S1E5 - Make Travel More Meaningful with Rami Zeidan

Foreign. Guest is Rami Zaydan, the CEO and founder of Lifehouse Hotels, the first Silicon Valley backed hotel group launched in 2018. I recently met Rami at the opening of Lifehouse Nantucket, where I learned about his life, his work and his philosophies. On the surface, Rami's resume shares one side of his story. An entrepreneurial journey marked by benchmarks of ambition, innovation and accelerated success. But Rami's story is unique and distinct in innumerable ways. Born in Minnesota to Muslim Lebanese immigrants, Rami's exposure to travel began on a homecoming trip back to Lebanon. Going home helped him connect to his roots, learn more about his parents and their unique history. Rami opens up about his hardships, events that resulted in losing his mother and his brother in an accident. Despite a cataclysmic loss, Rami maintains an optimistic outlook in life and demonstrates grit and grace. His story shows the strength of human resilience. Today, Rami shares his journey into travel, mindfulness, and the events and ideas that led him to create Lifehouse Hotels. Here's Rami on the line. So, Rami, thank you so much for joining me today here on the Art of Travel podcast. How are you doing today?

It's a pleasure. I'm wonderful. Happy to be here. Great.

So before we dive into talking about Lifehouse, let's take a few steps back. Where are you from?

So I grew up in a town in Minnesota called Eden Prairie, which is just a lovely town outside the beautiful city of Minneapolis. And it's freezing cold. And I loved growing up there to a degree. But after kind of exploring the world, I do not aspire to go back.

Tell me a little bit about your upbringing.

How deep do you want to go?

Let's get deep. Okay.

I was born in 1987 to two Lebanese immigrants. Both my mother and my father were born and raised in Lebanon. And actually my first language was Arabic. And Minneapolis, or Eden Prairie specifically, was a pretty homogenously Scandinavian. I derived place predominantly. My family emigrated from Lebanon, not with friends. And so we kind of kept to ourselves in many respects early on. And life was good. I mean, we were like a close knit family. And I was pretty, you know, I had great parents and in 1993 we were in a car accident. My family was hit by a drunk driver and my mother passed away. I was 6 at the time. And my dad's not a strong communicator. So it's kind of that part of your upbringing. I think in Ericksonian psychology, it's like the competence part of your development stage. And it's where you start to develop kind of a sense of self worth. And without my mother's nurturing, I started to really diverge from my heritage and really just wanted to fit in into this community that was very different than mine. And that was a struggle for me. And it was also a struggle to grieve. As a six year I found certain outlets in finding my way through life through soccer and then kind of focused my energies in ways to get out of Minnesota and get out into a more kind of place where I felt I fit in more and I'm happy to dive in more there.

So when and where did you feel that tension that you felt like you didn't belong after it seems that you tried to spend your childhood assimilating into the culture?

I was actually quite welcomed by most people. I don't want to say anything that I experienced necessarily outwardly hardships in any material way, especially in the context of what's happening in the world. But it's an internal struggle. I was six and a mother is good for nurturing and helping you say don't worry what people say and be proud of who you are. And I didn't have that. And so I just wanted to be somebody else. And so that allowed me to really focus introspectively and figure out, okay, like how are people perceiving difference? What I got to understand is we're so, as a, as a human species like so willing to connect with similarities. And you hear it even in modern culture of like, like minded people and all this stuff and it's like, it's really hard I think to gravitate towards difference. And you kind of see difference, particularly in homogenous communities I think less human and less, less equal. And that's how I felt. And I don't necessarily think that that was well, well justified, but it made me really kind of study it.

Yeah, and that's really interesting too because of course given the context that you're also Arabic and Lebanese, was that a source of.

Yeah, so my actual, my parents were not strictly practicing but from a Muslim origin. After 911 it was particularly poorly received place to be. But interesting is my brother's name was Mohammed, it's a clearly Muslim name. And like we didn't practice and we in many respects rejected the culture entirely. And my father was, doesn't outwardly practice at all. But he couldn't really hide his heritage because it's his name I have to say. Like he was so well integrated into, you know, homogenous communities. And so I actually think it was more of an internal struggle than necessarily an outwardly one.

