Warning: this piece will not do the experience justice.
Three or four songs into the mariachi set at the hacienda hotel, the band in gold-thread suits started in on Hotel California. When the chorus came they had us sing Hotel La Casona instead, and the whole room did. My sister was smiling and so was everyone else in the room, and I have the video. It has not left my head since.
I went to Hacienda Patrón in Atotonilco El Alto, Jalisco as a guest of Bacardi and Patrón, with my sister Elizabeth, one of the two sisters I trusted behind the bar at Wax & Tracks because both have real experience working in the industry. I came home with a theory about why that chorus stuck. The whole trip ran on hosting, one small decision after another, and the song was the loudest of them. I have spent twenty-plus years in hospitality, music and beverage, which means I walk into a room and clock the lighting, the greeting and the little things most guests walk right past. The hacienda was full of them, and they are what this post is about.
Everyone we passed on the property said hi and gave us eye contact. The terrace kept a fire pit going after dinner and the hotel kept a cafe open around the clock for Mexican coffee, so whatever a guest might want next was already there. The hosting held right up to the end of the trip. Just before we boarded the bus back to the airport, my sister and I stepped out of our separate rooms at the same moment to find two gentlemen already walking toward us to ask if they could take our luggage. Somebody had been watching the hallway, and like second nature, they kindly escorted our luggage for us.
That was the wow factor of customer service. Taking our luggage is something I would never have asked for, and nobody waited for me to. Excellent customer service goes above and beyond in a way the guest never expects, and for the people at the hacienda it came second nature.
The set was three or four songs deep when the band started in on Hotel California. Everyone in that room knew where the chorus went, so it took the singers a few tries to talk us into the new words. Once the instruments dropped out and the singers waved us in, a dining room full of guests belted Hotel La Casona right where the Eagles would have put California, loud and grinning. Anyone who has worked in live music knows a cover lives or dies on whether the crowd already owns the song, and the whole planet owns this one. The band borrowed that chorus, dropped the hotel's name into the spot where a full room would hear it loudest and turned the audience into the choir. Nobody handed us a brochure or a hashtag. The hotel gave us a hook.
I saw plenty of smart branding on that trip, and the one I can still sing word for word is the hotel's name.
The first place I clocked the Patrón bee was the hand-blown glass in the main lobby. It hangs from a brick vaulted ceiling like a chandelier, with a crown of green glass spikes that reads as an agave and winged shapes trailing down from it with tiny lights along their bodies that could be interpreted as bees. Below them, clusters of blue, green, red and purple glass tumble down in groupings, and a few of the pieces look like hearts.
After that I could not stop seeing it. It was in the concrete and the archways, and it was stitched into the gold threading on the mariachi suits, which means the same band that rewrote the chorus was wearing bees on the sleeves and down the trouser legs. Gold bead pins ran along the front of the jackets and more bees circled the brims of the sombreros. It was in the sweet potato butter at dinner and all over the back bar.
Nothing about it came off tacky. They handed us water bottles with no Patrón name on them at all, just a circle of bees you would only recognize if you looked closely. A brand that can leave its own name off the bottle and still be unmistakable has done something most brands spend millions trying to buy.
Artists and labels can pull the same move with a symbol that returns on album art, merch, the stage and a set of social posts, until fans recognize it before they read the name.
Lighting is always the first thing I notice. Uplights can turn a plain room into a place you want to stay in, and the hacienda knew it. Big agave plants sat in gorgeous planters along the hotel hallways and glowed at night, and unless you were looking for it you would never register that you were standing next to the plant the whole place exists for.
The craftsmanship went all the way down. I fell for the tile work and for the concrete with the large flecks in it, a little like terrazzo with bigger pieces. Every building I walked into carried the same design, from the hotel to the bottling hall, and somebody made hundreds of choices to keep it consistent.
The tour bus dropped us at Casa Mayahuel, an agave ranch in the Arandas area. First stop was the house. They handed us an amazing coffee drink made with hot cocoa and brown sugar, no spice anywhere.
Skeletons were everywhere. Marigolds spilled down the porch steps, so I am betting on Día de Muertos, and Catrina figures in full dress stood around the courtyard. A wall of sombreros and framed photos hung behind a long wood table set with a skull in its own little hat. Singing bowls sat on a stone ledge with offerings tucked around them, and a swim-up pool, closed when we visited, still said Patrón in a subtle way. I fell in love with every inch of it.
On the way back to the agave fields we walked through an archway shaped like a goddess with her hands open. Casa Mayahuel is named for the Aztec goddess of agave, so I figure that was her.
The lesson on how agave grows happened under an open pavilion with hearts hanging from the ceiling, red ones made of tin, mirror and broken pieces of glass. Hearts have had me since I collected heart-shaped boxes as a little kid, way before the Nirvana song, so I was gone before the lesson started. A big white heart sat on a boulder by the pond, on the way to the pavilion, and of course I sat down next to it for a photo.
Elizabeth and I took a photo in the agave rows before we left. It was my favorite whimsical stop of the trip.
Our guide Pepe gave every worker we passed a conversation. He checked that nobody was being interrupted, thanked them and stayed engaged the whole way through. When our group left the bottling line, everyone waved at the people working, happily waving back. The camaraderie of that place was phenomenal, and no sign could have told me that as clearly as watching it happen.
I learned how much the people on the ground shape a guest's experience years ago at Desert Trip, where I managed the ushers in a section with tickets over $1,500 each. I wrote about what that taught me in Building Brand Trust for Lasting Success.
All of it. Lighting that sets the mood before anyone says a word, a hidden detail guests find on their own and a welcome that makes people feel hosted from the first minute.
Word of mouth is still the best marketing there is, and it only works when you give people something worth repeating. The very next day I worked an event at a winery and ended up talking about the Hacienda with the owner. The owner told me, "I can tell that trip was not lost on you. What a great experience." Word of mouth does its best work when the story comes out on its own, with no script.
If you want to know more about how tequila gets made, I write about the process on the Wax and Tracks Fest blog.
If you manage a roster or run a label and want help building details like that into a release or a show, contact me.
