Sundays are great. To me they’re a mixture of doing laundry, eating breakfast at Oddfellows (here in Seattle), and spending quality time with my girlfriend Kelly and our laugh-out-loud corgi Bailey when…

Flipping through the channels, something caught my attention. A show about one man’s desire to help flailing hotels make the impossible, possible.

The story took place at a not-so-New-York motel called, “The New Yorker Motel” – a pretty typical local establishment around the Miami, FL area that…

As you might think, it’s family owned. Cheap. And “nothing to write home about.”

But the host – beyond experienced at what he did – immediately zeroed in on noticing how some of the really big changes that needed to be done, were really some of the smallest.

Things like answering your emails timely (from potential clients). Making the free breakfast table a lot more inviting. Making sure things are clean. Nicely presented. Organized and…

Nothing “big,” as I said…

But – as in any business – isn’t it always the smallest things that seem to make the biggest difference?

So here’s what happens.

The host goes to work, doing what he does best to try and see what needs to be done to turn things around for the motel and it’s owners. Bringing in a new designer to liven a few spots up…

They re-organized the office. Got everyone uniforms. Cleaned the breakfast bar. And met with the hotel staff – to make sure everyone was on par with the new direction they needed to go.

Next?

They tackled the one thing that made all the difference, and perhaps the smallest thing that almost any business these days seems to overlook – they looked at what words they needed to change to help communicate a lot more accurately the type of business they are. However in this instance, they found they only needed to change one word.

Just one, because the host of the show and the actual owner of the newly renovated hotel knew exactly what came to mind when people heard the word “motel” versus the word “hotel.”

It’s the difference between sounding cheap and stale, to – simply put – being perceived as “nicer,” cleaner and a lot more inviting.

And so, the New Yorker Motel went from struggling business owners with close to $1,000,000 in debt and their rooms barely full, to having the New Yorker Hotel 100% booked since airing this one particular episode that took place in Miami, FL.

Looking back…

Perhaps everything but the word motel could’ve been changed and the now “hotel” could be just as busy as it was when it was called a “motel.” Not to mention the fact that the new paint, uniforms, cleaning… all of it could’ve made a pretty big impact – compared to how it was run before – without changing a word.

But then again, perhaps not.

That even though they changed a lot of things with the new hotel, the perception of the word “motel” versus the word “hotel” wouldn’t have been good enough to stand out from all the other motels that bombarded the run-of-the-mill strip of mediocre establishments. That this one word barely did much of anything to help turn their business completely around, and re-position their entire hotel as a much more pleasurable experience for all involved.

How could it not?

From small well-established businesses to large international ad firms & brands, I (Jared Matthew Kessler) have taken on a wide variety of copywriting projects that encompass just about everything in my field. Increasing sales with words, I help companies stand out from the noise (not just add to it).

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