The Things That Make You Stay

By Bashar Wali on 05.19.26

I have thirty years in lifestyle, upper-upscale, and luxury hotels — as owner, operator, the person who signed the leases, built the teams, and personally sweated RevPAR at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday. That many nights teaches you things no design review catches. This industry is capable of extraordinary things. It is also capable of spending a fortune on a lobby and forgetting to think about someone’s morning. I have been on both sides of that equation.

After 281 hotels in New York, 89 countries, and a genuine obsession the final result, here’s what I know about making a room work.

Power belongs where people live.

An outlet behind the bed under a 200-pound nightstand is not accessible power. It is performance art. Every bedside needs standard outlets, USB-C, and USB-A. So does the desk. So does anywhere a person sits for longer than ten minutes. Sonesta mandates it. Hilton made it a global requirement in 2024. Both figured out what a guest travels with. Most operators still have not.

The thermostat is not your asset manager’s decision.

I understand the energy math. I have run the spreadsheets. The guest still outranks the HVAC algorithm. A locked thermostat holding a room at 74 in July is hostility wearing a green badge. Give guests a reasonable range, make the controls legible, and do not override the room while they sleep. The guest is not a variable in your sustainability strategy. They are the reason the strategy exists.

The small things carry the most weight.

Before any new room opens, I want five people to sleep in it. The owner. The designer. The GM. The chief engineer. The executive housekeeper. No setup. No briefing. Use it like a guest. Shower. Work at the desk. Kill every light. Sleep. Wake early. Read the shampoo label without glasses. Charge your phone. Pack in twelve minutes. That one night reveals more than any mock-up walk or brand standards review ever will.

Two real pillow options at check-in, soft and firm, costs almost nothing and transforms how a guest feels about the room in the morning. Enough towels for two people to actually use them. Shampoo bottles with labels large enough to read without glasses at 7 a.m. These details do not appear in any brand standard I have ever reviewed. They live entirely in the judgment of operators who care enough to think about what a guest’s morning actually looks like.