On November 19, a rooftop in Beverly Hills will start pretending it’s in the Alps. It will probably be seventy degrees outside. Nobody will care.
The Maybourne Beverly Hills is opening Après-Ski Winter Cabanas, running through December 31, an alpine-inspired escape overlooking the lights of Beverly Cañon Gardens. The hotel’s festive program promises après-ski gatherings with raclette and chocolate fondue. There’s no snow within a two-hour drive. There’s no chairlift. There’s cheese, a view and a six-week window. That’s the whole product, and it’s a sharper marketing idea than most of the hotel campaigns that will run this year.
Because the Maybourne isn’t selling a room. It’s selling a season. It gave the holidays a title, built a set, and announced a run with an opening night and a closing date. That isn’t hospitality marketing. That’s programming. It’s how a theater sells tickets, how a network sells a show, and how a city like this one has always sold anything worth leaving the house for.
Compare that with what most LA venues do with December. A flyer. A prix fixe. A “holiday menu” that is the regular menu with cranberry on it. A post that says “Book your holiday party now!” in a font that came with the template. All of it announces that the season exists. None of it gives anyone a reason to come see it.
The difference matters more than ever because of how people actually decide where to go. Nobody opens TikTok looking for a hotel bar. They scroll for something to do, and a thing to do has a name, a look and a deadline. “The ski lodge on the roof in Beverly Hills, only through New Year’s” is a plan. “Seasonal cocktails available” is an inventory update.
There’s a proven playbook here, and it started with a construction delay. In 2014 Greg Boehm was building a cocktail bar called Mace in New York’s East Village. On his mother’s advice, he paused construction and turned the unfinished space into a Christmas pop-up. He called it Miracle. The next year it ran in four locations. By 2016 there were pop-ups in Greece, Montreal and Paris. Today Miracle runs across the US and in Canada, Europe, Asia and Central America, mostly inside existing bars that become something else for a few weeks a year.
Read that history carefully, because the lesson isn’t “hang decorations.” Miracle is a format. A name, a look, a menu with its own titles, a window that opens and closes. The host bars don’t have to invent anything; they borrow a season and wear it. The tinsel is the least important part. The run is the product. Copycats followed, which is the clearest sign a format works.
Chains have figured this out, too. P.F. Chang’s, a year into a turnaround, ran a “Summer in Tokyo” campaign built around a sushi boat that arrived at the table smoking with dry ice. CMO Holly Smith told Marketing Dive the boats had done $2 million in sales. Then came “Autumn in Kyoto,” with a spread of duck dishes, and roasted duck lined up for the holidays. The chain says it has climbed from 22nd to third in same-store sales growth among its casual-dining competitors, by its own count of publicly reported earnings. Seasons with titles. Spectacle at the table. Smith’s read on the customer is blunt: “They’re looking for that reason to go out.”
Give them one, and give it a name.
Every season that works has the same bones. A title people can say out loud. A set that looks like nowhere else on their camera roll. A signature thing, a dish or a drink or a ritual, that becomes the photo. And an ending, announced on day one, so every week of the run feels a little more urgent than the last. Strip any of those out and you’re back to a promotion. Keep all of them and you’ve made something people build plans around.
Here’s the part that should make hospitality marketers uncomfortable. A season run like a show is a content engine and a booking engine at the same time, and most venues are leaving both on the table. A titled season hands you an opening night to shoot, a set people actually want to be photographed in, a countdown that creates urgency without a discount, and a closing date that gives the whole thing a reason to sell out. A holiday menu hands you a menu.
Think about what a season does to your feed. A room looks the same in March as it does in October, so the content looks the same too, and the algorithm treats it accordingly. Program four seasons a year, each with a title, a set and a run, and you’ve built four premieres. Four reasons for press to call. Four reasons for regulars to come back and see what changed. Four chances for the city to discover you again, as if for the first time. A season also gives your staff, your creators and your guests the same thing to point a camera at, which is how one good idea turns into a hundred posts you didn’t pay for.
Now the objection. Not every restaurant can afford to build a ski lodge. Not every bar has a rooftop overlooking a garden in Beverly Hills.
Correct. That’s exactly why the model works for them.
The Maybourne didn’t move a mountain. It brought in fondue, dressed some cabanas and gave the result a name. Miracle’s host bars hang decorations and swap a menu. P.F. Chang’s added dry ice to a plate. The investment isn’t in construction. It’s in the idea: deciding what the season is about, naming it, designing a small world people can step into for a couple of hours, and committing to a run that ends. A Silver Lake wine bar can do this. A Culver City boxing gym can do this. A med spa in Santa Monica can do this, and frankly should, because nobody has ever shared a holiday promo code with a friend.
The hard part isn’t money. It’s nerve. A season means committing to a point of view, and a point of view means some people won’t get it. The flyer never offends anyone, which is precisely why nobody remembers it. The rooftop pretending to be Zermatt will annoy a few purists and delight everyone who needed a reason to put on a sweater in December. That trade is worth making every single time.
We approach hospitality clients this way, as producers rather than posters. The first question we ask isn’t what to post. It’s what’s playing. If the answer is “the same thing as last month,” no amount of content will fix it, because there’s nothing to cover. Once there’s a show, the content almost writes itself: the build, the opening, the regulars, the last night.
Los Angeles has always understood the run. Premieres, residencies, limited engagements, the pop-up that’s gone before you’ve finished hearing about it. This city treats scarcity like a love language. Most of its hotels and restaurants just haven’t noticed they’re allowed to speak it.
The Maybourne is selling winter in a town that doesn’t have one. What’s your excuse?
