As Micah Solomon wrote for Forbes last year, "Local relevance and a sense of place are among the most important themes in the customer experience today. Everywhere a consumer may go today, from retail to hotels to restaurants, they'll encounter companies and brands that are striving to tie themselves as closely to the locale as they can..."
On an earlier trip to Jackson Hole this year, I visited two luxury resorts — one, a 5-star resort from an internationally lauded luxury brand, and the other a dude ranch where visitors pay up to feel like they're living an authentically Wyoming lifestyle for a week. The experiences were totally different, but they both left me with a strongly defined sense of place.
The Kentucky Castle made attempts at this with the bourbon bar and the horse artwork, but ultimately, I felt more like I was at Disneyland than at a luxury hotel in Kentucky.
And while I didn't pay the full price for a room, at the going rate of $295 a night, I would really expect the basics I've come to expect from hotels — like reliable WiFi and room service. The bedroom was big and comfortable, but, just like WiFi and room service, that's more an expectation than a perk in the world of luxury hotels.