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Some Future Day evaluates technology at the intersection of culture & law.
Join Marc Beckman and his esteemed guests for insider knowledge surrounding how you can use new technologies to positively impact your life, career, and family. Marc Beckman is Senior Fellow of Emerging Technologies and an Adjunct Professor at NYU, CEO of DMA United, and a member of the New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets.
Marc Beckman: All right, Anthony, it's great to see you. Welcome to Some Future Day.
Anthony Melchiorri: I am really, really excited. And since the moment I met you, I was like, there's something special about this guy. So now you have a stalker.
Marc Beckman: I like it. I like it. I need a stalker, especially since you're a New York City guy. I love the fact that you are from Brooklyn. New York City. I think it's a big deal. I, I, I read, I was really fascinated. I read that, your life story actually came to life in a movie that you, executive, produced. it was pretty compelling.
Do you want to talk a little bit about, about your background as a, as a Brooklynite, as a real New Yorker?
Anthony Melchiorri: Sure. I grew up, I grew up in Brooklyn. My dad died when I was two years old and my mom was left with three kids, [00:03:00] raised them on her own. And, um, just let's say that she was a very strong, great mother, uh, but she had to do things to put food on the table. So, uh, years later, you know, I grew up in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn. I went to Shreveport High School. I joined the military. Uh, the Air Force saved my life. Literally to this day, I see anybody in the Air Force uniform and I just give them a hug. Uh, I'm very, uh, blessed to have the Air Force bring me back for speaking engagements. And so they really saved my life from, from being in Brooklyn and not really having any direction.
Matter of fact, I don't think I've told you this. But last year, I was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame, which was an insane moment for me. And I cried for about three hours. so as I went through my career in the hotel business, I just had to get my story, my life story, or, or how I grew up out of me.
So I met a gentleman named Leo Rossi, who's become my best friend. And, uh, he's an actor at [00:04:00] Hollywood, you can look him up. And anyway, by meeting him, then I met the real Donnie Brasco, Joe Pistone. And, uh, we got a movie made through Lifetime and through, uh, Starz Media called Wisegal. It's a story about kind of watching my mother do things to kind of get us over to the finish line.
And, you know, and I wanted to make sure that it was really important to me that everyone knew my dad was a good guy and that my mom did what she had to do to make a living. So when you watch the movie called Wisegal, you can find it anywhere online. It's pretty compelling to see. What a mom would do to make sure her kid have food on the table.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I think, Anthony, it's really, you know, an incredible story. The fact that you were able to get James Caan, the amazing actor, who is also in The Godfather, into your film, you know, just speaks a ton. But what was the story that your mom [00:05:00] went through? Like, what, what happened, uh, to your family? And, uh, what did she need to do to, to take care of you?
Anthony Melchiorri: Well, let's just put it this way, and you have to watch the movie because I don't really talk about it outside of the movie because it's something I don't, I never talk about. And it's, she was working with the local organization there that, um, that helped, uh, let's just say move money. And so in the movie it goes through a story, Alyssa Milano played my mom, James Conn played uh, someone that she was involved with When I was on the set with James Caan, he told so many great stories but when I first met him, this is funny, I was like, I'm a general manager of a hotel. I don't know anything about Hollywood. I just was fortunate enough to get this movie made. I'm in Canada. James Caan's on the set that week. I fly in and I come out of my hotel room.
He comes out of his hotel room. We're in the lobby of the hotel. I had no idea it was in my hotel. I [00:06:00] have a cashmere jacket on. I have a black shirt on, kind of like what you're wearing. He has a cashmere jacket on, a black shirt. We have the same color jeans on. Because I was thinking, I've worked really hard, what would a producer Where to, to, to, to a set.
So somebody mentions that I'm the guy that the movie's about, or it's really about my mom. And he comes over to me and he touches my jacket. He looks at my outfit and he uses two words. One starts with F and the other one starts with Y. And I was like, yes, sir. And he smiles. And he goes, I have 50 movies in my back pocket since I'm nine years old.
I can't get one effing movie made. You have one screenplay and James effing Khan is playing in your movie. And I'm looking, I'm terrified. I almost peed down my leg. I was so terrified. And I'm looking at him and he smiles and he goes, kid, don't ever forget this [00:07:00] moment. And I go, sir, I guarantee you, I will.
I'm actually getting emotional talking about it. I said, sir, I guarantee you, I never will. And so, I was very fortunate.
Marc Beckman: Well, it's an interesting sentiment on society. Like you talk, you know, you winked and you talk about the idea of, um, your mom working with like the, the community organization. but I guess my question to you, when you think about, um, the community and, and organized crime is, um. sometimes people just need to find a place where they can get help and take care of their loved ones.
And I wonder if we're seeing that in New York City these days. Like, I know, uh, Giuliani kind of got rid of the mafia, and it's not as prevalent as it was when we were growing up, but there's still organized crime in certain communities. So you might look at You know, certain areas in, in New York City where, you know, people are living in the housing projects and they're relying on, on the drug dealers to actually give them opportunity to generate income, to [00:08:00] help their children, to get Christmas presents, um, in many cases, more reliable.
for some reason or another, than their local government. And I'm wondering if that's just a part of New York City culture, and it will always be, regardless of the, the groups, the communities, you know, background, ethnicity, racial profile, or beyond.
Anthony Melchiorri: I don't think it has anything to do with New York City in particular. I think it has to do with people wanting to be a part of a group. So if you go out to the Midwest, you go out to the West, wherever you go, if you have a better deal than the deal being provided to me, whether it be working at 7 Eleven or working or going to school and somebody, you know, saying, hey man, I'm the, I'm the cool guy and let's go, Sell drugs or whatever it is, right?
In any community, of course, people, that's why it's so important to have mentors and to have coaches because, you know, depending on when you get influenced, you know, it could be a pretty heavy influence. I remember when I was nine, 10, 11 years old, I [00:09:00] was like, people could influence me and my mom was very strong.
And she made sure that we kept our nose clean. And that we were very, very, uh, good kids and we went to school and we did what we had to do. But my mom took no nonsense. So she put food on the table. That's all I knew growing up. And that's all I need to know. But my house was a normal house where a very strong woman that took no crap from nobody, uh, raised us to be good people.
And so I think it really starts with in the home with coaches or with, you know, on a track team or wherever you get that support. Or if you're left to your own devices and someone kind of picks your bones, so to speak, and again, in the movie, you'll kind of see what happened after my dad died. And that's kind of what happened.
Um, but, you know, I say to people, what wouldn't you do to support your children, right? You'd kill me and three people behind me to make sure your kid has food in his mouth, period. And so that's [00:10:00] what this story is about. The story isn't about so much what she did, it's why she did it. so there's stories about that in, whether it be in a housing project, whether it be in Beverly Hills.
There's stories about those kind of women and men throughout our country. And some people, like myself, go in the military, and we get straightened out pretty quick. And we realize there's only one way to be successful. And that's do the right thing and be a moral person. So, I, um, that movie was a big, big, big hit.
