In 1915, the Kennedy School opened in Portland, Oregon. For sixty years it served as an elementary school, but was eventually boarded up because of a drop in enrollment and hefty maintenance costs. The building stood abandoned.

In 1997, restaurant development company, McMenamins, discovered the deserted school, and decided to reopen it as a hotel and pub. Rather than erasing the building’s history, McMenamins highlighted it.

Today, the property is still called The Kennedy School. Its 35 classrooms, complete with original chalkboards along the walls, are now guestrooms. Its auditorium is a movie theater. The former teachers’ lounge is a soaking pool. One of its barrooms is named “Detention,” while the other, located deep in the bowels of the building, is appropriately called “The Boiler Room Bar.” The establishment has a school theme throughout.

By trumpeting the building’s past, McMenamins has created a guest experience that’s organic and different. What’s more, the company didn’t have to build from scratch.

The Big Lesson:

People love to experience a sense of place, and feel differences in location and culture. Those reasons, after all, are why people take trips. They want to be invigorated by a history, environment, and way of being that’s different from their own.

Stands to reason, then, that drawing on these distinguishing elements when you’re creating a customer experience makes good sense.

(More on this idea of drawing on local geography and culture in our Ritz-Carlton post, “Making a Scene.”)