The Lifescriber: Hotels need memory keepers

Hotels are where we spend special occasions. But how do we remember the experience? 

One December afternoon in Singapore, my daughter and I wandered into the gift shop of The Fullerton. I was happily lost among the well-curated things when my gaze caught on a huge red mailbox in the middle of the room, simply labeled Royal Mail.

Even with a plaque indicating the collection time, I had to ask if it was just décor. “It’s in use,” the woman at the counter said. That was all the invitation we needed.

We chose a couple of postcards from the rotating rack and took them back to our room. My daughter sat on the couch and wrote messages to her ninangs in California. Later, we went down to the concierge to buy stamps, then walked back to that red mailbox and dropped the postcards in.

It was such a small thing, really. Two cards, a few sentences, a stamp, and a slot. But it turned our stay into a story we could send out in the world. The hotel stopped being just a place we slept in and became a place that helped us remember.

A month later, we were at the Grand Hyatt in BGC to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I went to the front desk and asked, again, about postcards.

The man behind the counter looked at me, puzzled. Eventually he disappeared into a back room and emerged with a card that had “Grand Hyatt” and a photo of the hotel on one side. The back was completely blank—no address lines, no little rectangle where the stamp should go. I asked where I could buy stamps. They had none.

In London, in Bohol, it was the same story. At The Clermont in London, there was another beautiful red mailbox. My hopes rose, but it turned out to be just a prop. Everywhere, hotels were offering us “experiences,” but very few were helping us keep them.

Think about it: we usually go to hotels because something is happening. We’re traveling. We’re celebrating an anniversary. We’re attending a wedding, a reunion, and a once-in-a-lifetime trip. In other words, we’re there to make memories.

If hotels are in the business of hosting our lives at special moments, isn’t it a missed opportunity not to help us remember them well?

I sometimes imagine what it would be like if hotels embraced their role not just as hosts, but as memory keepers. Imagine postcards and pens by the bedside. Stamps are available at the concierge. A working postbox in the lobby. A small “memory corner” in the lounge: a writing desk, good paper, maybe a short writing prompt.

Maybe they could even incorporate a simple storytelling session.

Recently, we spent a few nights at the newly opened South Palms MGallery in Panglao. On the walls of our room were words written in a script I could not quite identify. I tried Google Lens, but it yielded no useful results. Later, I scanned a QR code to learn more about the resort’s services, and that’s where I found my answer: it was badlit suwat, a native Visayan script, a cousin of the more familiar baybayin of the Tagalogs. The word on the wall simply spelled out kultura.

When we were shown around the resort, the staff pointed out the design elements used in the different clusters—motifs from the Chocolate Hills, fish on the walls honoring the sea as a source of livelihood, and painted patterns inspired by the old pintados tattoos of the Visayan people.

When I entered the spa, what greeted me first was not a waiting lounge but Lola’s kitchen. The spa manager explained that the main ingredients they use, like lemongrass and oregano, are freshly harvested, and that the scrubs and compresses are prepared in the kitchen just before each treatment. They introduced our senses to the land before they tended to our bodies.

Coming home from that stay, we brought with us not just our own memories but stories of the place we’d been to.

None of these are complicated or expensive. They are not as flashy as infinity pools or viral-worthy breakfast buffets. But together, they send a clear message: We know you may want to remember this years from now.

For families like mine, where godparents live on the other side of the world and grandparents may no longer be around for the next trip, stories and the means to tell them matter. A postcard written by an eight-year-old from a hotel room in Singapore is proof: We were here. We thought of you. You were part of this moment.

That’s really what this column is all about—how storytelling and memory-keeping can be part of our everyday experience.

Since this is my first entry, I’m inclined to tell you a little more about it.

I wrote a book called Lifescribing and founded a company with the same name because I am obsessed with witnessing and recording the details of life, turning them into stories we can pass on as legacy so they can live beyond us.

In this column, I’ll be writing from that place: part observer, part memory keeper, part conspirator, asking questions that might help you live the kind of life I aspire to live: a well-considered one.

 

 

I sometimes imagine what it would be like if hotels embraced their role not just as hosts, but as memory keepers.

 

 

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