The Luxury Garden
The Luxury Garden was located in the city's business district, in an imposing skyscraper that also housed offices. A gold-coated doorman, positioned near carefully cultivated flowering plants, greeted guests. Inside, neatly uniformed white, Asian, and Latino workers, mostly older than thirty, stood behind the desk looking into the lobby, decorated in black granite with red and gold touches. The hotel's 160 rooms boasted a glorious view of the city; they were decorated with dark woods and Asian accents, such as bamboo and Chinese ceramics. Large bathrooms featured capacious tubs and sinks, as well as a separate shower, two kinds of bathrobes, and soft slippers. Like most luxury hotels, the Luxury Garden boasted twenty-four-hour room service, an award-winning restaurant, same-day laundry service, twice-daily maid service, packing and unpacking service on request, valet parking, and a complimentary chauffeur-driven house car in the mornings and evenings. A fruit or flower amenity awaited each new guest in the room. A business center, a fitness center, and a gift shop were located within the hotel.
TABLE 2 Characteristics of the Luxury Garden and the Royal Court
| Luxury Garden | Royal Court | |
| Corporate structure | Multinational conglomerate | Independently owned and managed |
| Service | Formal, professional Meets standards | Friendly, informal Doesn't meet all standards |
| Clients | Business (global) | Leisure and business (local) |
| Mostly men | Women and men | |
| Mostly white | Mostly white | |
| Worker demographics, front of house | White (U.S.-born), Asian, Asian American, Latino | White (U.S.-born and European) |
| Older (30s–40s) (Immigrant men at front door) | Younger (20s) (Immigrant men at front door) | |
| Worker demographics, back of house | Primarily Chinese | Chinese, Filipino, Central American |
| Remuneration/benefits | Higher | Lower |
| Managerial regime | Hierarchical professionalism | Flexible informality |
| Client responses | Positive (“professional”) | Positive (“friendly”) |
The Luxury Garden's room rates ranged from $500 to $750 for single and double occupancy rooms, and from $1,400 to $3,000 for suites. Mobil, the industry's most important ranking organization, had awarded the hotel five stars, its highest rating. Other publications, agencies, and reader polls in travel magazines had also given it extremely high ratings. The hotel employed 200 workers, of whom about 165 were nonsupervisory. It was owned by a private Asian company. Management was part of the Luxury Garden Hospitality Company (LGHC), which managed luxury properties worldwide and was expanding, especially into the United States. The LGHC was itself a subsidiary of an enormous multinational conglomerate.
Luxury Garden workers earned slightly more than workers covered by the union contract in other hotels. Front desk workers made $15 per hour, as did concierges, though concierges garnered significant additional income from tips and commissions (approximately $2,000 per month, including an average of $150 per week in tips). They also received perks such as free restaurant meals, theater tickets, and gifts from vendors such as massage therapists. Bellmen and doormen respectively earned $9 and $10 per hour, plus about $100 and $150 per day in tips. Housekeeping workers made $13-14 hourly. Telephone operators and reservationists at the Luxury Garden earned $14 per hour. (See appendix C for details.)
Service at the Luxury Garden was highly professionalized and relatively formal. Doormen, bellmen, and front office workers consistently greeted guests with “welcome to the Luxury Garden” or, when appropriate, “welcome back.” They used the guest's name frequently. Using engineered recognition, workers consistently noted and respected guest preferences and frequently anticipated their needs. They were cordial but not overly friendly or familiar, as a rule, though some had developed relationships with frequent guests. Workers generally used what managers called “proper verbiage” rather than informal talk, which preserved distance.
The professional service the hotel offered was well-suited to its business-oriented guests, who brought fat wallets and high expectations. The Luxury Garden's clientele was overwhelmingly composed of business travelers (70-90 percent, according to different managers), usually senior executives from a variety of companies, especially in the financial services industry. Approximately three-quarters of the guests were men, and at least 80 percent hailed from the United States. The rest came mainly from Asia and Europe, especially London. Although most guests were white, the hotel housed more African American and Asian or Asian American guests than the Royal Court did during my research (which may have been related to the preponderance of business travelers). Most of the business travelers paid lower corporate rates. At least 21 percent of guests were frequent, meaning they returned at least twice in a twelvemonth period, and many more were repeats. The hotel hosted few groups and no conventions.
The Royal Court
Though located on a busy downtown street, the Royal Court was unobtrusive; you could walk by it a hundred times and never know it was there. Visitors entered through glass doors under a white awning; the décor of the spacious but intimate-feeling lobby was understated but elegant, featuring marble floors, high ceilings, European-style furniture, including some antiques, and a large flower arrangement. Featured colors included peach, cream, and gold. Employees uniformed in basic black—mostly young white women—stood at the ready behind the desk. Classical music played softly in the background. The hotel's 110 rooms were being renovated; new rooms were decorated in earth tones with bright accents, large mirrors, and natural woods; sizable bathrooms featured open glass showers and soapstone sinks and counters. The available services were similar to those at the Luxury Garden, though the hotel lacked business and fitness centers and a gift shop and offered slightly fewer amenities. The laundry was on-site, however, making service faster.
The Royal Court's room rates ranged from $300 to $500 for single or double occupancy rooms and from $550 to $2,000 for suites. The hotel was ranked with four Mobil stars. (Because it lacked some services, it was ineligible for a fifth, but the general manager told me the hotel merited “4.75 stars.”) A major travel publication rated it among the top ten city hotels in the United States, and travel magazine reader polls gave it consistently high rankings. The hotel employed about 160 workers, of whom about 130 were nonsupervisory, for a worker-to-room ratio of slightly over 1:1. Since its initial opening in the 1980s as a nonunion luxury property, the hotel had had two different owners and been run by several management companies. At the time of my research, it was owned by a private Asian firm and independently managed.
Wages and tips were slightly lower than those at the Luxury Garden. The most notable difference was among the front desk workers, who also did the concierge work; they were paid thirteen dollars per hour, in contrast to fifteen, their tip/commission income was lower (probably reaching only fifty to one hundred dollars per week), and the perks associated with concierge work were fewer, because their front desk work depleted the time they could spend doing concierge tasks. Other workers in general were paid slightly less than their Luxury Garden counterparts. (See appendix C.)
Management strove for “authentic service,” encouraging workers to be friendly and relatively informal in their treatment of guests. The hotel's founder called this unpretentious service “luxury with a cheerful face.” The doormen often joked around with guests. Front desk workers spoke to guests in a casual but warm way, often eschewing formal terms of speech (“my