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For over a decade, David Tian, Ph.D., has helped hundreds of thousands of people from over 87 countries find happiness, success, and fulfillment in their social, professional, and love lives. His presentations – whether keynotes, seminars, or workshops – leave clients with insights into their behavior, psychology, and keys to their empowerment. His training methodologies are the result of over a decade of coaching and education of thousands of students around the world. Join him on the “DTPHD Podcast” as he explores deep questions of meaning, success, truth, love, and the good life. Subscribe now.
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DTPHD Podcast Episode  12 Show Notes:

1:14 Why are we like a hotel?

4:45 How do you get people to go to your “hotel”?

8:59 Why some people can’t maintain relationships

14:29 This is how you get your love to come back

18:22 Why would you need to continuously improve yourself?

22:34 This happens when you stop going out of your comfort zone

26:33 When are you at your most attractive?

31:43 Why is false advertising such a big deal in dating and relationships?

36:45 Why working on your personality is important

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“You are a Hotel”: A Powerful Metaphor for Dating and Relationship Success

• David Tian Ph.D. enumerates the similarities between a hotel and humans, how both need to attract and maintain good relationships.

• When a hotel is rundown, no one wants to check-in themselves there. Similarly with humans, David Tian Ph.D. stresses the importance of continuous improvement.

• Why we shouldn’t fall into the the trap of falsely advertising ourselves, David Tian Ph.D. reveals the repercussion.

Truth, love, and the good. Here we go.
David Tian: Welcome to the DTPHD Podcast. My name is David Tian and I will be your host. This is an unusual one. We’re filming this and recording this in Phuket on the top of a mountain, on a cliff overlooking the sea, and in a gorgeous villa that’s got three houses. There’s a separate house that I’m in right now for the dining room, living room. Very spacious.

And then there’s a separate bedroom with a double bathroom and a gorgeous infinity pool that jets out over the side of the villa, that overlooks the sea, and then there’s a separate kitchen. Very, very pleasant. Right now I’m taking the opportunity to shoot this, record this in the morning before we head to breakfast, which is another amazing place.

The restaurant there overlooking the sea on a cliff. So, the whole thing’s beautiful. And as usual, I put off the recordings until the last minute, the last day. This is our last day here so we’re going to be taking off. So here we go. Today’s podcast is about a very important, very useful analogy, metaphor, simile, which is that you are like a hotel.

When it comes to dating and mating, it’s really helpful to think of yourself in terms of hotels. And that may be surprising but I think the analogy is really helpful so I’ll get into it. I’ve been living in hotel suites for almost four years, I think over four years now, and really loving it.

Taking advantage of the various loyalty plans and all the free upgrades to suites and so on. I explain how to do that in my Lifestyle Mastery course but that’s not the point of this podcast. But that’s what is the context, I suppose the background of what got me thinking about the hotel, you as a hotel, when it comes to dating, mating, relationships.

So a lot of guys, because I work with a lot of guys mostly, 90% of my clients and students are guys, but this applies just as equally well to women. But I’ll keep referring to guys because that’s the one I know best. So most guys think of dating and mating in terms of marketing, like in terms of the sales and marketing and advertising campaigns for the product.

So if they’re the product, which they are, then they’re focusing mostly on the marketing and sales versus the actual product. And if you think about in terms of a hotel, they’re like the really glossy marketing and advertising campaign versus the actual hotel product.

How do I know this? We’ve tested over the many years lots of different SEO, ads on Facebook and YouTube and other venues. But mostly, we know Facebook quite granularly, and the targeting on the Facebook is quite good.

So across the board, across all demographics, guys will click a lot more on a click bait-y title like, “The Top Three Hacks for Getting Any Woman Into Bed” or “Three Things to Say to Get in Conversation”, “Three Things to Say to Get Any Woman Hooked On You”, or something like that.
And by the way, the same applies to women. I’ve done a little research on the women’s dating coach side and it’s the same click bait-y thing. It’s a human thing to want things fast and easy, and they get the effortless route.