And so you mentioned that at some point you had a desire to live somewhere with a bit more of differences of culture. When did you start having that desire and where did you go?

Yeah, so it actually. When I was five, my family went to Lebanon, I think maybe for the second time, but the first time I was too young to really know. And we went and everyone speaks Arabic, all the kids are playing. And it was like, me, I was the outsider. And it was like, interesting to be a minority in a place where I think the unique thing about it was like, I was a minority wherever I went is fundamentally what I saw. But at the same time I could at least say my name, Rami, and feel like I belonged for a bit. And then, yeah, look, I didn't really get out of Minnesota much growing up except for soccer. It was like, not until my soccer recruiting trip at Johns Hopkins where I was like, wow, this is a very diverse school there. And I didn't feel at all like a minority. And then I went off to college and my friends back home from Minnesota would like call me and they're like, hey, I'm doing a report on minorities in.

You became tokenized.

Yeah. And I was like, oh, but I don't really feel. I don't really feel like a minority out here. So anyway, what's unique about it is it doesn't actually require international travel. And if you look at like the data, you know, a majority of population growth in the inner cities has been through minority. And I think that you can really get that exposure without having to go too far.

What was your first formative travel experience?

I think it was that trip to Lebanon. It was in the middle of a war. And, you know, my parents used to tell me, like, oh, the bombs were thunder. And you know, we went out to dinner one night and came back and like two doors down there was like a blown up house. And it was kind of normalized. Candidly, what was interesting to me was it was such a nice experience to. Nobody got my name right growing up. It was just like, nice to have, you know, Rami be a common name. The Zadan family name is big over there. My dad had like 12 brothers and sisters, so like, we were like Johnsons over there. Kind of just felt like not nice to belong. I think that was probably the most relevant childhood travel experience that was formative.

I guess this question isn't relevant because it kind of repeats what you just said. But what was your takeaway from going back to Lebanon?

Pre Covid, I used to go once a year. I did disconnect from my heritage, like after my mom died, and just try to reject it, frankly. I kind of thought, okay, I'm gonna go, you know, have a successful career, and that will kind of bring me, you know, salvation. And then my brother used to give me a hard time about it. And he was very well connected with, you know, our family and was constantly learning and actually brought his fiance to Lebanon, who's like a blonde hair, blue eye woman, so lovely. And so after he passed away, I started going back once a year and to try to kind of reconnect. And my dad doesn't even go back. And so going back has been a really nice experience to try to understand really the workings and motives of how culture is over there. Because I developed my own judgments. You know, I didn't like Lebanese culture myself. And it's, you know, I saw myself making wild judgments as well. And my family's actually quite progressive. So I think there's so many things that I think I learned every time I go. It was really kind of more micro. And I tried to really understand and get closer to my dad by understanding how he grew up and how he doesn't like to go back to Lebanon at all. He doesn't come back with me. So it was just an interesting kind of intentional discovery to understand my parents a little bit better.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a homecoming every time you go and you get like a much richer narrative or I guess you get the depth of what maybe your parents aren't able to communicate about where they come from and everything.

My father's a really poor communicator in any language. I don't psychologically know why. He's the kindest, sweetest person and obviously the most important person in my life. But I learned so much about his upbringing and his. Who he is today by kind of getting to know his culture.

Yeah, that's really beautiful.

Yeah.

And do you get to learn about it through visiting your family there? And.

Yeah, he doesn't. Look. He had a traumatic childhood. He grew up in a war zone, and he saw his brother get shot in the head right in front of his face, and his hair turned white and he had ptsd. And I think I didn't hear those things from him. I hear them from his brothers. And it's. I was kind of an idiot child dealing with my own emotional adolescent drama and self created. It really gave me a greater appreciation for what he's come from. And it made me so grateful for the risks he took to, like, make sure that my life could be so wonderful and the fact that he persevered despite me being such a wreck as a teenager. I feel like I owe a lot to him and it's given me a lot of gratitude, I think.

