's exactly right. Let's pivot.
SPEAKER_02So something happier.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I don't know how happy, but I'd I would love to talk about this. We were on a call with our interior designers, had to be yesterday, and talking about this exact thing. We were talking about the kitchenette and what type of coffee maker we're going to use in this kitchenette. We want to have an elevated experience, so not your standard soft packet that you throw in, you run hot water over, maybe a Keurig that has a coffee pot attached to it, so you can make a full pot because there's multiple people. Yep, you or you can do the pods. So, thinking through that, our interior designers didn't even hear about it. I heard about it through hearsay, but there may or may not be somebody on the internet who used a life hack or a travel hack in a hotel room where she used the hot water from the Keurig to clean her underwear. This was unbeknownst to me.
SPEAKER_02We we just gotta watch this, okay?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we might have to pull this one out.
SPEAKER_02We're gonna and I hope the YouTube gods and everyone is okay with this playing like a clip of this. I think it's super viral, broke the internet. We just heard about this and literally like watching this today. So let me see if I can get this to work. But I'm gonna share my screen. We're gonna come over here and we're gonna watch a few seconds of this clip that went viral.
SPEAKER_00Every room has like a coffee pot thing in it. Even the other coffee makers where it bruised through. All you do is push your underwear where you would put the coffee grounds, you close it, you press brew, and it puts scorching hot water through it, you guys and then put the hairdryer and you blow dry those bad boys, and you got yourself a cleaner pair of underwear to wear.
SPEAKER_03I did not realize how many people I'm like flabbergasted. I really cannot believe it. And to think that I use coffee makers in other hotels, I'm really a victim. I feel like I'm gonna be entitled to compensation at this point.
SPEAKER_02Oh my goodness. So, yeah, apparently she goes on to say then she learned this tip, a travel hack, right, from some flight attendants years ago. She always does this if she's running short. So it's just wild. And look, I remember growing up, 80s, 90s, where like on dateline or whatever, like they bring out the black lights on the going around the hotel room, and it's horrifying. And by the way, this is probably why we're not gonna do glasses like glass, we will do plastic-covered plastic, and all these are for hygiene reasons, and like everything needs to be wiped down, and there are like pretty comprehensive cleaning protocols nowadays to take care of some of this stuff to deliver a hygienic and safe and comfortable stay for guests. But this one, dude, just blew my mind. I used to travel 150, 200 days a year. I backpacked around the world for nine months. I can honestly say I never threw my boxers in a coffee machine.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god. Yeah, that's a new one for me. And I honestly couldn't believe it until I saw it. But we're making a lot of decisions based off of real life concerns or issues. And this is one of them. If we offer something like a cure egg, do we have to worry about people throwing their underwear in the part where the pod goes to clean them? And we want to be thoughtful of people like that, but also people who come behind that, or even our cleaning protocol to make sure even if that does happen, it's rectified before it even gets to the next guest. Tons of decisions are being made like this, but I think that was really important to share because I'm sure there's tons of quote unquote travel hacks that are happening like this every single day in every single hotel room, and our hotel won't be any different. But a big part of it is getting in front of it and finding ways to fix it before it becomes an issue, whether that be like I said, cleaning protocol or just not having certain products or reusable products versus one-time use, even though it might be a little bit more harmful to the environment, it ensures that we have a certain level of cleanliness and this never becomes an issue. Yeah, yeah. Man, oh man, such so crazy. It's wild, man.
SPEAKER_02But and I first saw a comment on this when we create a little video, right? A little TikTok or a little Instagram, because I come down once a month to hang out with Micah, make some videos. We typically drop ours like once a week, but we did one on coffee, and we talked about how we think the best hotels have three levels. You have to have something in the room for the people that don't want to put on pants or makeup or just need that first shot. They're not expecting world-famous coffee, just inject caffeine into my bloodstream, please. But some hotels choose not to do that, some choose to do that. Now we're in conversation with some different coffee providers to find out if we could use locally roasted or at least state roasted. So something different, right? Rather than just what's the cheapest shit we can buy or get a thousand packs for a penny. Like we're trying to deliver something a little more thoughtful, but we're not expecting to get five-star reviews on that. But in the lobby, right, we could have free coffee, decaf, tea, right? That normal coffee bar available. That definitely is part of our thinking. And by the way, that's where most budget and mid-scale hotels stop, right? You get the little continental breakfast and then the little kind of free coffee bar. We're partnering with a coffee truck or a food truck to sit outside like our pool, hot tub, barrel sauna area, where again locals not staying at the hotel and guests alike can be able to go out and get that triple vanilla latte or whatever your espresso of choices. If you want to spend $11 and say 18 words to a barista, we got you. We got level three.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's all about creating, like the interior designer said, creating a moment and creating an experience. Because while some people are okay with the in-room coffee, I'm a very big proponent of take me to the coffee truck that I know I'm gonna get local coffee that I can't get anywhere else. I want to try it. It may taste like my coffee at home, but I won't know until I try it. So, yeah, I love saying 10 words. I love asking for the double mocha vanilla cream furtado with oat milk. Yeah, so just I'm excited. So many things are happening, so many changes are occurring, and I think every week we have new updates, there's new things happening, and we're continuing to reposition this old but deserving product into the best hotel in town. So just excited to continue to share our journey and our story. You got it, man.
SPEAKER_02Look, that's probably we new website went live. Brandings in I'm building AI tools to look for hotel too, because we've got investors who are like, we love what you're doing and want to get another one. So there's so much more to share ahead. And again, that's our commitment to you, the listener, the viewer, if you're catching this on YouTube or Spotify, is literally to share our story and to continue to get around people doing this, right? Especially those folks who've made that jump from short-term rentals into the boutique hospitality asset class. I think there's so many pros. And again, I'm just absolutely loving the journey, even with the bumps, the challenges, the sweets that are missing sinks. Honestly, it has still just been a joyous adventure. So a lot more to share. And we'll continue to also bring on guests and industry leaders and our coaches and continue dialoguing with Mike Shogren and others. So if you've got ideas for guests that you'd like us to interview or stories or topics that you'd like us to cover, please reach out. And uh, and of course, we've if you're looking for a community, honestly, please do not try and buy a hotel off of YouTube University. Get around people that are doing this with some expertise. We have, I don't know, we've soaked up so much wisdom in such a short time. And that's again, that's given me confidence and some competence to move forward. And now hopefully be part of your story. You, the listener, if you're an investor, you're an operator, you're thinking about making this jump, please reach out or think about joining the community. So, with that, Micah, any closing words for today's show?
SPEAKER_03No, I do want to say it's 80 degrees in Page, Arizona today, and it's 36 in West Virginia. So uh the great state of West Virginia. But no, otherwise, no, I'm you're exactly right. Um, so glad to be on this journey with you. And there's a community out there for people who want to learn more and buy their first or second hotel, whatever number that may be for you. So please feel free to reach out.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. Okay, gang. That's the pod. We'll catch you on the next one.
SPEAKER_03All right, that's it for today on the official Bookie Hotel Secrets podcast. If this helps, be sure to follow or subscribe and send it to someone who needs that bigger foot.
SPEAKER_02And if you want the community or the resource and playbook to find what we're learning, the link is out.
SPEAKER_03And if you have questions or topics you want us to cover, what's helped? So does it tell us the topic just.