I took a small break last week with my wife and went down to the Four Seasons in Scottsdale ( http://www.fourseasons.com/scottsdale and @fsscottsdale ) for some R&R.  We have been to the resort several times in the past and have always gone in celebration of either my Birthday or our Anniversary (which fall fairly close together).  

In this case my birthday is right around the corner and it happens to be a fairly big one, so we decided to go back because the resort is one of our favorite places.  In the past I have always let the hotel know if there was a special  occasion for them to take into account.  In most cases they will welcome us with a bottle of champagne or a nice desert, which is a very nice touch.  However, on this occasion it slipped my mind to remind them that we were coming for my Birthday.  Despite my omission, someone or some marketing system recognized our name and made it a priority to welcome us in grand style.  

This is a picture of the welcome gift that was waiting in our room for us:



And this was the card:



The Four Seasons went out of their way to make sure we had a wonderful start to our vacation and this little touch of thoughtfulness is now being spread both by me verbally to all my friends and by me socially to all readers of this blog and my Twitter followers.  Now that is effective local marketing.  

While Balihoo focuses on local marketing automation, it's always nice to see local affiliates going the extra mile with service to round out the efforts that can't be automated.