Yeah. Well, I think if there's one thing he's definitely instilled in you, it's sort of this post traumatic growth slash survivalist instinct that you persevere. And I think even above and beyond what a normal person could achieve. Because, I mean, your story is really remarkable in the sense of, like, what you've accomplished in such a short amount of time.

Yeah. And I think, like, he's not necessarily unique. So many people around the world are struggling with much greater problems than I certainly have had. And he kind of opens your eyes to the idea that, like, things are not so bad and we should be really effing grateful. He's like my rock of positivity, no matter what happens. I mean, he lost his wife in a drunk driving accident. He lost his son in an unfortunate accident, and his brother and like all this stuff, and he's like Mr. Positive. So it really inspires me. For sure.

That only goes to show how humans can endure so much.

Right, Totally. Yeah. And, you know, and of course there's baggage that comes along with certain things, but no, it's been a really wonderful evolution.

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Of course. Yeah.

So I actually wanted to talk to you about spirituality because I know that when we spoke in Nantucket, you had presented a really strong sense of self exploration. And I'm so curious, what role does self exploration play in your day to day life and your day to day philosophies in working and developing a brand?

Yeah. So I know this is supposed to be about hospitality and travel. I think that's just like a vessel for a much deeper mission. And so I was fundamentally lost. And I think, you know, everyone is going through a journey of some sort to find a greater clarity. I was actually introduced to meditation in 2014 through this motherly figure that I had previously mentioned in Nantucket. And I was on the way to a meditation retreat, Transcendental meditation. I was on the phone with my brother. We got cut off because I was on a train and I texted him, hey, on the way to this retreat, I'm gonna turn my phone off for the weekend. I'll text you back later this weekend or Sunday or something. And he goes, okay. And he ended up getting on a bicycle and getting hit by a motorcyclist like, 10 minutes later and died. And I had my phone off. I found out that news at a meditation retreat, which is, like, a really beautiful place to hear sad news. It was painful. My brother was my best friend, and I didn't really have too many good friends. I was quite transient in my life. I'd make a friend, and then I'd jump onto the next thing and lose touch. I was working in the luxury hotel space at the time, and I just remember, like, thinking, if somebody had given me and I didn't grow up in wealth, if somebody had given me, like, a billion dollars overnight, my mood wouldn't have even changed, let alone, like, improved spiritually. I knew, like, I needed to do something more meaningful with my life than just chase a career or run away from important things. Family, heritage, et cetera. And so I started to dig and try to understand, like, what's causing me pain and where are there voids in my life that are related to my shortcomings. And a lot of it is internal. Travel has been a helpful tool to help me discover some of those things. But, you know, sitting on the couch, on the cushion and meditating also helps. But I don't necessarily think that. I really don't believe in travel, of wanderlust, if you will. And so I think, like, intentional travel for the sake of discovery is a really powerful thing. And so I've explored with my spirituality to find a greater purpose. And I think, fundamentally, what I've discovered, these material endeavors were not going to materialize into some meaningful life for me. I had to look a little bit deeper introspectively at first. I tried everything and I tried. I mean, I studied, I guess, you know, from Buddhism to Kabbalah. And I think I've learned a lot to psychology and, you know, certain other medicinal practices. And I think that they've all been helpful in creating a new perspective. But fundamentally, I think at the end of the day, we're a node in a network, and what we do matters. And so the mission and how that's kind of translated to the mission. What I'm trying to do today is manifest positive change for the long term and for the universe.

So I actually wanted to take a few steps back and sort of go through the evolution of your considerably short career trajectory. You worked at tpg, Deutsche Bank, Starwood, and then you became a director at Seidel Group after working in finance and real estate. What compelled you to work in the hospitality space?

