WRISTBANDS AND ROOM SERVICE: MUSIC FESTIVALS CHECK IN TO HOTELS
By the pool, bass boomed from towering speakers. Inside, stanchions blocked the elevators. One dinged, the doors opened, and hoard of wristbandwearing revelers poured out. This was a five-star hotel, but over one weekend this fall, it turned into a 48-hour dance party.
Wise to the popularity of gatherings like Coachella and Burning Man, hotels are staging their own music festivals, trying to lure travelers obsessed with finding the next thing to post about on social media. In December, the Hotel Paseo in Palm Desert, Calif., put on an “Airstream Palooza,” a free music festival arrayed around renovated airstream trailers. In November, the Careyes resort in Jalisco, Mexico, hosted its third annual music festival, Ondalinda, a bacchanal that Vogue has called “the luxe Burning Man.” In Bali, Indonesia, pop stars Fergie and Liam Payne performed at the Mulia hotel’s music-fueled Labor Day weekend bash. In February, the electronic dance music, or EDM, DJS Calvin Harris and Zedd headlined the opening weekend festival of the Vidanta resort in Los Cabos, Mexico.
But none of those properties is pumping its proverbial fists as heartily as W Hotels. W, a subsidiary of Marriott, came up with the concept for its roving music festival, Wake Up Call, after discerning that its target customers tend to go as hard during their off hours as they do during their working ones, and don’t necessarily want to deal with the crowds and logistical planning inherent in attending traditional, multiday concerts.
“They’re 25- to 45-years-old, well-traveled, affluent professionals, mainly, who like to have fun and burn the candle at both ends,” said Anthony Ingham, the global brand leader of W Hotels, which has 54 locations worldwide. The first three Wake Up Calls took place this fall in Hollywood, Barcelona, Spain, and Bali; W Dubai is slated to host the fourth next year.
Historically, W has courted musicians through its Living Room Live program, in which emerging artists perform in the lounge area of their local W, and W Sound Suites, recording studios that exist within select hotels. “When we started brainstorming what we could do next, it felt like a natural evolution to produce a music festival,” Ingham said.
One would think that a music festival held in a hotel, a place with walls and smoke detectors and guests who may not be partaking in late night dance parties, would be less raucous than the type that take place on open plots of land, in the middle of nowhere. One would be wrong, at least in the case of Wake Up Call Barcelona, which took place the third weekend in September and courted 4,300 attendees, thanks to headlining artists like Martin Solveig and Robin Schulz.
When my husband and I checked in on Thursday evening, the W, a half-moon-shaped monolith visible for miles down the Barcelona esplanade, seemed like a regular hotel (albeit, one with a vast wall of red and silver sequins in the lobby). A gray-haired man in a suit was checking in next to us; samba music played at a conversational volume.
Everyone in the hotel’s 473 rooms came knowing a festival — with set times starting as late (or early) as 2 a.m. — was taking place. (Fifty rooms were booked before the planning of Wake Up Call Barcelona, and W offered to relocate those guests unwilling to take part, Ingham said.)
By midday Friday, the first day of the festival, two stages had been erected by the pool (the “Wet Deck,” in W parlance) and in the lobby, a phalanx of people in tank tops and shorts waited to check in. Jamiroquai crooned from the speakers outside, claiming there was nothing left for him to do but dance, but no one was dancing — yet.
Maybe it was the booths that had been set up in the lobby to dole out festival entrance wristbands, maybe it was the two guys in the gym talking about “throwing down” that night: There was a palpable feeling that a party was about to engulf the property, and indeed, that was the W’s intent.
One advantage a hotel-planned festival offers over a traditional one: Attendees and artists can more easily interact, they’re staying at the same place, after all. On Friday night, two dozen festivalgoers ate ham croquettes and paella with Thomas Jack, one of the many EDM DJS on the lineup.
“The thing that I hate, I even hate the term, is the ‘meet and greet,’” said Solveig, a French DJ who hosted a cocktail party in the hotel’s “Extreme Wow” suite, which was used as a gathering place during the festival. “You have, like, two minutes, so it’s reduced to taking a picture with a fan and that’s it. What’s special about this is that it’s hanging out for an hour with people who have knowledge of my work.”