So that’s a lot like a hotel that doesn’t want to undertake the expensive and I guess more time consuming repairs or renovations, and would prefer to put their money into coming up with some idea and printing out lots of glossy advertisements that try to market their hotel rather than actually improving the hotel itself.

And that’s how most people approach dating and mating. They’re more focused on the marketing campaign. “What should I write on my Tinder profile?” “What photos should I put on my Tinder profile?” “How should I come across on that first date?” That’s sort of like a marketing campaign, like a multi-step campaign, instead of letting the product speak for itself.

So if you have a great product, if you have a great hotel or resort, you don’t have to do any marketing or advertising. It’ll just spread by word of mouth. You’ll get great reviews, then the press will pick you up and that will spread the message more.

But a lot of great properties have very minimal marketing, advertising. Or if they do market and advertise, they’re in very limited places. They’re very targeted, specialized venues or platforms. So, marketing and advertising is like one way to get people to the hotel.

And instead of just focusing so much on that, if you are a hotelier, you’d be better of focusing on the product itself. Because– so let’s just cut to the end of the analogy. Imagine you go to a hotel that has a great marketing campaign, that’s what sucked you in. Maybe there was like a Groupon deal or something. The hotel’s even attracted the wrong type of customer, the type of customer who won’t be coming back, because they don’t see the value in the price.

But hey, if you offered a 10% of the normal rack rate, or the standard rate, they’ll go. So, somebody suckers you in to going to this hotel; and the facade of the hotel, the exterior is falling apart, it’s not that pretty. And that’s like somebody who hasn’t taken care of their exterior: their fashion and fitness, and their body language, and their eye contact.

The first impressions of the place are bad. Now, obviously you should get the first impressions right. So that’s the second place that most people go. First, they look into the hacks, and the tricks, and the cheats to get people to the date; or the opening lines, or the pick-up lines, or what kind of thing can I say to this girl that’ll make me get her attention?

So sort of like in the movie Hitch way back in the day, Will Smith — basically, all you saw was his openers. At the beginning of the movie, that was the jaw-dropping moment when there was like 10 dudes surrounding these two women, and he went in there with like some kind of line about — that he was ordering a drink and pretending she was a waitress, and then she follows him out and then he delivers the line.

That’s like, “Woah.” And that’s sort of like a marketing campaign. So most people put their effort into improving the marketing campaigns, but then they don’t improve the product. So imagine then you get to the hotel and the outside sucks, but imagine it’s okay because then the second step like I was saying was fashion, fitness, body language, eye contact, tonality.

And by the way, I think I will be doing another series of videos on those things. Or seven factors that make or break a man, and a woman actually, for whether they’re sexually attractive. And there’s five of them: body language, eye contact, tonality, fashion, and fitness.

And if you get all five of those down, you get the person inside the door. They get to the front of the hotel. The hotel’s beautiful. The exterior is gorgeous. The exterior service is good. The bell boy, the greeter at the door and all that, they’re wonderful, and you get inside.

And then it’s another step, like getting inside and checking in, going to the check-in counter or the lobby, that’s sort of like your first date and how that goes, the first three or four hours that you know each other. That’s sort of like that first entrance, the first floor, the lobby, checking in and that experience.

But then like, if they can keep the charade going the whole way, get you suckered in with some fancy marketing, and then you get there and it looks good on the outside, sort of like a Hollywood set. Like, it looks great on the outside. And then you go inside. They can keep faking you through to the check-in counter.

And that’s sort of like, you’re really good at faking your way to that first date. You learn some conversation skills. You learn a few questions to ask on the first date that’ll open things up. And so, you’re running a first date script. I know that there’s such a thing because I used to teach those things, and there’s many of them on the internet.

So you have a first date script that you run through, here are these questions, here’s the funny, witty banter, here are the things you’re going to throw in there to sexualize the conversation, get things moving on the right direction.

Or if you’re a female or you’re a dude who’s just got higher standards, you’re going to be more choosy so you’ll get her to work for you through selection. So part of you is going to be wondering, “Do I really want to see this person again?” and so on, and that’s already on the right step.