I didn't know what I wanted to do out of college. And growing up, I was like a creative. I don't know, you can attribute that to being a Pisces or whatever, such a Pisces trait. You know, I was creative, I was emotional and I was erratic, and I was a damn good soccer player. But I knew that my path out of Minnesota was not through soccer. I did actually get accepted into Johns Hopkins through soccer, not because of my grades. I got injured my first year and basically sent home for a medical leave of absence for a year and had a really productive year off and came back and started as a doctor or pursuing a path of being a chemical and biomolecular engineer, and then quickly saw that I'm not cut out for chemistry in the Johns Hopkins way and pivoted. And then from doing chemical engineering to economics, economics is far easier than chemical engineering. So I crushed those classes. And you build a certain confidence when you're doing well. And so I kind of fed off that. And then I transferred to the London School of Economics for my senior year. And candidly, I was looking for a job that was intuitively interesting and was going to pay me well, because.

It'S not very Pisces.

No. But I was still on my mission to be financially independent from. From my Minnesotan background. And so I got a great job. And I wish I could say that, you know, it was creative and I learned how to build hotels, but it was, it was not that. We were buying distressed real estate in the last recession and we were building like Excel financial models and working like, till 4 in the morning. And I got really, really good at Excel, and like, if you're a creative person, no matter what you do, to find creative ways for solving problems. And fundamentally, that's how that excites me.

It's design thinking.

Yeah, I think design thinking can apply to a lot more things than just product, for sure. And long story short, it was exciting, frankly, it was interesting. And I think the finance industry gets a bad rap for not being, quote, unquote, creative. But I think there's a ton of creative people in that industry. Of course, there's a lot of ego and materialism and superficiality, but I thrive and I got really good at Excel. We also financed the Nomad Hotel, the construction of that. And so I got to see that there was an avenue to kind of make a living and pursue something creatively interesting, which is hotels, which is a super complex business with branding, design, real estate, all this stuff. And so then I went from Deutsche bank to Starwood Capital and then spent the latter half of my time there working on brand and asset management and helping build the One Hotels brand in a junior role and got to learn through osmosis. And I think like one of the best things in my career has been I take a job, learn as much as I can, and jump when the learning starts to plateau. Employers don't love it, but it's good for me. And then as I mentioned, I was starting to lose interest in that and I saw there were so many problems. So going from the finance side to the hotel operations side, there I saw that my Excel skills could automate away people's jobs. It was like mind boggling how behind the times hotel operations were. And then my brother at the time was working in med school, he was on his way to be a doctor. And I saw like in medicine, their spreadsheets are like chaos. So I don't necessarily think it's specific to hotels. I think there's probably a lot of industries that suck at Excel, but it's a great tool to use to solve problems faster. So that's when I kind of got the light bulb that this could be done better. And then I was creative, so I was like, for sure I can build a better brand. And I was also like, in my own ego about building cool hotels to be the next Andre Belage. And when my brother passed, I was like, wow, that's really not interesting for me. And so that's when I kind of got excited about what Seidel was doing with the Freehand brand. At the time, they had just launched it in Miami. And I really learned a lot there about how to tell stories through real estate. And it's a complex ecosystem. You can't just build a great hotel brand or design a great hotel and be successful. I learned how to kind of marry a lot of these things. And at Seidel, we were really good at trying to tell those stories initially and not so good at some other things and gave me more ammunition to like, wow, I could go do something really interesting and make some, some impact. And so then I was like, okay, I gotta get out of there. I wanna start my own company, but I need some savings to be an entrepreneur. So I went and took a job at tpg, got my bonus and quit with some savings in my bank account.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

Tell me a little bit about how you came up with the Lifehouse concept.

