If You Manage A
 Hotel
You Need A Magician

You already know that the hotel industry is competitive. Along any main street, there are plenty of options for your important guests when it comes to staying–even plenty of great options.

How does a consumer decide where to eat or drink? 

A professional magician does more than stroll from table to table, performing close-up magic (this type of magic happens right in front of their eyes and even within their hands).

Having a house magician solves a dozen issues that a successful hotel faces. A seasoned hospitality magician typically performs personalized command performances for your guests.

Now that I have that out of the way let me give you a few reasons why you need magic in your establishment:

Your Guests Will Thank You

Magic is in season right NOW.  

David Blaine, Dynamo, Derren Brown, Criss Angel, Penn & Teller – the list goes on and on.  
Magic is very popular with the general public.  

TV shows have magicians all the time–I hardly need to mention Penn & Teller’s Fool Us, which received the nomination for Critic’s Choice Television Award for Best Structured Reality Series–plus more touring magic shows are happening now more than ever in the past.

People LOVE to see magic and are prepared to pay to do so.  As a hotel manager this is something that you should take advantage of.

Close up magic is even MORE popular.  

Of course, “close up magic” is the sort that is performed right in front of the spectator’s eyes and in Jon Finch’s case in their own hands. 

As a magician, I frequently hear people say that don’t fully trust the magic they see on TV, but that when it happens to them personally they have a change of heart.

Close up magic is perfectly suited to a hotel environment. You can have a magician going from group to group and your customers will love it.

Unlike a lot of other types of entertainment, magic is inconspicuous.

If you decide that entertainment would work in your venue, there are many options. However, just about every other form of entertainment has to be experienced by the whole venue. 

One example is Karaoke. Karaoke can draw people into the hotel–people specifically looking for that sort of thing; but it can also repel as many who dislike it.

Oftentimes people walk into a hotel that has a Karaoke system set up, and they immediately walk out. If I wanted to eat there I HAD to listen to a couple of hours of terrible singing and I didn’t want to do that.

The same is true of singers, bands, accordion players, comedians – pretty much every other type of entertainment – either you’re forced to stomach it or you leave.

Magic, on the other hand, is unobtrusive. A magician strolls from table to table engaging one group with magic and then another one. If a specific group doesn’t like magic or they’d rather not participate, they aren’t obliged to (unlike most other forms of entertainment). 

It means you can put on entertainment which most customers will enjoy but you don’t have to worry about driving away customers.

Magic gives you a competitive advantage.  

As noted above, people have plenty of choice of where to sleep–even places that have outstanding beds and service.

How can you differentiate your venue from the dozens of others within the same area, while adding value for your customers?

Simply offer something unique that no other hotel in your market is able to match.

How can you beat that?

Most folks these days don’t stay in a hotel every day. So when these guests do choose to stay, they want a unique experience and they want to get the most value for their money.

If you were going out and there was a choice of two venues, both the same other than one was advertising free entertainment, which would you chose? More importantly, which would your customers chose?

One has everything other hotels offer, and another has the former and offers free entertainment as an extension of the hotel’s hospitality. It’s a no-brainer.

Magic encourages repeat customers.  

Most hotels I’ve worked with use me on a residency basis. This means that I go into the hotel on a weekly or a bi-weekly basis. This is the absolute best way to use a magician if you REALLY want your business to increase. Why? Simple–magic induces incredible word of mouth.

You know as well as I that there are few venues you can go to in Indiana to see magic. This is even more true for close-up magic. 

When your guests see a great magician entertain, they typically want to see more. More importantly, they will want their friends to watch as well.

I’ve been in a hospitality suite before when the customer has called his friends to come and join there and then because they really HAVE to see the magician.

Hotels I’ve worked with on a weekly basis focus a great deal of their advertising on getting people in on the nights I am there.

You would be amazed at the amount YOUR guests will come back every single week to see the magic. They will even bring their friends and family as well.

Whatever your clientele, magic can work really well.  

The great thing about close up magic is that you can adapt the performer or adapt the performance depending on the venue you are performing in.

When a magician is performing at a upscale bar he can use sleight of hand, mentalism, and effects engineered particularly targeted to a sophisticated, discerning audience.

On the other hand, if the group is a family group, the performances can be changed to appeal more to children and teenagers.

In fact with family hotels there is the ‘The Child Decider’. Your child will choose where you go out to eat as a family. If you have children and have been to a restaurant where there is a magician doing magic tricks, when it comes time to pick where to go again, where do you think the child will choose; the place where there is nothing going on or the restaurant where they can watch the amazing magician?

You can totally eliminate walk outs.

Long waiting line? Opportunity!

I’ve worked with a number venues where their priority
is for me to stop this from happening.

As customers arrive they are ushered into the bar and told the magician will be with them momentarily. Then while they are waiting they get to see live close up magic.

What if you could transform restless walkouts into raving fans?

By booking a professional restaurant magician,
you have transformed a walkout into a happy patron.

Magic can help manage problems within the venue

Imagine you have a problem and there is a delay on the room. Depending on the customer this can be frustrating, for all concerned.

A good magician will work with the staff in the hotel to ensure any problems are dealt with quickly and effectively.  

If there’s going to be a delay, the magician can go to the guest and explain the situation and then, while they’re waiting, he can make time fly (even though that’s altogether impossible).

Before the patrons know it, the problem is rectified and they don’t have an issue waiting at all.

Create a magical souvenir that is better than word of mouth!

A lot of magic tricks involve altering a normal object in an impossible way. For example, making a borrowed dollar bill fold itself in half in the hands of the spectator and then float into the air; or having two, signed playing cards fuse together into one card (for, say, when a couple comes in on their anniversary).  

A great magician will perform tricks like this when in a hotel. That miraculously-altered object will be kept and treasured by the person participating in the trick as a souvenir.

You would be astounded at the number of people that take these magical souvenirs home and proudly show them around to their friends and family.

There is no way to buy the publicity that this sort of thing manufactures.

Many times a stranger I have never yet met asks, “hey can you do the trick with the dollar my friend told me about?” 

But the bottom line is this: people will come into your hotel because they want to experience this sort of thing themselves.