I don't think I've ever said this publicly. I haven't said this publicly. It was my therapist. Getting that out was my therapist and, um, you know, my mom in a lot of ways is my hero and, um, I just wanted to show, in a light and she was involved in it. She actually, I didn't know a lot of that stuff and she actually sat with the writer and, and helped her write the movie.
Marc Beckman: So you had a personal catharsis of sorts when you talk [00:11:00] about it being your therapy. When the movie was finished, what happened to you personally? What finished, what was resolved in your life personally?
Anthony Melchiorri: Wow, you're, you're good, man. I've never gone, I've never gone anywhere like this with anyone. Um, I will, I will tell you that, um, I'm not a violent person at all, but I was an angry person. And, um, I was a hell of a lot less angry and I was very, um, I felt good. I just felt like my dad was a good man. In the movie, he was a police officer, but he was a construction worker.
And my mom was a smart lady, uh, Who basically whose life was turned upside down. She had a, not a great upbringing herself. so when she finally had a stable life with three beautiful kids living in a, you know, in a townhouse on the second floor. In, uh, in Cheap Shed, but we're in Bay Ridge, [00:12:00] um, and then, you know, making pasta and raising our family and our husband coming home and making good money back in the day.
Matter of fact, if you ever see the parachute ride in Coney Island, think of my dad because he painted that back in the day and he was a construction worker making good money at the time and everything was fine. And then he dropped dead of cancer and everything got turned upside down and backwards. And she had no support system.
Her mom was, my grandmother was a great lady, but she, she had nothing and she had no support. so again, some people show up in a time in your life that's vulnerable and sometimes you walk through the door and sometimes you don't.
Marc Beckman: So, anyone who knows me knows I have a tremendous amount of respect for the military. I think that your background as it relates to the United States Air Force is super incredible. I didn't realize that you received such an amazing award, Anthony. What were you doing in the Air Force? What was your role while you were in the Air Force?
Anthony Melchiorri: Okay, so when I took the, the test, uh, here at Fort Hamilton, in, in Brooklyn, I say here, I'm not in Brooklyn, but in [00:13:00] Brooklyn. And, uh, you take a test, you can be, you know, it was things about mechanics, electrical, whatever. And then it was administration and I aced the administration part without realizing I got the highest mark you can get.
And thank God, because the other two, I got the lowest mark you can get. Basically . I put my name on the paper and so I became the administrator. And basically, I worked my way up. I went to Whiteman Air Force Base, uh, which was a, which was a nuclear, uh, base. We had 150 intercontinental missiles. And I worked my way up and, uh, in administration, and then, uh, won Airman of the Year and won all awards, went to college, started getting my degree, and Colonel Canning, who eventually became a general, Tap me to become his protocol officer.
So I was a protocol officer, which means I made sure anything he needed, I took care of. Whether it be driving, whether it be if a general comes on base, make sure the rooms are ready, whatever it was, I was his [00:14:00] person. Make sure the flags are in the right place. I remember going to Fort Leavenworth for a flag we didn't have, uh, that we needed for a dignitary.
And then when I was on base, we were very fortunate because it was an old army base, World War II base. Um, we got the only, To this day, the only stealth bomber base in the world went to Whiteman Air Force Base because Ike Skelton, who was a senator, he made sure we got it. They put in a billion dollars worth of renovations to our base.
We had the best general, best dorm. And I worked for the colonel who was in charge of bringing the stealth bomber to, uh, to Whiteman Air Force Base. So
Marc Beckman: Nuclear, nuclear weapons and stealth bombers. That's pretty amazing.
Anthony Melchiorri: And I was a kid that didn't know which way I was going. And I'll tell you another story. Listen, you open up a can of worms, my friend. I was there the day of the four star general. It was when the wall came down and it was a four star general from Russia. Uh, [00:15:00] the only time in our history to this day that a Russian general was in a nuclear facility.
Uh, silo. It was me, Colonel Canning, the four star general, General Welch of the United States Air Force, a four star general from Russia, and two or three other protocol officers from their side in this silo, in where we launch nuclear weapons. And then all of a sudden I'm the kid that gets a stealth bomber model on his desk with like, with a box of 50 stealth bomber models that I had to give out to vice presidents, presidents, generals, dignitaries, cause everybody came to the base.
So that was my. I'm a very serious person, even though I try to keep it light, uh, into, piss poor preparation leads to piss poor performance. And I was trained on there's no second chances. This is, this is serious stuff. So [00:16:00] even though I wasn't, you know, turning screws for a nuclear weapon or, or launching nuclear weapons or flying the stealth bomber, I was treated as whatever you did, do it right the first time.
So that's.
Marc Beckman: cog, you were a cog in that team. You were still playing a major role. And what, so I don't understand just going back to like the missile silo thing. So you were in a nuclear missile silo with a leader from Russia.
Anthony Melchiorri: yeah, so this, and you can look it up and there's a whole big, I was just, I went back, I was honored by my university, Park University, uh, and I was sat on the board. So I would go out there and they, their base asked me to come by. So I went by and I go to the decommissioned nuclear, uh, silo and there's a big plaque of this day.
And the gentleman who's now passed away, I was there about five, six years ago. He said, this was a really big day in the history. of Whiteman Air Force Base. And I make believe I have no idea what he's talking about. And he's going through, he goes, the [00:17:00] only time a Russian general blah, blah, blah. I wish I was there.
It was a historic day for our country. And I look at him and I'm in my honor guard uniform in this picture with my little silver hat on. And I'm in charge of the honor guard and I have my gun. And I go, look at that guy right there. And he's looking, I go, Look familiar and he's like no and I go look a little closer and he looks and he goes is that you I go Yeah, that's me
Marc Beckman: That's amazing.
Anthony Melchiorri: So, yeah, it was one of those moments You know, listen, I was very I was very fortunate But how it works is you have 150 nuclear missiles, which after Gorbachev and Reagan signed the deal those got decommissioned so but when they were when I was there, they were you know, they were ready to launch So there's a hundred and fifty missiles throughout Missouri.
Marc Beckman: like inside? Like, when you say when you were there, they were ready, they weren't decommissioned, like, what does it feel like inside a nuclear missile silo? What's, like, what's the ambience?
Anthony Melchiorri: I see you, I will show you the video. Um, so, so, um, there's [00:18:00] 150, uh, missiles throughout. There's launch pads all over. There, there's silos all over Missouri. But then, I think there's 15, uh, uh, nuclear launch facilities that are throughout. Missouri, they're not on site necessarily of that weapon.
So I may be honest, like I may have a launch site and I may have a missile site in the same site that launches that missile and 10 other missiles throughout Missouri. So each launch site has 15 missiles, right? Sometimes they're at one site and sometimes they're just in the middle of a cornfield. So you go down to the site where you launched a missile.
You go through this tunnel, and I can't remember if it's 60 feet below ground, and you go through and there's a, um, think of a bank vault, like when you walk in the bank with that thick door. Well, times that by two or three, okay, they close two pilots in the, in the [00:19:00] launch area, uh, and they seal it for 24 hours.
