In August 2016, I was deep into an extended business trip through the Middle East, and as always, my base camp was the JW Marriott Marquis Dubai. If you’ve never been to Dubai in August, picture opening an oven door and then climbing inside. I didn’t leave the building much, which, as it turns out, left me with a lot of free time.

If you ever find yourself in Dubai, stay there. Nobody is paying me to say that. Although, as you’ll see, I was eventually paid in cake.

Plenty of things set this hotel apart, but for me it’s the staff. Everywhere I went, somebody greeted me by name. The front desk. The pool attendants. Chinedu, the bellman, who somehow knew which floor I was headed to before I did. Every one of them treated me like I was their absolute favorite guest.

And I believed it. For several glorious days, I walked around that building like a minor celebrity. My coffee was poured before I sat down. The elevator was held before I reached it. At the Thai restaurant, Somchai brought my usual before I’d decided whether I wanted my usual. A man could get used to that. I certainly did. By day three, I was strolling through the lobby with the confidence of a guy whose name is on the building.

Then one night, lying in bed and basking in my own favoritism, a horrible thought crept in.

What if they treat EVERYONE this way?

I sat straight up. I started replaying the evidence like a detective in a bad TV show. That afternoon, hadn’t the front desk lit up for a German couple exactly the way they lit up for me? Hadn’t Chinedu held the elevator for a family of five with the same big smile? Hadn’t the pool attendant brought someone else a towel with that same little nod I thought was ours?

Of course they had. That’s the whole program: make every guest feel like the only guest. It’s what every great business is supposed to do, and they were doing it brilliantly. Which was wonderful for them and devastating for me. I had been played. Lovingly, professionally, five-star played. I wasn’t the favorite. I was a guest. One of hundreds. A man with a room key.

My bubble didn’t burst so much as slowly hiss.

The next morning at breakfast, I laid out my crisis to the Executive Lounge team. Priya, who ran the morning shift, listened kindly, confirmed my worst fear (yes, they are nice to everybody), and then tried to console me.

“But Mr. Larry, you are definitely up there.”

Up there?

UP THERE?!

What does “up there” even mean? Top ten? Top fifty? Somewhere behind the guy who tips in cash and the lady with the little dog? I don’t do “up there.” I do first place.

And that is the moment the Best Guest campaign was born.

I told Priya that “up there” simply wasn’t going to cut it. We needed a formal, fair, democratic process to settle my true standing once and for all. “As of today,” I announced, “I am officially running for BEST GUEST.”

She nodded, smiled, and said that sounded like an excellent plan. I could hear the eye-roll. Didn’t matter. I was a candidate now: a grown man running for an award that did not exist.

Every campaign needs a platform, so I gave mine one. If elected, I pledged to reuse my towels, never request a late checkout, say “please” to the espresso machine, and tip the bellmen like an oil man. Bold stuff. Visionary, even.

Every campaign also needs a stump speech, and I spent most of that first morning workshopping mine. It was short, it was sincere, and it ended with a firm handshake and eye contact. I’ve spent my whole career in sales. I know how to close. The only difference was that this time the product was me, and the price was one vote.

At lunch, I made my pitch to Somchai at the Thai restaurant. He listened to the entire speech, nodded thoughtfully, and asked if I wanted the green curry again. I took that as a yes. At dinner, same pitch, different waiter. By the next day I was working that hotel like a man running for county commissioner: shaking hands at the pool, stopping housekeeping in the hallway, campaigning to the trainers between sets at the gym. I would have kissed babies, but there aren’t many babies in an Executive Lounge. No hallway too long. No bellman too busy.

Then something wonderful happened. The campaign took on a life of its own.

Within three or four days, staff I had never even met were walking up to me, introducing themselves, and pledging their support. “Mr. Larry, you have my vote.” Somchai had the Thai restaurant locked down. The pool deck came through. The gym swung my way. The front desk fell in line. And Chinedu shook my hand like a ward boss on election night and told me the bellmen were voting as a bloc. I was Ferris Bueller, and the whole hotel was in on it.