That’s like a solid lobby and check-in experience. It’s not like a fake one. But then you get upstairs. You get to your room and you start to explore the facilities. And this is where most people, 90% or more people in the world fall apart, and then they wonder why their marriages fall apart, or their relationships fall apart, or why they can’t get a second date, or why they can’t close it into a relationship, or extend it, maintain it, grow it over time.

And here’s why: because most people focus on these first steps. Most people focus on just getting the guy or getting the girl, or just getting the date, first of all. And then very few of them focus on what it takes to succeed in 10 years. Very few of them take the long-term perspective of what it’s going to be like 10, 20 years from now.

If you continue to live this way, what are the consequences 10 years from now or even five years from now? They don’t think long-term. They just think about the next date, and that will result in the hotel analogy, like you go up to your room and you start to see it’s kind of crappy.

There are cockroaches scurrying around. It hasn’t been cleaned in years. There’s rats and all kinds of bed bugs. The place is just falling apart. They haven’t renovated or replaced the furniture in 20 years. It’s still the old box TVs, and so on, and then you’re disgusted by the room itself.

And then you explore the facilities, and the gym is moldy, and dusty, and sweat stains everywhere and stinks; there’s no ventilation. You go to the pool and it’s got green slime on it. Just imagine a really shitty hotel. But you had no idea because the management decided to spend all of their budget on the marketing campaign to get you there. Like, 80% of their budget was there.

15% of their budget was on the exterior of the hotel, making it all pretty, and hiring the best bellboys and greeters and so on; and then the remaining 5% of the hotel budget was on the lobby experience and the check-in counter. That’s often how people approach learning about dating, mating, relationships and marriage and so on.

They’re just focused on the first step. Because the first step is always the hardest to take for anything. And that’s sort of like, if somebody wants to start working out, before they even work out, they research all of the gyms in their area. They buy the most expensive work-out clothing. They hire the most expensive trainer. And this is all before they’ve done a single rep.

And then that’s all set-up and then they’re like, “Oh, I actually have to work out?” And then after the first workout, they’re just there like, “I’m sweating. This sucks!” And they quit. And that’s how most people are with relationships. They’re focusing on the wrong thing. They’re like a hotel that sucks.

And maybe more apt is the analogy between the inside of the hotel and your lifestyle. So what’ll happen is, a lot of people front on when they’re first getting to know somebody. They work on that first impression, and then that’s how they get the relationships, or the girlfriend, or the boyfriend, or the date.

They tidy up their Tinder profile or whatever to get on the date. They also tidy up their first date appearance. They wear their best clothes, on their best behavior, at their most witty, and so on. Let’s say they get into a relationship; they actually trick the customer into getting into the hotel.

Well, they’re not going to have many repeat customers if their hotel’s like shit. And here’s something about the hotel industry that also applies to dating and mating, and here’s one place where the analogy falls apart: You only need one customer.

If you’re a hotel, you only need one customer. Let’s say that one customer pays a million dollars, it’s a million-dollar hotel. It’s more like real estate, actually. It’s like selling the house, because you only need that one customer and a lot of it is about searching for that one customer, making sure that you turn off a lot of the customers that will not be right for you.

And that’s the right way to go all the while improving your product as much as possible, and then finding that one customer that would match that product, the special product that you’ve created. And that’s a lot more like dating and mating.

But there’s a way to work the analogy in the hotel because it’s very useful to think about it that way, which is the loyalty plan. I’m a loyalty member. I’m on Starwood Platinum Ambassador. That means I’ve stayed over a hundred nights a year in Starwood hotels.

And then of course, they’ve merged with Marriot so I have that with Marriot. But I’m Diamond through status matching on pretty much every other hotel loyalty plan. And then using all those hotel points, I get all these business-class flights, so I’ve experienced what it would have been like if I were actually loyal to any particular airline.

I am loyal to some airlines because their mileage redemption is much better than others, so I keep funneling my points in particular airlines. But I’m not on a loyalty program with any particular airline, but I know what it’s like when they think you’re loyal and they treat you very differently.

