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A guest who does nothing other than check in, sleep atop Eaton’s organic mattresses, and check out will still have a sense of the hotel’s mission, Lo said. “We plan to have new ideas in the minibar-an activist toolkit, for example, that includes sheets with information to help you call your congresspeople. And if we’d been open during this year’s Women’s March, I could have seen us putting poster boards and markers in the rooms!”

Political statements such as these will be tailored to each property. In Hong Kong, for instance, Lo said she’d like to replace Bibles in the nightstand drawers with copies of the United Nations Declaration for Human Rights.

The goal isn't to bring together left and right

Eaton Workshop isn’t for everyone. “Self-selection is definitely one of our strategies,” she said. “We wanted to emphasize that it’s a place for people who are thinking outside the box and want to effect a change in the world.”

Though she speaks of fostering diversity and inclusion, Lo also said that “the goal isn’t to bring together left and right.” Instead, she wants to create “a diversity of fields and backgrounds as well as gender and ethnicity,” representing the antithesis of the Trump hotel just a few blocks away.

This is partisan politics playing out on the city’s hotel scene; whether that will hurt or help Lo’s bottom line remains to be seen. But if the Trump Hotel is any indication, Lo may be poised for big success. The Washington Post reported that the president’s hotel brought in $1.97 million in profits during the first four months of the year, despite business projections that had forecast a loss of $2.1 million.