Can't get in, can't get out. Each one of those, this is all declassified by the way, each one of those people have guns. Why do they have guns, Mark?
Marc Beckman: I have no idea.
Anthony Melchiorri: you can't
Marc Beckman: above my pay grade.
Anthony Melchiorri: You can't get in, you can't get out, but you and I are sitting there, we can't, like, when we turn the keys, we can't be, you and I can't turn the keys, uh, like, I can't turn both keys, I need, it's so far away that we have to turn them at the same time.
Why do we have weapons?
Marc Beckman: Talk to me. Tell me.
Anthony Melchiorri: Because if you lose your mind, I have to shoot you. And you can go online, and you
Marc Beckman: That's crazy.
Anthony Melchiorri: it's all online. And, um, so, these two people, these, we call them missile pilots. I'll tell you a funny story. I used to go to the bar, me and my best friend, who's now passed away, and, you know, we were young, and so, a young lady asked, you know, asked what we did in [00:20:00] the Air Force, and she said, we were missile pilots.
She's like, what's a missile pilot? I said, how do you think those missiles get to Russia? We get on the missile, and then we power shit off, and of course, that's not true. But so, I was a missile pilot, uh, when I
Marc Beckman: But she believed you.
Anthony Melchiorri: Some of them did. Yeah.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I bet you.
Anthony Melchiorri: So yeah, so I go from this kid that grew up in Brooklyn that in my book, um, uh, Show Up, it talks about, I was 18 when I wanted to jump off a roof, and then all of a sudden, I'm kind of hanging out with a Russian general, and I have to make sure that the colonel runs on time for a nuclear base and a stealth base.
It was bananas. But I never thought of it really being bananas until I'm speaking to you, because it's just, you know, um, you know, the only thing that, what, sharpens a diamond, or iron sharpens iron, it's like, you need, you, early on in your, at least for me, as a young man, I needed to be around The best in the world.
And to [00:21:00] this day, I have not met any leaders outside. I've met some good leaders outside, but I have not met anyone that comes close to the people I worked for in the long term. Not one
Marc Beckman: So that's Yeah, that's really interesting to hear you say that as far as, you know, military leaders being the best. I assume that's the most organized and beyond. And in your specialty, in the hospitality category, You went on, uh, quickly after you left the military and went into the hospitality space, you went on a bit of a meteoric rise.
I mean, your lineup of achievements and accomplishments are incredible. The Plaza Hotel, the Lucerne, the Algonquin, and the innovation that you brought into those areas too. So, it wasn't just about, like, organizational standards that you might have brought from the military experience, but also creativity.
Like, for example, the Plaza, the iconic Plaza. You're the person that created the Eloise tour.
Anthony Melchiorri: Okay. So the Eloise tour was
Marc Beckman: So I'm moving you, I'm moving you from nuclear missiles and stealth bombers to Eloise.
Anthony Melchiorri: [00:22:00] well, Eloise was obviously the thing right before me, but Eloise was at the Plaza and Randy Glick was the VIP manager. A young lady comes into Uh, the lobby of 59th street and she, she's dressed in a little beautiful outfit. And I'm in my tuxedo at the time. Cause when I was there in the beginning, we were in tuxedos as the, as the manager and, uh, she put her hand out, it's in my book, she put her hand out and she goes, Mr.
Where's Eloise? Like a shotgun in my chest. I was like, I don't know. So I run into the VIP office and I go, Randy, do we have a tour or something? Like this little girl wants to see Eloise. And she goes, we'll make one. So she brings her around, she makes this tour. And then. I went to Tom Civitano, who's the chief marketing officer.
And he's actually in Home Alone 2 because he brought Home Alone 2 to the plaza and he said, um, let's now generate revenue from it. So we made it to where we generate revenue and it became revolutionary. And then we did. This whole package for Home Alone 2, which actually blew up, and you don't know this, but at the end of Home Alone [00:23:00] 2, Tom Civitano thought it was a good idea to put our phone number at the end of Home Alone 2.
So on a Sunday morning, and at this time I was director of front office operations, we would get thousands, tens of thousands of calls that would break our phone lines to kids making believe they're, you know, the Home Alone 2 kid, right? It was, it was fascinating. So yeah, so I go from the Air Force and then all of a sudden I'm on the Home Alone 2 set.
All of a sudden,
Marc Beckman: Who, who? So it's kind of interesting because at the time, the Plaza was really the most iconic New York City hotel, hands down. Who was own, who owned the hotel back then that they were bringing in movies and, and let, you know, you were launching Elo, the Eloise
Anthony Melchiorri: Wait, wait, do you know the answer to this question?
Marc Beckman: I don't, I really don't.
Anthony Melchiorri: You're gonna, your mind's gonna be blown, my friend.
Marc Beckman: Go ahead.
Anthony Melchiorri: Okay, now, this is back in 1991, okay? And at the [00:24:00] end of Home Alone 2, do you, have you ever watched Home Alone 2?
Marc Beckman: Of course.
Anthony Melchiorri: Okay, at the end of Home Alone 2, and um, uh, what's his name? McAllister, the kid's name in the movie.
Marc Beckman: Macaulay Culkin.
Anthony Melchiorri: Macaulay Culkin says to a gentleman standing in the lobby, Hey, mister, where's the front desk? Who did he say? Hey, mister, where's the front desk to?
Marc Beckman: Trump. But Trump, was Trump the owner back then?
Anthony Melchiorri: the only reason Home Alone 2 was shot there is because Trump wanted to be in the movie.
Marc Beckman: So he owned, um, the building or the, or the business?
Anthony Melchiorri: He owned, he owned the, go, go online and read the New York Times article about him owning the Plaza Hotel back in the day. He owned the Plaza. So I worked when I was at the Plaza, I worked for Donald Trump and he would call me Tony.
Marc Beckman: How did you like working for him?
Anthony Melchiorri: He was, he was fine to me, you know, I'm not going to get into politics of where we are today, but when I was a young manager, um, he would say hello to me, he would ask me [00:25:00] what the average rate is and, uh, he, I, I had nothing to add outside of.
Yeah, I worked for a gentleman who was the Managing Director, Barrick Regan, and so my only FaceTime with Trump was when he came into the lobby to go to the Oak Room, he would ask me the average rate, and from time to time, ask me another question. That was really the only Interaction we have.
Marc Beckman: That's pretty cool. That's amazing. So, all right, let's move off of the plaza and talk about the Lucerne because something that you accomplished there is really notable, um, particularly in these days. You won the New York Times Best Service Award while you were at the Lucerne. Um, what did that mean for that hotel?
Like, what does it mean generally speaking and, and how important was it for the Lucerne at that time?
Anthony Melchiorri: Well, you're doing something that no one's ever done for my, to my career or to me. Like you're taking, and in my book, there's parts of this, but you're taking a very early part of my life [00:26:00] and making me realize that I'm going from Brooklyn to, Nuclear weapons to Macaulay Culkin, Home Alone 2, and then now I'm at the Lucerne.