And that’s a smart business move. The businesses that will fail are the ones that don’t treat their loyal customers differently from a new customer. And here’s why. Business will tell you that the cost of acquiring a new customer is very much higher than the cost of retaining a customer.

So if you can get the customer to come back, most of the customer acquisition costs are upfront. They’re in that first transaction. If they love your product, the second, or third, or fourth transaction, or the second, third, or fourth time they come to your product, it’s going to be a lot cheaper for you to get them to come back.

Maybe it’s just a little reminder, a little display ad on Facebook or something, or it could just be when they check out or when they leave the restaurant, they just get a little discount voucher or something for the next time they come back and that’s enough incentive for them to come back.

And then once they come back four or five times, they’re kind of hooked and you don’t have to even market them anymore because you’re going to be top of mind for that customer, and then it’s zero acquisition cost for you. That’s one of the many reasons why loyalty customers are so much more valuable than trying to get a brand new customer, and they should treat people differently.

Now, if you gun for that first stay or the first transaction and then you don’t play for them to come back, then you’re in a dying business model. I mean, the business model will die. Well, your business will die because the model sucks.

And that’s how most people approach dating and mating. They think about just that first date, or their first month, or that first week and they don’t think about the long-term plans. How am I going to retain this person? How am I going to get them to come back? How am I going to continue to improve the product so that despite the competition, they’ll still want to come back?

There’s some hotels that are arrogant. They think, “Look, I just want a customer who’ll be loyal and I don’t want to have to improve the product. I just want them to keep coming back.” And that’s a bad way to go. I’ve been loyal to some properties that, just based on service who are just so above and beyond.

But because they didn’t continue to improve the rest of their product, I gave them enough leeway but they’re still not going to add a lounge, they’re not going to renovate this or that, they’re not going to upgrade their TVs. And after some time, just like, “Okay, well. I’ve got to move on because you’re not improving yourself.”

And when it comes to marriage obviously, you got a different kind of contract with the customer. There’s a penalty to leave, but then there’s also, on both sides, a lot more leeway; but you can’t expect the customer to be passionate about your product. If you lock them in with a contract, then they’ve got no choice.

But you shouldn’t expect passion to be there. And if you want a passionate relationship with your customer, you’ve got to keep improving your product. and you’ve got to improve the product in ways that you are passionate about.
Now, there’s a guy who posted in the Man Up Facebook group which you should join. Also, you should join DTPHD Podcast group, that group’s just getting going. But the Man Up group has 22,000 over dudes there.

Anyway, somebody posted there and he said, “I’m 35, I don’t want to have to change myself; I already know who I am. I’m 35. And my problem is, I can’t find a woman, let alone a woman to date, but I just can’t even find women in my life.” He’s from a small town in the U.S.

He likes to hunt, and fish, and do manly things. And apparently, there are no attractive females on those particular activities. Various guys went in there and commented saying, “Hey, why don’t you try yoga or cooking classes?” Like, “I’m not going to do yoga. That’s just not me. I’m not going to do cooking classes, that’s not me. I’m not going to dance classes, that’s not me.”

So basically he’s saying, “I’m not going to improve my product. I’m not going to try different things. I’m not open-minded. I’m not willing to improve. I’m 35. I’m done.” And I’m like, “Yeah, you are done, dude. Even though you’re 35, you’ve decided” — 35 to me is young. I’m coming up to 42 this year and I’m still improving myself constantly.

On Sunday, there’s another training for myself to try something new, and so on. It just doesn’t stop because growth is a really important part of human life. If you’re not growing, you’re dying, I believe. We’re biological creatures after all, and the 35-year-old there, he’s obviously started dying.

And he’s sort of like a hotel that maybe had a good one or two year run, they got its customer base, and then it decided never to renovate again, never to improve its offerings, never to add any new items to the menu, never to redo any of the furniture, or to replace the televisions, or to set-up different high tech stuff in the room, not to offer Wi-Fi. They’re still doing plug-in broadband which no one can use anymore.

