MINNEAPOLIS—The Depot Renaissance Minneapolis Hotel and My Hotel Rocks, LLC, have announced a strategic partnership to offer hotel guests use acoustic guitars for rent on-site or as part of their room package.
The partnership allows The Depot Renaissance to build on the Renaissance Hotels’ brand strategy, which highlights music and entertainment as part of their RLife Live events. The program officially launches this month and the cost to rent a guitar is $25 for guests of The Depot and its Stone Arch Bar & Lounge.
The idea originated with My Hotel Rocks founder Dave Musolf, a self-described road warrior/guitar hack who often found himself sitting in his hotel rooms wishing he had his guitar to play.
“I asked everywhere I went, and no hotel ever had a guitar,” stated Musolf. “I knew there were a few hipster boutique hotels that had them, but as a business traveler working a loyalty program, these weren’t really an option. Minneapolis has such an amazing music scene and The Depot supported this idea right away. It’s a perfect fit.”
My Hotel Rocks is currently using Ovation guitars in the $550-$650 (Celebrity) range as part of this program. Each guitar has built-in tuners, and can be plugged into a mobile device/headphones supporting the wide range of guitar and music apps available online.
A common concern is about potential noise issues within the hotel. Through a variety of tests, however, the mid/shallow body acoustic guitar ranks below noise levels of parties, TVs, music/radios, and even conversation and phone use as a potential noise issue.
“Most guitarists I know are super respectful and I don’t envision hardly any issues with noise,” said Musolf. “In fact, The Depot Renaissance has a number of guests who travel with their own guitar, and they’ve never had a noise complaint related to this.”