So let's go back just for a second at the Air Force. I was given confidence. I had no confidence. I was going to kill myself when I was 18. I was going to throw myself off a building. And then I go in the military and all of a sudden, you know, the military gives me confidence. So I walk into the family who owned it.
Wonderful people. They bought it. It was Columbia University dorms renovated. It gave me a jewel. No one wanted me to be gm. I, uh, in my book I talk about, I told the headhunter, I will give you the commission. And I didn't have 15 cents, let alone 15 grand to give him a commission if I don't get the GM job.
I went in, Ron Dom gave me the GM job. I didn't have to give the guy the commission. That's in the book too. So anyway. So when I get there, again, learning in the [00:27:00] military, being the best is the only thing that you should be getting up in the morning for. We're America, we have to be the best, and so in the military, it's like, I got that in my brain.
So I make a mission statement, first GM job, and on the mission statement, the bottom of the mission statement said, We will be the number one hotel in New York City for service. So I brought it to the owner, and the owner giggled. And then I brought it to my team, and the team giggled. And that really motivated me, and a couple years later, we were the number one, before the event, number one New York Times hotel for service in New York City.
And that is the only way to build a team. Where are we going? So in the military, we knew where we were going. We were being a deterrent for the world. It's like, you mess with us, we're going to talk to you, but if talking doesn't work, we got stuff. So. In, in, in the hotel business. I needed a mission. And so that was the mission.
And recently I'm working, uh, with this [00:28:00] company and I said to the owner, I said, well, we will be the number one, so and so company in the world. And he giggled, this was just maybe a week ago, and he giggled and I was like, yes. And he goes, why'd you say yes? I said, because you just got me going because now you even doubt it.
So to me, uh, when we became the number one in service, I still have people talking about that. Kids that were kids then, full grown adults with careers say to me, that moment changed everything for me because we did something nobody thought we could do,
Marc Beckman: Is the best service standard in hospitality today higher than it was back then?
Anthony Melchiorri: not even close. Not
Marc Beckman: You think the service, you think the service, um, the standard of best service has diminished over time?
Anthony Melchiorri: Okay, when you say best service, are you talking about best service at the Four Seasons Maui? Or are you talking about best service as a comment [00:29:00] for service today in the world?
Marc Beckman: I'm saying, what, well, let's back up. If you were going to instruct the next generation of people entering the hospitality business, what is the definition of excellent service?
Anthony Melchiorri: Be available. Mentally and physically available.
Marc Beckman: Okay, so now, so if that's the standard, right, and, and when you were, when you were at the Lucerne and you were awarded the New York Times Best Service Award, do you feel like that level of being available back then is the same level as it is today in, in hotels generally speaking?
Anthony Melchiorri: the answer is in some hotels in the higher end hotels, yes. Where you used to get great service and you still get great service in some three or four star hotels, obviously. Um, this is the problem. And this is something I work with every day. And I do a show called Hotel All [00:30:00] Stars. And in my show, the first episode you can watch on YouTube, um, I had six candidates, four showed up late.
That wouldn't have happened, like, when I first came into the career. You have one maybe person show up late, and maybe because the subway got stuck. So, it's not so much the standard has lowered, is that people aren't taking hospitality as a career. When I came into the industry, you didn't really take it as a career.
And then it started to become a career. And now, because of low wages, And maybe people not being treated the way they should have been, uh, people said, you know what, I'm not going to stay in this industry. Now after COVID, there are no low wages. You know, desk agents are making really good wages, especially in New York, um, and they now have the power, whereas they didn't have the power because we have flexibility.
So if you're not taking and meeting employees where they are, so [00:31:00] I'm hopeful. But my job in this industry is to get people to look at this industry. So whether it be talking to students in colleges, whether it be doing my branding course at Cornell, whether it be doing my new show, Hotel All Stars, writing a book, working with companies and consulting with hotels, which I do on a daily basis.
My job, I was talking to a young man yesterday, actually not a young man, And he said to me, because there was a story he heard and whatever I was telling him about it, and he said, I've never met in my entire career anybody that loves this business more than you do. And you probably never will. So, It's not there, the infusion of that level of wanting.
We are servant leaders. You come into my hotel, I'm, the only thing I am to you is a servant leader. I'm there just, you at three o'clock in the morning want your shoe shined, and there's nobody on duty, and I get a call saying, hey, Mark needs a shoe shined. I get my car and go shine your shoes.
Marc Beckman: [00:32:00] So Anthony, though, shouldn't that culturally then, if it starts at the top, right, if executive management and ownership has that culture of excellence with regards to service, it's three in the morning, I got you, shouldn't that trickle down then to, um, the, the employee level at, you know, at every level?
Anthony Melchiorri: It does, if there's a culture of, if you have a line employee, And you say, well, that line of employees should just work harder. Well, are they incentivized? Yes. They're making a decent wage and yes. Maybe they have health benefits and yes, they maybe even have a good work environment, but everybody wants to grow.
Showing that person how they're going to grow and why they should stay. I just had this example at a hotel I was at, um, in Boston recently. And I asked a young lady, I said, are you in Haas Valley School? And she said, no, as I was checking out. And I go, oh, and she was okay. She wasn't great. And she goes, but I want to be a supervisor.
And then she got excited. So [00:33:00] if we don't. Make sure we're, we're mentoring her. We're going to lose her in the industry. So I'm going to make a personal point to try to, to talk to that young lady and mentor her. So it comes down to like anything else, who are you surrounding yourself with? So if you are a general manager, that sucks.
Your team's going to suck. You are a general manager that understands the housekeeper is the most important person in the building. It's not the owner. And you inspire that housekeeper. You inspire that front desk clerk. They want to work for you and around you, not because you're paying them, not because you're nice, just because they're inspired by you, because in my career, the first word that people, I think is what I hear, uh, when they say, tell me about Anthony, nice guy is not the first thing that comes up.
The first thing that comes up is he gets stuff done. And then maybe the third word is like, and he's a nice guy, but [00:34:00] I don't get paid to be a nice guy. I get paid to get crap done. So if you are a general manager in leadership, whether it be in Walmart or in a hotel business that cares about the associates in a real way, you are going to have a insane company.
Marc Beckman: So, so which hotel, if you were going to name one hotel as the North Star as it relates to exceptional service in the United States, just one hotel, where would you say the best service is?
Anthony Melchiorri: I, I can't say that. Um, because depending on what it is, there's. There's three star hotels that you pay 300 a night for that have that kind of service. There are, you know, and then you go to the five star hotels, and there's some that are great and some that suck. Um, but typically, if you go to a branded five star hotel, you're going to get good service.
Uh, sometimes you go to that branded five star hotel
Marc Beckman: Give me one name. You don't want to name it.
Anthony Melchiorri: um, I don't. Well, okay, I'll name it. I'll name it because if I don't, [00:35:00] you're gonna, I don't want you to be disappointed. Dude, I will tell you from a personal experience. I was shooting a show called Five Star Secrets in Cabo. And I was at the One&Only And as soon as I walk in, I I get out of this car, my crew's already there.