They’ve just decided not to upgrade. And then they’re thinking, “Hey look, we’re going to be the charming boutique hotel”, which could work. If you have a very loyal clientele because you had a good 30-year run, and then you don’t improve the product, you could still go coast for another ten years or so, just on that clientele that were loyal to you for that long period of time.

But it’s not going to last in the long run if you don’t refurbish. I mean, at the worst, you think about in terms of like, they don’t even get new towels or new bed sheets, and you got holes in them, they’re fraying. That’s what most people’s lives are like.

Let’s say that they had a nice hotel all the way through. Somebody really took care of themselves. They took care of their exterior but also their lifestyle. They had a thriving lifestyle, they had lot of friends, they had a career they really enjoyed, they had hobbies and interests outside of that.

Let’s say they went jogging every day or worked out every day and they eat healthy and they went out and travelled and so on. And then they got married. And then the first couple years, while they were dating, everything was great. And then they moved in together. And then things started to get a little familiar.

So to shock the system, they decided, “We’ll get married.” So then they get married, and then that’s kind of fresh and novel for a while. And then after a year or so, the novelty of that wears off, and then they have kids. After two or three kids, that’s a big deal and that changes the routines.

There’s always like growth going on in a sense of like forced growth in their lives because they have these milestones, and sort of like a hotel that has to weather certain recessions or they’re going go to through the necessary hurdles of opening the gym, finally, because the hotel will open before all the facilities are ready.

So they finally get the gym open; and then they finally get the second restaurant open; and then they finally get the pool working and everything’s great with no problems; and then they finally open the penthouse bar and whatever. They finally get everything open, everything’s running, and then everything’s smooth.

And then they have no other plans but everything’s going according to plan and everything’s fulfilled. So, the hotel’s now complete. That’s sort of like a married couple that has these kids, and they’re off to school, and everything’s complete. But now, everything gets stale and then their lifestyles have completely changed.

The guy stops seeing his guy friends, or they just do stupid shit because his guy friends are all the same as him. So they just sit around drinking beers, watching the game, and that’s their life. They’re not growing very much. They’re growing I guess in their company just like climb the ladder at a normal rate, I suppose, not an accelerated rate, not like at a totally game changing rate.

But then also the job’s gotten a little stale. They’re in the routine and then they stop working out. They stop travelling. They stop stretching their boundaries. They stop stepping outside their comfort zone and improving themselves. That’s like the guy who wrote in the Man Up group. And I think there are a lot of people like this, especially in smaller population places because they’re not challenged very much.

There’s a lot of routine there, a lot of familiar places there. So when everything’s familiar, it’s hard for you to break out of your comfort zone on a regular basis mentally. And so, there’s a lot of people like this who just get into this routine.

They stop growing, they stop looking for opportunities to grow, and develop, and stretch their boundaries, and step outside the comfort zone, try new things, learn new things. It’s like a hotel that once was good. Have you ever been one of those? I’ve been to many of those that have once been good.

And you could tell that they once must have been really great, but they haven’t changed the color scheme, or the rugs, or the wallpaper, or the design in decades. Maybe they still list themselves as five-star but they’re really like a good three-and-a-half-star.

And just to be competitive, they have to reduce their rates. And so now, they end up becoming at the three-and-a-half-star price range. It once was a five star hotel. That’s what most people are like. I now have clientele that a lot of them are in their 40s and 50s, and that’s what their life is like.

And a lot of these dudes got pillaged by women in the US at divorce courts or something, so they’re on a shitty hotel. They’re running a shitty hotel, let’s say they are a shitty hotel. And on top of that, half of their furniture’s gone, half of their shit’s taken away. And now they’re trying to like entice new customers into this hotel when half the shit is gone.

And the exterior’s run down, it’s fat now; the exterior’s fat so to speak. It’s old, balding, and it hasn’t learned about fashion in decades. You can imagine the most out of fashion exterior of a hotel. And it’s asking me about its marketing campaign, instead of like, “Let me improve the product.” Because they’re old, they haven’t improved the product in a decade or two decades.