Sure. So truthfully, the mission started with affordable, accessible travel. So I actually initially started with a concept Called Share House. It was going to be a new take on hostels and we were going to use software not just to automate components of the back office operation, but to match people into guest rooms to build trust in that ecosystem. I'm still passionate about solving a problem in a more affordable segment. That's a really challenging problem, I think, to solve. And in doing that I saw this, a similar business problem existed in the three star to four star space. It's really fragmented in the independent hotel space. So I kind of applied a similar mindset to that space and it just caters to a different demographic that actually more resonates with me than otherwise. And the concept really behind Lifehouse was it's not how do we make boutique hotels more affordable and tech forward, which the press likes to talk about. It's a vessel for delivering access to meaningful experiences and making those experiences, this social good of travel and exposure to the unknown, more accessible. And more accessible doesn't mean necessarily more affordable. It also means it's a lot easier to do something outside your comfort zone if it's in a nice, beautiful hotel. So making interesting experiences and challenging experience easier to digest.

So design plays an important role in the Lifehouse brand. And one feature you often mention is your in house creative team. Why is this an important feature to have in the company?

You've seen a lot of great independent brands or hotels come to fruition, whether that's through Ian Schrager or Andre Belage or the Ace Hotels or what have you. Fundamentally, what we believe is telling authentic, locally rooted stories. Those stories don't start from someone like Andre Balaj or myself, for example. Those stories start locally, whether it's the neighborhood or the local culture, what have you. And in order to tell those stories, you need a creative team to get in the market, study things and then take that study and manifest it into a real life story. And that creative process does scale. But if you. I think traditionally, and this is why I talk about the complex hotel ecosystem, is most hotel brands are owned by real estate private equity firms. And what that effectively prohibits is the ability to have in house creative or invest in in house creative that can scale as the brand grows. And so what ends up happening is you hire a third party branding agency or design agency or designer, you build something beautiful and then you try to replicate it. And as soon as you do that, you lose the authenticity. And so for us, in order to tell real life, authentic stories wherever we go, we have to do the same process everywhere. We're not cookie cutter and we don't aspire to be. And the beautiful thing about being venture backed is we have the resources to invest in building that team.

And what role does community play in building your brand?

I think community is a word that has been over used and abused tremendously in the hotel space as of late. Really, what we're trying to do is help bring meaning to people's lives. So much of that meaning is derived from an experience where they do something that steps into a place of discomfort. And meeting new people is a great way to do that. And I don't mean that in some cliche way. And so what we've tried to do is kind of cultivate a community or an ethos that's predicated on people meeting other people. That doesn't mean a communal table in your lobby. It doesn't mean a hipster coffee shop in your lobby. It takes more than that. It takes an investment in a strategy and a responsiveness to the culture. Fundamentally, people are looking for interesting things to do and something unique and authentic. And that energy feeds similar energy and desire to be exposed to that. All those things kind of work together to deliver community. It's not.

Yeah. So I'm so curious about how you design the hotel to sort of allow this experience where people are going outside of their comfort zone and meeting other guests. How do you create that sort of atmosphere where people feel comfortable enough to. To say hello to each other?

I have to say that it's not a super prescriptive formula not to get too spiritual here, but I think, you know, I think everything boils down to intention and attention. Our mission serves our intention in all the work we do. So, for example, our design team is thinking about seating arrangements as not just how do they look aesthetically, but. But is there a guest experience where there's an opportunity for eye contact? We do a lot of seating arrangements where they're not usually meant for an individual group, they're meant for multiple groups.

Yeah. Like converging groups.

Yeah, exactly. And so there's an organic way to have that eye contact or maybe even sit on the same cushion as someone else that's a couple feet away from you. You start to feel.

Which might not be Covid friendly at this time.

Yeah. Six feet away from you. Those little touch points help you feel safe. And as soon as you feel safe and comfortable, it's kind of like in the Matrix. Did you ever see that movie? So there's a scene in the Matrix where they see deja vu, which is like a glitch. It's kind of like that in real life, if you see an inauthentic component of a design, which often happens when you outsource design or outsource branding. It's like if your social media has a different voice than your property, or if the uniforms are wrong or the lighting's wrong or the mood's wrong. It's like those things have people's guards up. And fundamentally, that means they're living more from their limbic system and they're less oriented around, how do I feel so safe to say hi to a stranger that I can deal with the potential of rejection? And so you were really at the core of it, trying to cultivate an energy where people are thinking, I feel safe to take a certain risk. And, you know, sometimes it works really well.