There's two cameras up. My producers are at the front door. And all of a sudden I walk in and I've never been there before. And everybody's going like this, the staff is going like this. And I'm like, I said, my producer, what the hell is this? I'm getting nervous now. They go, just go with it, go with it. So I find out that every employee touches their heart When you pass them and I asked the managing director, what is that?
And he goes, from the heart, we give you service from the heart. Marc I am telling you, that changed me. I changed in that hotel. Have you ever been to that hotel?
Marc Beckman: I have not.
Anthony Melchiorri: It changed me. So that level of service was, and then they put me in, you know, because we're shooting the [00:36:00] show, they put me in this presidential suite or whatever it was.
I thought I was in the lobby. I was in my living room. I thought I was in the lobby of the hotel, in my living room.
Marc Beckman: So, okay. So, like, you're a very interesting person because we talked about marketing activation at the Plaza. We talk about attention to detail and a high level of service over at Lucerne, organizational service at Lucerne. Let's talk about the Algonquin for a second. And another important, amazing piece of.
Um, New York City History. This is a marketing play also, in my opinion. I mean, you went through a major renovation there, you reinvented the brand, and part of that reinvention was your iconic 10,000 martini. Who drinks a 10,000 martini, Anthony?
Anthony Melchiorri: You, you, you have, listen, you know, I'm a storyteller, I, I, this is the story of my career because this is the story where people that had money in New York City that wanted hotels turned around kind of started to know who I was. But this was the moment where everybody [00:37:00] realized the difference between marketing and PR.
And I didn't know the difference until this moment. So, I get to meet the General Manager of Algonquin, it was a blessing, and the owner said, don't ask for forgiveness, don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. And I turn to him and I go, you just said that to the wrong guy. And he goes, no, I just said that to the right guy.
I said, okay. So, the ownership, and there's a lot of stories about this renovation, but I'll just cut to the chase. They gave us 3 million to renovate, soft good renovation. That means wallpaper, carpeting, furniture. $3 million for 174 room hotel is not a lot of money. Even back 20 years ago, wherever long it was, we closed the building and that's his story.
We opened it up.
Marc Beckman: hey.
Anthony Melchiorri: time the Algonquin's been closed. We opened it up in 28 days. That's a miracle. New York time Rights, New York, uh, the only thing that ran on time, whatever month it was, and whatever year it was, [00:38:00] say June, uh, 1999, whatever it was, was the elgon renovations. 28 days, right. So. With this, I'm working with a PR company and Carla Cacavalli was from this marketing company, PR company.
I said, I need a big idea and um, and so she came up with ideas and I didn't like any of them. So one day, I won't tell you all the gory details, but one day I was done. And she's like, wait, cause I was, I was being very direct in a meeting. And she goes, I don't work this way. She goes to the bathroom downstairs at the Algonquin.
She comes up, she looks at the, at the frame where she's between the blue room, uh, the blue bar and the lobby bar, the lobby bar of the Algonquin. So when you walk in the Algonquin, there's two buildings. There's a carriage house. And there's the Algonquin. The Carriage House is part of the Algonquin, but they're two separate buildings, and there's a door between them.
She's in this door, and she looks at me, and she goes, You do a lot of, uh, [00:39:00] engagements here. And I said, Yes, we do. And she says, Uh, and you're known for the Martini. I said, Yes, we are. And she goes, How about the thousand dollar martini? I told the entire team, I said, tell me this, we get a jeweler, we put a diamond in the martini, we put it on the menu and somebody comes in, orders it, and they ask somebody to marry them.
I tell everybody to sit down. I tell her to stand up and I said, everybody give her a standing ovation, or actually the other way around. And we gave her a standing ovation. And she goes, what's that for? I said, you just nailed it. So we are going to be. We are going to be on the front page of every paper, it's yours, whatever.
Call the owner, and go, Mr. Miller, I'm going to need some money, blah, blah, blah. And he said, I like it, but not the 1,000 martini, the 10,000 martini. I said, yes, sir. Front page, David Letterman wore a hat that said, what do you get at the Oak Room's, uh, the Blue Bar's, uh, 10,000 martini? What do you get? You get a martini and a hat that [00:40:00] says dumbass on it, right?
So he wore a hat. David Letterman wore a hat that said dumbass about a hard martini. And what, and, and, and what happens is, David The 10,000 martini is you order it through the hotel before you ask the person you want to marry you to marry you. I'm going to get to the point of this whole story. They, so we get with a jeweler in Rockefeller Center.
Now it could be a 10,000 diamond, a 10,000 diamond, or a million dollar diamond. And they buy the diamond. They set the set, the diamond's set. We take it, we put it in our safe. We make an appointment. He comes in or she comes in. And the one that we sold, he comes in. He ordered the martini, she ordered whatever drink she thinks she's going to a Broadway play.
I had the daily news photographer next to me. He, the, the nobody knew. And anyway, this is after it already blew up after the PR release, but this was the only time he sold it and, uh, he got on his knee place,
Marc Beckman: a nice story.
Anthony Melchiorri: the daily news next day. The point of this. [00:41:00] I didn't come up with the idea. I didn't make the idea better.
I didn't have the three million to renovate the Algonquin. My job was the four star general job. I don't fly planes. I don't fly missiles. I make sure there are no mistakes, and I make sure nobody gets in your way when you're flying that plane. I will kill everybody in my wake if we are flying the Algonquin plane and anybody gets in the way of us being in a modern hotel in New York City.
That's my job.
Marc Beckman: But it seems to me, Anthony, like in every instance here, your focus is on the individual, the guest, right? Whether it was the Eloise tour, whether it was the best service at the Lucerne, um, even this enjoyable experience, you, you, you entered the experience with a marketing idea. With regards to the 10,000 martini, but you come out of it with making these people's lives fantastic.
So you're very focused on the guest. And I want to, I want [00:42:00] to like move into an area. Um, I want to modernize. I want to bring us up to, up to speed in 2024 and talk a little bit about the guest as it relates to technology today. So let's shift gears and move over. Like, do you think that technology really improves a guest's experience in a hotel these days?
Anthony Melchiorri: The answer is yes, and I'm going to do it. And I'm doing the keynote speaking engagement of HITECH, which is the technology show in Charlotte in July for my industry with my partner Glenn. And we are actually bringing everybody through technology in the hospitality industry in the last hundred years.
Okay, so the short statement to that is, The industry comes to technology late. When we come to technology, we implement it incorrectly, and we implement the wrong technology in a lot of instances, in the wrong places, and then we spend 20 years re engaging and trying to fix it because we just spent all this money.
However, from time to time, we get it right. Electronic door [00:43:00] locks. We got that right pretty quick, okay, once it started to be a thing. Air conditioning, right? Um, the bed, the big thing, the big technology in our industry, 25 years ago by Barry Sternlicht when he ran the, the, uh, Westin brand was the bed. It's the bed, stupid, the heavenly bed.
You remember the heavenly bed? It's the bed, great technology. That's technology. Yeah. And then all of a sudden we all followed suit. Now you haven't stepped on the bad bed in the hotel since he introduced it. So it's necessary. Guests want it, implement it. We don't do a good job of that, typically. But sometimes we do.