And instead of like improving the product, because they’re too afraid, they’re too afraid of going to a yoga class now, because they haven’t done anything new in 10/20 years. They haven’t gone to a place where they don’t know anyone and try something completely out of their comfort zone, where they look like kind of foolish because they’re white-belts, so to speak, at this thing.

And now, because they’re divorced and lonely and trying to get back into the single scene, the dating scene. They’re trying to figure that out. And they’re asking me about the marketing campaign instead of, “How can I improve this product?”

Because if they improve the product, they wouldn’t need a marketing campaign. Then it’s just a matter of taking a photo of the hotel and showing it off like the features, and like, wham, bam. What do you think? Do you want to come or not? And that’s it. And they’ll attract.

And if they think about like, “What’s my unique selling proposition? What’s special about me? What do I like about me? And how do I put that out there? How am I different? What’s different about me?” And so many people are afraid of their USP. Almost everyone has a USP, they just don’t realize it, but they’re so afraid of it.

They try to just fit in. They try to be like every other hotel. And when you’re like every other hotel, then you’ve got to put a lot of marketing muscle into it because you’ve got nothing special. You’re just like a commodity. You’re just like any other hotel down the block, so you got to compete on price. In fact, that’s how most attractive women do it.

But there’s so many homeless men, so to speak, that they’ll just pay for the hotel but they don’t realize it. Like the top spenders, the customers that they really want, the big loyalty spenders, they’re very discerning. They see like a cookie-cutter boutique hotel like any other cookie-cutter boutique hotel; like they’re all the same.

But what’s special about you? Often what people are missing is, they don’t know what’s special about them because they don’t know what their true self is really like. They think they know but they don’t know, just like that 35 year old dude who doesn’t want to grow and stretch himself anymore.

He thinks he knows who he is. That’s not his true self, that’s just an adaptive false self that he’s taking on to fit in, to stay in this comfort zone. I mean, that’s ridiculous. Like, fishing and hunting as being a part of yourself. It’s an expression of a characteristic, a personality trait of yourself.

But the USP, if you have a great hotel, that’s unique, that’s maybe quirky in a certain way. Often, when you don’t think about whether you’re unique, or creative, or original, and you speak your mind, that’s when you’re the most attractive: when you’re just yourself. That’s also when you’re going to turn off a bunch of people because they’re not the one customer that you want.

And the more you put yourself out there, as closely as you can speaking the truth, being yourself, putting yourself out there, the more you will attract that one customer or that small minority of customers that are perfect for you. And you charge a high price, by the way. A message to all women to stop slutting yourselves out.

If you charge a high price, you’re going to attract a higher quality of customer, generally speaking. A lot of people can just start with the basics, just renovating the damn hotel. Forget the marketing campaign right now. If the product sucks, it doesn’t matter how great your marketing campaign is, you’re just going to die.

Like a Groupon deal, you get them in the door but then they’ll never come back. And they’re the wrong type of customer anyway. And so, if you happen to actually get the right type of customer to walk in, and they see all these Groupon customers running around in there, they’re just going to turn around and get out because they’re like, “This is not my place. This is not the type of place that’s for me. I don’t feel comfortable here.”

That’s why I tell guys stop fucking the sluts. Because when you do that, you’re actually letting in the Groupon customers to your hotel and they’re running crazy. You’re actually letting them ruin your mind set, in a way.

And then the ultimate part of the analogy is, that the interior of the hotel, the actual facilities; the various facilities, the room; the actual room, the bed. Those are all like your mind set; what’s going on inside you, inside your mind, your personality traits, your hobbies, your interests, and more importantly your needs, and your values, and your self-awareness, and so on, like your mind set, your thoughts and behavior.

Those are going to drive real attractiveness, and that’s actually the heart of the product. If you start from the inside out, then you can think about it in terms of the bed. That’s where everything starts for real hotel loyalty. If you really think about a hotel, the most important parts of it are:

If you have just a great exterior and great restaurant, you’re going to get lots of people visiting just to go the restaurant and then they leave. They’re not going to stay overnight. But if you have an amazing room, like a room where people are Instagramming or talking about it and it’s the best sleep they’ve ever had, then you work out from there. You work outwards from there.

