Look for the Wow Factor

In everyday activities, as in the market, there is more than one way to skin a horse. And one of the important butcher's knives we commonly deploy is that of the quality assessment. But how can we tell if a given share, currency, or hotel is any good?

I'm glad you were thinking about that question, because I have some photos at hand to illustrate.

Witness the Osaka Hilton. At first, you make your way into the lobby, and decide that it is a good quality hotel, based on the singing lady and piano, and well-dressed people standing around listening.


However, I put it to you that this is not a sufficient indicator. Would you have walked into a regional Lehman office, said "wow - nice chandelier and golden lions", and instantly hurried to your broker to buy as much as the market would take? Exactly.

A much better source of insight is the obligatory wall clock display. I propose the inverse of the sum of the variation between the clocks, as a quality-of-hotel indicator. Let's call it, I don't know - how about the Jan Hotel Quality Index. In this case the variation is minimal, and thus the JHQI is massive. But you wouldn't expect the Japanese to be taking lessons in punctuality - I bet that any variation is more the fault of Rolex.

So far, so good. But that can hardly be enough. We must look for other clues to make up the entire picture. And here, I suggest the Unhappiness of People in the Lobby number. The theory here is that rich people are the most likely to be dissatisfied with everything, and unhappy people on business trips are more likely to be important fat cats. Here, almost everyone looks suicidal - a fantastic quality pointer!


But we still have to look out for that one extra thing - the Wow factor that all good hotels aspire to.

And here we have found it, in the form of...

...a wedding-themed stick-your-face-in-the cardboard photo thingy for kids! (or midgets)


So this hotel does pass the quality test, and, thankfully, it has some Jinglish for those who almost forgot that we are in Japan: "The atrium plaza is designated as the public space".

And this reminds me a little of the market. If you are buying stocks, perhaps you should do more due diligence than counting the number of gold elephants in the company's atrium.