Wake Up Call attendees redeemed points from Starwood or Marriott’s loyalty programs (the hotel groups recently merged) to gain access to these more intimate “moments”; some used points to fund their entire trip.
“It’s the perfect excuse to do things that otherwise you don’t have the inspiration to do,” said Alan Conde, 46, a management consultant based in Madrid who spent 50,000 points on a festival package. “What I don’t like about festivals so much is the crowds. It’s very difficult to move, you have to make lines for everything. Suddenly, you have this concept, which I think is very creative.”
Being an elevator ride away from your suitcase is also a plus. (As Ingham put it, “you can have four outfit changes!”) I discovered this on Friday night, when, in-
spired by a group of jumpsuit and fanny-pack clad attendees grooving in a darkened conference room to the house DJ, Schulz, I ditched my cumbersome purse for the fanny pack the W had placed in every room (and stuffed, in true music festival fashion, with mints and condoms). By 3 p.m. the next afternoon, more than two dozen people snaked out the doors, waiting to buy day passes, and a security checkpoint had been set up in the lobby.
Up in the Extreme Wow suite, Stacey Arkules, 57, from Arizona, was kicked back on the balcony with a cocktail and sunglasses, taking in a view of the coastline before things kicked up a notch. What brought her here? She smiled and shrugged as if it were obvious: “The music.”
5 HOTELS BOOKING LIVE MUSIC EVENTS
Turning their lobbies, pools, bars and rooftops into concert venues lets hotels bring musicscene energy on-site. Some are following the example of festivals like Coachella by hosting dayslong events, while other are throwing one-time intimate concerts. Here are some of the hotels that have music events planned in 2019.
1. Kimpton Hotels
Kimpton Hotels started its live music series, Kimpton Off the Record, in June. The hotel brand has seven intimate performances of no more than 200 guests slated for 2019. Performers are chosen based on how well they complement the hotel’s locale. In August, for example, the indie-pop band St. Lucia will perform at the Kimpton Goodland Hotel in Goleta, Calif. — a hotel with its own vinyl record shop and record players in every room. Performances will also take place in Austin, Nashville, Tenn., San Francisco, Toronto, Boston and Los Angeles.
2. Ace Hotel
Ace Hotel isn’t new to the festival scene. Every April for the last decade, the Ace Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs, Calif., has hosted the Desert Gold festival. The 2019 version will take place from April 12-21. Performers haven’t been finalized, but in past years, Blood Orange and Florence Welch have performed at the hotel. The New Orleans Ace will host its fourth Six of Saturns festival from April 26 to May 5. The chain’s newest festival, Double Vision, was held at Ace Hotel Chicago in July for the first time in 2018 and will be back in the coming year. All the festivals take place poolside, on rooftops, in bars, private event spaces and, in New Orleans, at its in-hotel music venue, Three Keys.
3. W Hotels
W Hotels plans to take its Wake Up Call festival to Dubai in the second half of 2019, when the W Hotel Dubai The Palm opens. Other W Hotels will have individual music performances. The W in Bellevue, Wash., holds performances in its bar on the third Thursday of each month with local artists. Hip-hop artist SWSH will perform at the W in Los Angeles on Jan. 17, and in Barcelona several concerts are scheduled in the hotel’s 26th floor bar, including performances by Josh Butler ( Jan. 1) and Full Intention (Feb. 1).
4. Fellah Hotel
From March 28-31, the Fellah Hotel in Marrakech, Morocco, will play host to the Beat Hotel festival, put on by the promoters behind the Glastonbury, England, festival. Festival attendees can stay at the Fellah Hotel, which is on a 27-acre farm, where the concerts will be held. The festival also plans shuttles for those who stay at other hotels or riads. Scheduled performers include the Mercury Prizewinning band Young Fathers and the Dutch disco-house DJ Hunee.
5. Hard Rock Hotels
Live music is a big deal at Hard Rock Hotels around the world. Through the hotel’s The Sound of Your Stay program, guests are allowed to check out Fender guitars and amplifiers, take them to their rooms and create their own music studio experience. The brand’s annual music festival will be held in summer 2019 at the Hard Rock Hotel Shenzhen Mission Hills resort in China, with dates and acts still to be finalized. Guests are encouraged to stay in the hotel’s 258 rooms and interact with artists who will be on the property.