Eventually, you get to the walls of the hotel, like the outside of the hotel. And it could be nothing. It could be just like a door, with a doormat, a very elegant red carpet, that’s it.

It could be like a Speakeasy Hotel and that’s fine. You’re going to attract the right type of customer if you do that way. If you do it the opposite way, you have an amazing exterior, all flashy and glitzy and all that, but then the actual room itself sucks, like some Ws by the way, you’re just going to have people coming in and trashing that room as a party house.

I’ll end with this analogy. We got suckered in with the great marketing campaign to a particular hotel. It wasn’t me by the way, it was my associate. But I’ve wisened up as has he after this experience.

He booked this particular villa and it wasn’t really expensive but it wasn’t cheap either. The marketing campaign was amazing. It was a video with a drone. It was a party kind of house, but it looked really luxurious: five bedrooms, multiple rooftop cabanas, multiple swimming pools on multiple levels.

A movie room, a work-out room, all of this inside this vacation home. The marketing materials looked great. The price looked like a steal, we booked it. We get there, and I swear, the place was falling apart. It’s so hard to explain.

There were like holes in the floor. There was a swimming pool that was drained, so it was literally just a pit in the ground, made of cement. Next to one of the key master bedrooms, so it was like very un-sexy, there were bugs everywhere and there were broken windows.

You can imagine like, you’re trying to sell it like a six-star luxury villa and it turns out there’s broken window panes. There are huge spiders and spider webs. This is in the jungles. Man, it’s like the government should come in and shut this place down. It should not be able to take customers, but there’s a lot of corruption in this particular country so that wasn’t going to happen.

But anyway, the owner showed us around, the sort of decent parts, and he left us for those two nights to discover the really nasty parts. We took it out on him on a review, but like there wasn’t that much recourse unfortunately for us. That’s like most people.

They sucker you in with a marketing campaign like most men and women on dating and mating. They think about that marketing campaign. It turns out all of the photos from the marketing, all of the videos from the marketing were taken when they opened like three years ago.

And in that time, because of the marketing campaign, they attracted a lot of party people. They accepted all these party people who completely trashed the place. It got to the point where — there was a pizza oven which looked really cool, like you could make your own pizzas there. It came with a full staff: kitchen staff, cleaning staff, etc. And when we met them, they had just given up.

There was a security staff that didn’t bother to stick around after night, so they were completely useless, and they shut down that pizza thing. Because like somebody came back at 3:00 AM, some group of party people, and they tried to make a pizza and somebody burned his eyebrows and whatever.

So they were like, “Nope, this is awful.” They got rid of pretty much all of the fun facilities because some drunk party person destroyed it or got hurt in it. And they decided, instead of improving or renovating, they’ll just leave it and shut it off. They drained the pool because it was too deep and drunk people got almost drowned or whatever.

And so, they just drained the damn thing. And they eventually just like, “I’m going to take that away. I’m going to take that away.” And it reminded me, in terms of the analogy, like a bitter shriveled-up woman in her late 40s or 50s who has basically stopped having sex with her husband, and is just a shrill woman who snaps at her kids, hates her life, hates the job she’s in.

And 20 years ago, she was at the prime of her life, party it up and loving it. But now, she’s just bitter; and there are men like that. And of course, there are men like that and they would cause their partner to become bitter as well, so the energy will just reflect.

There are plenty of guys who are burnt out, who don’t want to improve, don’t want to grow and so angry. In fact, there are whole movements of men in the internet so angry about women and the American court system on how they got half their shit taken away and they got cheated on.

And in the meantime, they haven’t realized that they’re like that disgusting villa that once was good. But instead of renovating and improving, they just took shit away: they drained the pool, they shut down a whole section of the house. It’s like a woman, who after a while takes it out on her husband, hates her life, and takes it out on her husband.

