The Psychology of Choosing a Hotel

Why can one person walk into a minimalist hotel with bare concrete walls and think this is perfect, while their travelling companion wonders when the furniture is arriving? Why do some of us dream about an isolated cabin in the mountains, while others would be miserable without a bar downstairs full of people they haven’t met yet? We usually search for hotels by destination, price, stars and amenities. But perhaps we’re overlooking something rather important. Ourselves.

You may already know your Myers-Briggs personality type. If someone has ever announced that they are an INTJ, ENFP or one of fourteen other mysterious four-letter combinations, this is what they were talking about. The Myers-Briggs framework looks at personality through four pairs of preferences: Extraversion or Introversion (E/I), Sensing or Intuition (S/N), Thinking or Feeling (T/F), and Judging or Perceiving (J/P). Combine the four preferences and you arrive at one of sixteen personality types. It isn’t about putting people permanently into boxes — the Myers & Briggs Foundation itself stresses that we use all these preferences. Think of the letters more as indications of what tends to feel natural. Never done it? The popular 16Personalities test is free, takes about ten minutes and will give you a four-letter result. It isn’t the official MBTI assessment, but it’s an easy and entertaining place to start.

Take the free 16Personalities test

And then come back. We need to find you a hotel.

Then comes Thinking (T) versus Feeling (F) — which is less about whether you possess feelings and more about the way you naturally approach decisions. Thinking puts greater emphasis on logic and objective principles; Feeling gives more weight to values, people and relationships. Hotel version? T might fall hopelessly in love with a perfectly resolved piece of Modernism. The proportions work. The materials make sense. Nothing has been added without reason. F might fall for the converted family palazzo because the grandmother still lives upstairs and her recipes are served in the restaurant. One says: what brilliant architecture. The other says: what a wonderful place. Both may ultimately book exactly the same hotel. Just for completely different reasons.

And since we’re talking personality types, here’s mine. I’m an INTJ.

Quiet. Independent. Analytical. Fascinated by ideas, architecture and why something works rather than simply whether everyone else says it is good. Suddenly DNA Hotels makes rather a lot of sense. I’ve spent years looking at thousands of hotels, filtering out the generic ones and trying to understand the character of those that remain. Not is this the best hotel?, but who is this hotel perfect for? That distinction matters. Because the hotel I would choose for myself isn’t necessarily the hotel I would choose for you. Tell me you hate hushed luxury hotels but could happily spend four hours at a great bar. Tell me breakfast matters more than a swimming pool. Tell me you love Brutalism, hate beige, want to meet people, need absolute silence, adore grand hotels or would rather sleep in a converted petrol station than somewhere predictable. That’s useful information. And if DNA Hotels doesn’t have exactly what you’re looking for, there is always Friends. Tell me roughly where you want to go. But more importantly, tell me who you are. I might just know your hotel.