So right now, we're doing a good job with text messaging. I think Hilton, if I'm not mistaken, was the first to really implement checking on your phone, text messaging. It works. I've used it. It works most of the time. Um, so to me, for me personally, The thing that works the best is text messaging. When I was talking to [00:44:00] my friends at Forbes about their standards, they said, we'll never do text messaging.
COVID comes, now five star standard is text messaging. A guest wants what they want when they want it. When you walk into a room, I don't necessarily want to be called on the phone, cause I may be in the toilet, but I do want to text saying, hey, welcome, do you need anything? I'm Larry. Hey Larry, I
Marc Beckman: so, so, so it's, so it's really you're saying technology can enhance the guest's experience in a hotel by making it a little bit more seamless for utility purposes, frictionless. I don't want to speak to a person at the front desk, but I want some service. That's really where you see technology, um, shining.
Anthony Melchiorri: front of me, I want that service to be impeccable. However, I want to choose when I want to see that person. So if I go to the front desk and I choose to go to the front desk, if I see a housekeeper and I choose to engage, but most guests want what they want when they want it. So if they want a towel. They [00:45:00] should, everybody has this phone three, you know, less than three feet away from them, right arm's length.
And I want to be able to go, and I think, you know, working with me, I'm a text guy. Like you text me great. Email me, take me a week, but text me and I'll, and I'll, and I'll get it done. So yes, the answer is guess what, what, what they want. When they want it. However, you've got to make it easy for the, for the employee and easy for the hotel to implement it.
And it's gotta be friction free to use your words.
Marc Beckman: So, so let me ask you this. With regards to technology, have you seen it ruin a guest's experience? Have you seen it frustrate them to the point where, you know, even if the physical hotel and the employees are excellent, the technology was such a disaster that it actually ruined the guest's experience?
Anthony Melchiorri: But let me ask you a question. Have you ever walked into a nice hotel and used an iPad that didn't work?
Marc Beckman: I have actually. Yes.
Anthony Melchiorri: There's your answer.
Marc Beckman: Yes.
Anthony Melchiorri: So the answer is [00:46:00] I've had many times where I went for an iPad across the room because it doesn't work.
Marc Beckman: Okay. So going back to like name dropping now, which hotel chain, let's say, generally speaking, it doesn't have to be the only one, but who's doing it right as it relates to technology, like which chains are so, you know, so ahead of the curve that the technology that they're offering enhances the guest experience.
It's seamless. It's easy to use. Who's doing it. Fantastic. Who's the North star hotel for, for technology.
Anthony Melchiorri: Well, I'm going to, I have two answers, but I'll just give you my personal travel answer as a businessman who travels. I'm fortunate enough to, to speak in Vegas a lot. So I, I go to the wynn sometimes and my friend Brian, who runs it, great guy. And I, and I stay there from time to time and you grab the iPad from wherever it is, the docking station, it's, it feels.
Substantial, it's in a case. [00:47:00] It works every time for room service, for the drapes, for everything. You put it back in its docking station. You have two or three around the room. It works every time. It's seamless every time. But when I deal with a guest, I mean an employee, their level of service is at the highest level.
Marc Beckman: So Steve Wynn is winning.
Anthony Melchiorri: Well, Steve was no longer involved with, with Wynn, but, but I would say Brian and his team at Wynn and Yates.
Marc Beckman: Okay. All right. So that being said, which core tenants of like hospitality will stand the test of time even beyond technology? Like where's like this, there's this friction, right? Like this innate friction between, you know, hospitality, people, service, et cetera, versus how technology can move that experience forward.
But regardless of technology, if you could name like one or two core tenants of building an incredible hotel chain. What would they be?
Anthony Melchiorri: I'll say it two ways. One, I'll use one [00:48:00] word. It's called urgency. If someone is going to a formal affair, man or woman, and the blow dryer doesn't work, and they just got out of the shower, and they call you down. How long does it take to get that blow dryer to that person before their hair is out of control and they ruin their event?
Three minutes. So the sense of urgency for every guest request has got to be, uh, urgent, number one. Number two, if the owner of the hotel and the housekeeper, I don't care if the owner lives in Maui and the housekeeper lives in, in, in New York City, if they're aligned for the vision of that property, The guest is going to win because the owner cares about that line level employee.
They feel it. And when that blow dryer needs to get up to the guest room in three minutes, that's important. And the only difference between a 200 room and a 2,000 room is amenities and size of room. The [00:49:00] one thing that should not Ever get in the way of the guest is service. So I can train a two star, three star hotel employee at the same level as I train a five star, uh, employee.
We, I talk about in the book where it's when you're born, you're born a five star baby, even if you're born with disabilities, you're born a five star baby, right? There are no mistakes. You choose, as you grow up, if you work in a gas station and people are running that gas station and the bathroom is perfectly clean, you learn standards.
If you work in a five star hotel and that bathroom is disgusting, you learn low standards. So, the one thing we can control is how we train and maintain our level of care for our employees, and those employees We'll care about the guests. So you said I'm a guest driven person. I'm an employee driven person because the owner is a money driven person.
And I want to make them money. And the only way to [00:50:00] make them money is to make sure that they have the supplies they need and the care they need to do their job. And I hold them to very, very, very, very, very high standards. And I don't take crap from anybody. So if you do that, well, that's who wins.
Marc Beckman: Okay. So I love that. I think that philosophy is incredible. Let's talk about, um, let's, let's, let me ask you one more question with regards to name dropping, and then we're going to move on into like a fun exercise. Um, who do you think the most innovative hotelier has been in history?
Anthony Melchiorri: You know, it's easy to say Ritz. Um, you know, ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen has been something that's run through the line of our industry. Uh, and, and now is in other businesses. Amazon actually built their business on that model. Um, uh, and, and as I remember, uh, worked with them to build the model of, uh, service.
[00:51:00] So I would say you have to look at them, but then there's guys that you've never heard of, like a Jerry Inzarello or, um, just on and on and on and on and on the list. But I would say if, if you had to put,
Marc Beckman: I think I've had lunch with Jerry. Didn't he start one and only?
Anthony Melchiorri: Inzarello?
Marc Beckman: I do. I do. I was introduced to him years ago. Yeah. Yeah. But he, didn't he start the one and only in Dubai? Yeah.
Anthony Melchiorri: He, he helped develop that, Atlantis. Yeah, he's the man. He's the man. You know him. Most people outside the business don't know him.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I know Jerry. He's amazing. Sorry. So let's give it, let's give that award to Jerry. And now I want to take you to the next phase of your life quickly, which is amazing television personality. I mean, you've been on, you mentioned Hotel All Stars now, you had Extreme Hotels, Travel Channel with Hotel Impossible, Hotel Turnaround.
And what I think people love about these shows, Anthony, is that it allows for your personality to flourish specifically as it relates to personality. Problem. [00:52:00] Solution. There might be a big problem. It could be family related. It could be the guts of a hotel. It could be, as you said earlier, the soft part of it, the furnishings, et cetera.