“We’re not going to have sex”, shrivels up, chest down, locks up or drains the whole pool so to speak. And then they get the divorce, and now they have to go and find new customers. And every customer who they sucker in with marketing, maybe I don’t know at that point how good your marketing can be, but it’s basically a lie.

And they get in there and the customer’s disgusted, they don’t want to have a second date. They cut short the first date or whatever. That’s the situation of a lot of bitter older people coming out of a bad relationship, a long relationship where they let themselves go.

So I recommend that everybody to get onto a loyalty plan. You can do a status challenge. And instead of taking 50 nights to get to platinum, you can just do it in 21 nights. If you do it in a concentrated period of time, just Google it and you’ll find it.

And get on these things so you can explore some of these wonderful properties, and get to know the difference between a great property and a bad property, and you’ll start to see what it takes. It’s hard. It’s a low margin business, hotels, and travel, and planes.

They’ve got to work really hard, they always have to improve that product. And if their employees, if the company’s mindset or model wasn’t about delivering a great experience, and it was like a chore to renovate, like for most people. Going to the gym or trying something new is like a chore, it sucks. And with that attitude, you’re never going to improve.

You’re like a hotel manager who grumbles every time he has to renovate or try something new or improve, versus somebody who’s passionate about, “I’ve got this new idea!” or “I experienced this new thing at this other property and I think we can improve on it and do it even better at our property.” He’s really passionate about it, and he greets — a hotel manager, a general manager or like a senior person — his guests at the door, as some of them do.

And that level of passion is what draws customers in. And they’re even willing to overlook a lot of other things, facilities and so on at the hotel if the service is amazing. The service is like the heart, the blood of the hotel.

That’s like the personality of the person. You’ve got to work on that personality first and foremost. This means all of your open-mindedness, your mindset, your adventurousness, how laid back you are, how passionate you are, how assertive you are, how confident you are. All of these things are like the service in the hotel, and that’s what really runs it.

If you have some really great service, it can turn a mediocre facility into an extraordinary one. So I’ll leave you on that one. If your exterior is fat, and falling apart and so on, and it’s an old property, don’t despair because you can turn into a charming, rustic — There are whole brands built on this, by the way.

There’s like the tribute portfolio and collection, these design hotels. There are a lot of these great hotel brands, Luxury Collection is another one, that takes really beautiful old properties and makes the interior high-tech and clean, and beautiful but the exterior they keep the same. So you can be old and overweight a bit, and have a great service, great interior, great mind set, and do very, very well.

So you are a hotel. Ironic that I’m in a really great property here, saying that — actually, it’s not ironic at all. It’s completely intentional. So, I’m going to have an amazing breakfast. And here’s another thing for all you hoteliers out there: I really appreciate it when you have a separate menu, in addition to the buffet, so that we can order some made-to order things right off the menu.

That’s an amazing thing, just a little suggestion. Instead of having stations, well you should have the stations, but you should also let us order our eggs Benedict on top of the buffet.

You could tell I’m a little spoiled, but I’m not just a little spoiled. I got to watch it though, so the occasional Airbnb without any service, more or less, and those are good to keep you honest. But also Airbnb gets you access to some really unique places too, so that’s really cool.

I’m really appreciative of Airbnb when it comes to booking villas, though. Okay, and now I’m rambling because I could go on on this subject for hours. And I do give insider tips in the course Lifestyle Mastery. If you’re interested in that, check that out. But in the meantime, join the DTPHD Facebook group.

I’m going to start doing live shows there. That’s the easiest way to interact with me, personally. And it’s a very good community in there. And there are guys following the reading challenge also, guys and girls, women, men, following the reading challenge in the group. And I hope to see you inside the DTPHD Facebook group, click the link below this video or audio and join the group.
I’ll see you inside the group, David Tian, signing out.

Hey, it’s David again. Before you go, a couple last things. First, all the show notes and links to resources can be found at DavidTianPHD.com/dtphdpodcast. Or you can just go to DavidTianPHD.com and find it through the top navigation menu.

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