Guests told their kinkily inclined friends back home; word of mouth was the best advertising. The Resort had a website and an 800 number. Discrete ads were placed on sexually themed websites and especially on soft BDSM sites. There were enough new guests each year to replace those who came once or twice and never returned, but the market appeared to have reached a limit. The Resort was now eight years old, and it had not grown beyond what had been achieved in the first three years of operation.
The Resort occupied an entire island in the South Pacific, and there was plenty of room to expand–to build more hotels and to build the facilities that would entertain the new guests who would stay in those hotels. But how to attract those new guests?
Management was well aware that there is a wide range of tastes and offerings in sexual entertainment. Some customers want the risque or the tastefully erotic, some want soft porn, some want hard core. Those who want tasteful are often offended by hard core; those who want hard core are quickly bored by the merely risque or erotic. If The Resort moved toward the hard core end of the continuum to attract an additional set of guests, it would have to move carefully to avoid driving off too many of the guests it already had.
Maybe the long-run solution would be to create two or more separate sections on The Resort, with different levels of kink. But that would be a huge investment; it could not be done all at once. The lottery was a smaller step, designed to attract a kinkier set of guests without seriously disturbing the guests were who weren’t interested. It wouldn’t solve the market problem all by itself, but it was a start.
* * *
The Resort added two sentences to its website: “Starting June 1, a very small number of guests will be randomly selected for a more intense experience. If you want a chance to participate in this experience, please check the box labeled ‘Lottery’ on your reservation form.” And on the reservation form, a box was added with the legend: “Lottery. Check here to be entered in the Lottery for a more intense experience.”
No details were provided. Staff were instructed to be vague in answering questions. To say things like: “Lottery winners get to carry The Resort’s themes further than most guests. Winning will likely push your limits. Just enter in the spirit of adventure. If you knew all about it before you even entered the lottery, it wouldn’t be so much of an adventure.” If (and only if) a potential guest said or implied that she would not come to The Resort at all unless she got straight answers, staff was to refer her to a senior official for an explanation of what would actually happen. Rank and file staff didn’t know themselves.
Once the lottery was up and running, guests would see for themselves what lottery winners did and had done to them. Descriptions would spread by word of mouth; many guests would know before they ever made a reservation. Of course that was the point: the only way the lottery could attract new business was for potential guests to hear about it in advance and come to The Resort because of what they had heard. But management guessed that a sense of mystery would help with the initial marketing.
There were about 2500 guests on the island at the end of May, more than half of them female. More than 300 had checked the box. Management divided them into groups of 20. The first group of 20 found notes on their pillows late on the evening of May 31: “You have been selected to participate in the June 1 Intensity Lottery. Report to the Tahiti Room on the basement level of the Hotel Polynesia at 8:30 tomorrow morning. You need not be bound, but do wear your collar. And come alone. Your partner should wait in your room for a phone call.”
The Tahiti Room turned out to be a large meeting room. There were a few such rooms for the occasional small conferences that (perhaps remarkably) chose The Resort as a place to meet.
Nineteen nervous young women arrived right around the 8:30 start time. One had apparently backed out, and a fair number of the others were no longer sure they really wanted to be here. Two had their wrists bound behind their back, an early morning gift from their partners. Four female tour guides and four male escorts awaited the arrivals.
Tonya, a tour guide who appeared to be in charge of the proceedings, told the women to line up in a single row facing a table. No one offered any further explanation. One of the 19 women spoke only French, so an interpreter was quickly provided. The Resort had fluent interpreters for any major world language and a fair number of minor ones. Most affluent Europeans spoke English; the most frequent need was for Chinese and Japanese. The interpreters were a help in all sorts of situations. But The Resort’s core experience of being bound and scantily dressed did not much depend on language.
The male escorts now freed the two women whose arms were bound behind them. Then they worked their way down the row, binding each woman’s arms in front of her. They tightly wrapped both arms together from the wrists to the elbows. The soft rope didn’t chafe, but the position was surprisingly stressed and quickly became uncomfortable.
The women could grasp lightly with their fingers, they could move their arms up and down from the elbows, or up and down and a little bit left and right from the shoulders. When all 19 were bound, the four escorts bound the four tour guides the same way. No words had yet been spoken beyond the instruction to form a single line.
Twenty wooden discs sat along the front edge of the table. The visible top side of each disc was blank. Tonya instructed each woman to step forward and pick up a disc. Balls in a bowl might have been more conventional, but tied as they were, few of the women could have reached into a bowl. When the women returned to their places, they were instructed to bring their disc up to eye level, turn it over, and silently read the number on the back.
Then Tonya drew a disc from a similar set of twenty at the back edge of the table. She called out “17. Will number 17 please step forward.” She did this three more times, calling for number 9, number 20, and number 5. Four women stepped forward, and Tonya checked their discs to make sure she had the right four people. Some of the others breathed an audible sigh of relief before realizing that they weren’t yet sure that they were off the hook for the day.
In fact they were off the hook, but they were not dismissed. They were retained for the rest of the morning’s events, and for the explanations that would eventually be offered. They would undoubtedly spread tales of what had happened that morning, and of what would be happening to the four winners. Without being asked, they would spend much of the day advertising the lottery and the big lottery events that were designed for spectators.
Number 17 was Amy from San Francisco, a statuesque blond with large breasts that strained her sarong. She was an attorney, and although she didn’t say so, a rather high powered attorney. She loved to surrender that power in the bedroom, and she was looking forward to a week of being bound and helpless. The lottery sounded like a potential bonus.