Yeah, I mean, I can attest to that. It definitely resonates in your properties. So since you brought up inauthenticity, what do you define as an authentic experience?

I really like this question, because authentic also gets thrown around a lot, and local gets thrown around a lot. Authentic doesn't mean traditional. The definition of authentic means of an undisputed origin. And that origin doesn't necessarily need to be history. The way we think about it is less about designing and paying homage to history. It's more we study the constraints, which are the facts of the history, the architecture, the local culture, the environment. And then we say, okay, here's the landscape of things that exist. And if we were to create a character that would be able to manifest a true story that takes all of these things into consideration and pays homage to the things that are important, but also brings to life a new energy that can stay with this neighborhood indefinitely. That's kind of how we think about it. And so we design a concept with a protagonist. It's really like method acting. And we try to, like, really understand who the protagonist is and make design decisions from their perspective. And that, to me, is of a true origin, and the origin is that protagonist.

I think one thing that's also really interesting about Lifehouse are your locations. How do you pick out a location for a new property?

Also, I'm not gonna give you a sexy answer. It's a combination of things. Because it is a complex ecosystem. We specialize in historic buildings. That's not to say we won't do other buildings, but that's our bread and butter. And so you basically have to find a historic building that has a story to tell that's not being told. That is, it needs an upgrade, and you need to find an owner who's either willing to sell that property or spend money to renovate it. And that's a challenge to find all those things. And then if he's ready to sell it, you need to find someone to buy it. And so it's complex. And to pitch people on buying hotels and building a brand that's relatively new is not an easy thing. And I feel so blessed to have had the business side of the hotel business as part of my career, because I understand how those people think and can create solutions to help them get comfortable with making those investments. And it's not as easy as just focusing on the consumer in our business. And we're really excited about solving that challenge, too.

So lifehouse has an extremely ambitious launch strategy. How do you scale without oversaturating or diluting brand equity?

I think it goes back to your question earlier about creative team. We've built a system and an ethos internally that allows us to go to every hotel with largely a blank slate. We always say, hey, to streamline certain things, can we fix the headboard or can we fix certain elements? And every time we get to a new hotel, we end up changing everything fundamentally. Scalability is related to can you do things fast and at a lower cost? And we've built infrastructure. We've made relationships with manufacturers for custom furniture and vintage furniture. We're building a vintage furniture warehouse so we can do things at scale without diluting the spirit of what we're doing. And so being venture backed doesn't mean we're investing all into technology. It's. We're investing. Investing a lot into building infrastructure that can really solve a lot of these problems and maintain the authenticity and still reduce the cost structure.

I read somewhere that you were supposed to open 20 properties this year, which is very ambitious. And of course, that would have taken a toll to some degree for your design team. How could you ensure against burnout?

There's three components to this question, obviously, Covid, because it's allowed us to slow down. And it's a really good point. And that's where the venture capital comes in. Venture capital invests in things that work and. Or things that they believe in. And so we're not constrained by our creative team. And what's actually been so fascinating is to see how our design team, they have the best jobs they've ever had in their career, despite working really crazy hours because they're doing the research and basically they're not reporting to a client. They really resonate with the brand, and it's them creating these really special hotels that they would want to stay at and they just love it. And so we don't have a problem hiring creative talent. And what we've been working on in Covid has been how do we get a new designer in and thinking like us in the shortest amount of time possible. And that's what we've been kind of building on. How do we train them to think the way we think in a shorter timeframe? And I think we're in a good place there.

Oh, that's great. So I guess you've covered this a little bit, but obviously the pandemic has affected the entire hotel industry. In what way has the pandemic really shifted your strategy?