But you come in like the, you know, the white, the white knight, you come in on your white horse and you solve these problems. So I want to throw some historically notable problems at you. And I want to hear what, how you would resolve them.
Anthony Melchiorri: Just not the problem problems of Rome. As long as I don't have to fix that problem.
Marc Beckman: You ready to fire away? All right, I call this exercise Hotel Horror, and sometimes things just can't help but be wrong. So let's start first with regards to, um, how you would, what would you do to repair a damaged image of a hotel or the damaged perception of a hotel. And I want to go all the way back in time to a downtown Los Angeles hotel named the Cecil, um, which was built in 1927, Anthony, and it's [00:53:00] known for murder.
It has, um, inspired the American Horror Story plus two documentary. There was 16 murders at the Cecil Hotel and a slew of suicides. In fact, it had two serial killers stay there. First, the night stalker, Richard Ramirez, where in the middle of his killing sprees, he was which were arguably the deadliest in history.
He would stay there. It was reported that he would return to the Cecil Hotel after a killing. He would leave his blood soaked clothing in dumpsters behind the hotel and then walk into the hotel naked or in his underwear and the hotel staff didn't care at all. And then later on, years later, in, in 1991, there was the Australian Strangler Jack, I think his name is Jack Unterweger, who, um, was the second hotel that checked in, was the second serial killer that checked into the Cecil Hotel.
And these tragedies were even, uh, dwarfed to a certain extent with something else that happened there [00:54:00] in 2013. Elisa Lam, her body was found naked and decomposing in the hotel's water tank. Can you imagine? I mean, this is downtown Los Angeles. All of this happened at the Cecil Hotel. What would you do if you were challenged with resuscitating the image of the Cecil Hotel?
Anthony Melchiorri: Okay, the first thing is, I would take the story. And I would hire someone like you who just said it so beautifully and like just so articulate, you were so articulate, and I would tell the story. And then I would make it, uh, we'd talk about are there ghosts here, or is there a haunted part of this, or are there souls in this building?
After I made sure that the alignment of the hotel was to be a nice hotel, good air conditioning, good services, is it going to be a quality hotel? So if the answer is going to be quality hotel That's, that's easy, right? We get that done. So now, how do you market it? You, you, you literally level into that.
And you tell the story in a very palpable way, in [00:55:00] a way that people can take it in. Now, if you look at Travel Channel, Travel Channel is no longer travel shows. It's about mystery. Jack Bagus and his guys, and they're famous because they tell mysteries of not only hotels, but of all kinds of mysteries and ghosts, right?
So I would lean into the ghost part of it. I actually did a show called Extreme Hotels, where I stayed in the scariest room, apparently, in the world, which is in Scotland. I stayed in the blue, the blue room with the blue boy. I went to sleep. I don't know
Marc Beckman: the blue boy? What's the blue boy?
Anthony Melchiorri: He was a blue boy that apparently was, was, uh, uh, pushed into a wall alive, basically, and he lived in this wall, and then he eventually died as an older man.
He lived in the wall, they fed him through the wall, something like that, exactly. But my crew left and left me in the room with GoPros, and I was like, oh my god, I'm scared, but I was so tired, I fell asleep, woke up, no blue boy. But my point being is, there was a story. The [00:56:00] story of that hotel is the number one scariest hotel in the world.
That's marketing. Whether that blue boy existed or not, they, they leveled, they really pushed into that ghost story and they marketed it around the world. So, I would market the ghost story. Some people really, I, listen, do I believe in ghosts? No. Do I believe I've seen a ghost? Yes, I have. I truly believe.
I've seen my father a couple of times. So, so people are going to believe what they believe. So that's what I would do. I wouldn't shy away from it.
Marc Beckman: Anthony, have you been to the famous Stanley Hotel in Colorado, famous from Stephen King's movie, The Shining?
Anthony Melchiorri: I, uh, I haven't, but again, not to reference my show, but I, I did a show close to there and, um, was that the movie with the little three wheeler in the, in the lobby, in the hallway?
Marc Beckman: Yeah, with the boy.
Anthony Melchiorri: Yeah, I reenacted.
Marc Beckman: it's actually a true story. Like [00:57:00] Stephen King went there with his family in the dead of winter and was inspired to write The Shining because of the experience he had there. It was like the hotel, it's a luxury hotel in Colorado. It's in Estes Park, Colorado. Stephen King goes in and it was like basically empty, but the bones of the building were luxurious and the Um, they had a band that was still playing in the, um, in the ballroom, live, even though there were no, no, um, uh, guests at that time, because it was, you know, so snowy out and cold, and that's what inspired him to create The Shining, um, but it's, you know, today, because I, you know, it's kind of funny, the movie, Put a spotlight on the property and today it's considered one of the most haunted hotels in North Car in North America It's pretty wild.
So
Anthony Melchiorri: So if I could, if I could just kind of stop you and you just, you just summed it up. Guess what they want, what they want when they want it. So guess [00:58:00] what? Spooky hotels and they're willing to pay for it. But the people that don't want spooky hotels and don't buy into it. Want nice hotels, so you can do both.
You can have the spooky and you can have a nice hotel and people will come. So yeah, we reenacted those scenes throughout One of My Shoppers.
Marc Beckman: that's pretty cool. So it's pretty wild actually staying on on the Stanley Hotel for a minute Jim Carrey went there knowing that In, I think it was, he was shooting Dumb and Dumber. He went there knowing that the hotel was haunted and there were these allegations of hauntings. And apparently, um, he couldn't get through the whole night.
He ran down, um, and a staff member said that basically in the middle of the night, he came down to the front desk and demanded to me be moved to another room saying something had happened and he did not feel safe in the room, but they were never able to uncover what actually happened and he left that night.
He never even stayed through the night.
Anthony Melchiorri: What's the most powerful machine in the world? It's the human mind. So, you [00:59:00] go in with a preconceived notion of this is a scary hotel, and you're maybe falling asleep and you're already in a different state, and things happen, or it really happened. I went to this haunted hotel, my staff wouldn't, my team wouldn't stay there, I stayed there because I said to myself, I'm tired, I'm going to sleep, I'm not thinking about the Blue Boy.
I went to sleep, I woke up, no Blue Boy. If I went saying, I wonder if the Blue Boy's here, I'm going to sleep with that in my mind, and I may wake up in the middle of a dream thinking it really happened.
Marc Beckman: Right, so does the technology, like this ghost finding technology in hotels, does that really work or is that all nonsense?
Anthony Melchiorri: Um, as someone once said to me, no comment,
Marc Beckman: Okay, let's go on Problem Solution. Let's talk about celebrity marketing and the famous Hotel Chelsea. They've had incredible guests, as you know, from Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley to Janis Joplin, Patti, Patti Smith, [01:00:00] um, Stanley Kubrick, Dennis Hopper, but they also had, uh, I didn't know this in doing my research.
I thought it was really compelling. The Chelsea Hotel here in New York City provided lodging for the Titanic survivors that had second class tickets, um, for a few days after that disaster, obviously, um, but they also had some famous deaths. Dylan Thomas died there in 1953 of alcohol poisoning, and Nancy Spungen, I think is her name, died in 1953.