It was getting a little out of hand, in the best possible way. I’d step off the elevator and someone would give me a thumbs-up from across the lobby. A waiter I’d never seen before set down my water and whispered, “Four more years.” I hadn’t even had one year yet. A woman from the spa stopped me by the pool to say her whole team had discussed it and the decision was unanimous. I didn’t even know the spa had been briefed. Somewhere in that building, there was a ground game I knew nothing about.

Naturally, success made me paranoid. Every good campaign has a scare, and mine came from Chinedu, who mentioned, very casually, that a British gentleman on one of the upper floors had been complimenting everything. The breakfast. The towels. The view. The carpet. A dark horse. I spent an entire afternoon convinced I was about to be outflanked by a man in a linen suit. Then Chinedu let me know the gentleman had checked out that morning. I was uncontested again. Politics is a cruel business.

Of course, I’d been uncontested all along. Nobody else even knew there was a race. I had won an election no one else knew was happening, so I wasn’t expecting a ceremony.

On the eve of my departure, the phone in my room rang. It was Rania from the Executive Lounge, asking me to come upstairs. When I asked why, she said there was “some business to settle” with me.

Some business to settle.

Nothing good has ever followed those words in a hotel. I was out the door before I’d properly hung up, running through the possibilities in the elevator. A problem with my bill? A complaint from the gym? Had the bellmen finally had enough of my handshakes? Had the British gentleman come back and demanded a recount? Was I about to be impeached?

The doors opened, and there they were: representatives from every department I had campaigned in, standing together like a welcoming committee. The front desk. The pool deck. The gym. Housekeeping. Somchai from the Thai restaurant. Chinedu and the bellmen. Rania and Priya out front. The votes had been counted.

They presented me with a cake proclaiming me the Best Guest, a fruit tray with little animals carved right out of the fruit, and an official plaque declaring me, once and for all, the “Best Guest Ever” at the JW Marriott Marquis Dubai. Then every single one of them stepped up and shook my hand. There were photos. There was applause. And there were fruit animals, which I felt terrible about eating, and ate anyway.

Priya leaned in as she handed me the plaque. “You are not up there anymore, Mr. Larry. You are at the top.”

Then they all looked at me, waiting. A winner gives a speech. And for the first time in my entire sales career, I had nothing prepared. All that workshopping, all those handshakes, and when the moment finally came, I stood there holding a plaque and a slice of cake with my mouth open. I managed to thank the voters of the Thai restaurant, the pool deck, the gym, the front desk, housekeeping, and, of course, the mighty bellmen’s bloc. It wasn’t Lincoln. But it came from the heart, and they clapped anyway, which tells you everything about the kind of people they were.

The only business left to settle was the margin of victory.

Landslide.

Looking back, that’s what made it special. A silly joke over breakfast turned into something the whole hotel played along with, and they seemed to enjoy the ridiculousness as much as I did. These were people from every corner of the world, Nigeria, Norway, Thailand, Poland, India, Romania, China, Jordan, all working under one roof in a city that’s a long way from home for most of them. They didn’t have to play along with a guy from Texas running an imaginary campaign. They chose to. They took a joke and made it a gift. When it was time to leave, I was genuinely sad to go. (They may also have been relieved the campaign was finally over.)

That plaque sits on my desk to this day. Every time I look at it, I think about those wonderful people in Dubai who took a guy fishing for a compliment and turned it into one of my favorite memories from all my travels.

So yes, they treat everybody that way. That’s exactly what makes them great.

But only one of us has the plaque.

P.S. When it opened, the JW Marriott Marquis Dubai was the tallest hotel in the world. Fitting, really. I’ve never been held in higher regard.

Note: The names of the hotel staff in this story have been intentionally changed.