Obviously the hotel industry has been impacted pretty significantly. I will say that we've been very blessed to have raised capital just before COVID and fundamentally why Covid is such a challenge for most hotel companies is they have a big hotel portfolio, they're heavily reliant on the revenue they get from those hotels. And those hotels have all closed, so all their revenue has gone away. For us, we didn't have that many hotels open and so we weren't that reliant on our in place revenues. And so we thought actually we were going to spend a lot more money this year, maybe twice as much money as we're actually going to spend. And so we've extended our company's financial Runway and used the time to build the infrastructure of how do we bring people on and help and have them think and work like us in the shortest amount of time and work on our internal culture because that bleeds through to the properties. Because you're right, if Covid didn't happen we'd be scrambling. I wouldn't have been able to meet you in Nantucket because I've been doing 10 other things. And so yeah, I think we've been really blessed to be in a position where we're well capitalized. And I have to say like venture capital has like really high expectations on growth. And I don't want to say like now I have an excuse to like slow things down, but the situation is.

I mean just based on the global environment, everything must slow down.

Yeah, we're a unique venture backed company. A technology company can scale rapidly out of the gates. It takes time for us to launch a brand and build awareness for it and it's slower than a traditional tech company. And so we had tech company pressures irrationally on us. Obviously, sad to say we're thriving because of it, but it's been a good experience for us.

Yeah. And. And that is actually really interesting to hear just because I've interviewed Brian and everyone just has different types of challenges presented to them at this time. And what were the challenges of launching a hotel during the pandemic?

Again, we were really lucky because Nantucket as a market is thriving. The challenges were I couldn't go visit the hotel leading up to it. And by me, I mean me or my team convincing people to travel and brand partnerships and those types of things were a little bit more challenging than normal. But at the same time, there was such a dearth of competition. So we benefited from being one of the few new things opening. And so opening a small hotel in Nantucket, in Covid, and not having to worry about 20 other properties open, was get out pretty straightforward. And we were really, really lucky.

That's great.

Yeah, I'm.

No, it's wonderful. It's actually. It's great to hear that someone can at least have a positive experience through this time, just because what the pandemic has done has completely turned the travel industry upside down.

Yeah. And don't get me wrong, I mean, you know, a bunch of our hotels are closed because of COVID Miami entirely is closed and growth has has stagnated. Obviously, I think challenging circumstances catalyze change and innovation, so I'm hopeful for that.

So I wanted to get your thoughts on a few things. How would you like to transform the travel industry?

I don't necessarily. My goals aren't how to transform the travel industry as much as the more deeper mission I communicated earlier. I do think that travel fundamentally is a vessel to catalyze really meaningful experiences. And so I do think that there's a way to make all travel a little more meaningful and a little more accessible and therefore more frequent. I think travel is a social good, not an escape. And so what was the Anthony Bourdain quote that I like? It's like, it's not a reward for work, it's an education for life. And so people have evolved and want to be educated and want real substance. Fundamentally, I think historically at least, it was vacation or work. It was very functional. And I do think that our goal is to make it a social good more than an escape or just a leisure activity.

Yeah, much more intentional activity.

Yeah.

And what projects do you have in the pipeline?

We have a lot going on. I want to be careful about saying too much, but we have a project in Bali that I'm really excited about. We have a project, a couple projects in Mexico. We have Denver opened next in October. We have a couple new ones in Miami that are opening a project in Kansas, Boston and a few more in New England. And then we have Chattanooga, which is this amazing hotel historic train station that'll be converted and has a ton of public space. And so, yeah, I think there's definitely a lot on our plate at the moment. And I know those locations sound erratic, but they're all connected in the same kind of ethos.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today, and I'm so happy to have you on the podcast.

Thanks so much.

Thank you guys so much for tuning into this episode. To find Romney's work, visit lifehousehotels.com or find LifeHouse on Instagram @LifeHouseHotels. The Art of Travel is created and hosted by Olivia Lopez, produced by Jason Stewart with music composed by Slow Shiver. We'll see you then.