I don't, I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce Nancy. It's famous from Sid and Nancy, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. She was stabbed to death there. So at what point, and I guess you could like do the same thing with Chateau Marmont and John Belushi's drug overdose, right? Like at what point is celebrity marketing bad for a hotel?
What would you do as it relates to celebrity marketing?
Anthony Melchiorri: well, Whitney Houston died in the bathtub of Beverly Hills, the Beverly Hills Hotel. Uh, John Belushi, you know, at Hotel Montmartre. That's not the [01:01:00] marketing you want. You don't use that market. That's not, that's the third rail of marketing. The hotel in Vegas where there was this mass murder, you don't use that kind of market.
The Chelsea Hotel, that was years ago. That's romanticized. Oh, that was the day when all the celebrities, they were on the road playing and drugging and sexing and now they've reinvented the Chelsea Hotel recently. And I haven't been there actually. I almost went in the other day, but I just, I just couldn't, couldn't get in because I was busy, couldn't get there.
And so I don't know what they're doing to market it, but that's it. That marketing, I would be very, I would listen to the walls and I'd say, well, what do you want to be? Who do you want to be? What happened here? And then again, I would hire somebody that's a really good writer. Good storyteller that would tell that story, but again, too much, you know, very little, right?
A little bit. You don't over [01:02:00] saturate the hotel with that story or that branding. You tell the story. Okay, you tell the story in the website, you tell the story in some of the marketing, but the hotel doesn't become The history made it that. What you're making it is a guest service hotel. You're making the employees happy to be there.
you're making the owner money. That's your job. You kind of just, and this happens all the time in every business, especially hotels, is they take their one hit wonder and they kill it to death when they're ignoring. The sheet's not being cleaned. You're ignoring things on the carpet. Guests want to go back to what you said with technology.
This is what they want. They want the technology of shampooed carpets, the technology of hot water and water pressure, they want the technology of really comfortable beds, and they want the blackouts to work, whether through an iPad or through a pole. They want the blackouts to work. [01:03:00] That's what they want.
Everything else is everything else.
Marc Beckman: How would you solve the problem of like room destruction? I mean, there are so many times where I hear stories about these big brutes or these entitled Hollywood types that go into a room and for one reason or another, they destroy it. I remember at The Mark, which is a luxury hotel here in Manhattan,
Anthony Melchiorri: I know, I know, well,
Marc Beckman: Up in the seventies, right?
Like, you know, do you remember that story with Johnny Depp, where apparently like he was in a luxury suite at the time he was dating the supermodel, Kate Moss, and apparently like he just shredded that room. So how, what would you do if it, um, you know, the idea of room destruction, like, how would you solve that problem?
how do you stop people from behaving this way? We've even had stories right here, um, downtown where celebrities go into rooms. They live there for a long time and they're not, you know, when the hotel owners go back in, the room doesn't look anything like it should have. There's just so much destruction.
Anthony Melchiorri: that's why [01:04:00] you prove, you pre approve their black card. You make sure that there's money on that card. You know, there's security in those hotels, and I, I, I won't talk through the security of that hotel. I know that hotel very well. I actually, my daughter worked there for a time, being in the VIP office, and I can tell you a lot about it.
Great stories. So, so I, I, the gentleman that ran it up until recently, Manuel, is now running a very beautiful hotel in Washington DC. So it's a, it's one of my favorite, uh, places to hang out and have a drink. They have a high level of security. Uh, for their guests because the guests that stay there, you know, they're the top of the top of the top.
Um, and they pay the top of the top of the top. So there's heavy security. But if somebody, whether it be a king or a celebrity or whatever, destroys a room, you have insurance for a reason and you have their credit card information for a reason. It happens. There's no preventing it from happening. When people don't go to hotels, they go home.
When you and I stay in [01:05:00] hotels. We're not going to our hotel room. We're going home. We, everything we do in a hotel room, we do at our home. We go to the bathroom, we have sex, whatever we do in the hotel, you do at home. So that's their home. We cannot invade their home. So if they decide to destroy their home, we have insurance and we have a credit card.
If we go out of our way to make too much security and them feeling not comfortable, That's not a way to run a hotel. When owners come to me on a weekly basis and say, you know, I did this and I did that. I was like, what do you mean? You're tying everything down. You have a credit card. If they break a 50 vase, don't put a 5,000 vase in a, in a 200 hotel room.
Okay? Put a 50 deposit. If they break it, charge them.
Marc Beckman: So, okay. Last example, just for fun, let's see how you would solve this problem. The Park Central Hotel. really dealt [01:06:00] with these ongoing mafia stories. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it became problematic. There was the infamous barbershop incident with the Gambino crime family's boss, Albert Anastasia.
He was the, also the head, he was known to be the head executioner of Murder, Inc. He was murdered in 1957 while sitting in the barber's chair. During a shootout, um, that murder, by the way, was never solved. Nobody ever figured out, um, how that happened or who did it. And then, before that, uh, the famous Jewish gangster, Arnold Rothstein, in 1928, was shot and killed while he was playing just cards, his regular card game, um, at the Park Central Hotel.
So, what would you do to keep crime or criminal element out of, of the hotels?
Anthony Melchiorri: Again, you have security. Every guest is treated the same. Um, they're treated with respect. There have been many [01:07:00] hotel, uh, uh, guests that stayed at my hotel that may have been felons. They may have been to jail, served their time. You don't know. The only thing you can do is have good policies, good procedures, good security, good cameras, Uh, and, and do your best, but you can't give every guest a third degree.
You can't see who is in the paper. There's a guy right now in the paper in Philadelphia. He's the godfather, Skinny Joe Molina. If he came into my hotel, he actually has a podcast. If he came into my hotel, we're going to treat him with respect. We're going to treat him as a guest, and we're going to do everything we can to make sure he has a great stay.
If he does anything that's against our policies and procedures, Our director of security will follow the proper protocol, whatever that protocol is.
Marc Beckman: Anthony, you've been tremendous and fun and [01:08:00] insightful and emotional and I appreciate all of it. Um, a tradition of the ending of my show is for me to start a sentence which incorporates the name of the show, Some Future Day, um, and then I allow for my guest to finish the sentence. Are you game?
Anthony Melchiorri: I'm game.
Marc Beckman: All right.
So in some future day, hotels will become.
Anthony Melchiorri: Everything I want them to become.
Marc Beckman: You're the man, Anthony. I really appreciate your time today. Is there anything else that you want to add? Is there anything we missed as it relates to the hospitality business? We went pretty wide.
Anthony Melchiorri: I've been very fortunate, I don't know how I got all these blessings, but you know, your interview is going to stay as one of my favorite interviews. You are a very well prepared, very engaging person, and I enjoyed this more than I can tell you.
Marc Beckman: I love you, man. Thank you so much for taking the time today. I really appreciate it.
Anthony Melchiorri: My pleasure. [01:09:00] [01:10:00]