Building hospitality businesses in markets most people think are too small https://xitter.cf/t.co/bp4kynrykO
niche hospitality newsletter👉
Joined May 2009
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I found an A-class coworking space in the middle of the Austrian Alps 🇦🇹
And it's empty...
Staying here with my family for 4 days, enjoying hiking and nature. And trying to do some laptop work at the same time.
The concept is 30 glamping cabins, 20 spots for campervans, and a "clubhouse" in the middle with a café and an office area that can easily accommodate 60 people.
July is the high season in the Alps. The accommodation is relatively busy here (still far from full), but the office is completely empty. I met 4 people working here in 3 days.
The internet is perfect. They invested a lot into this space, and it's visible everywhere. I spotted some Vitra furniture. And yet, it's empty.
The initial idea was to build a perfect venue for company offsites, and it technically is.
But the location doesn't work - the nearest international airports are a 4-hour (Munich) and a 3-hour (Vienna) drive 🚗
It's in the National Park called Gesäuse, which is nice but not as popular as other places in Austria.
The business has been open for less than 2 years, and the owners are planning to sell. I think it could be a perfect longevity resort or similar concept.
If you know someone who might be interested in buying, I can share more details.
I'm visiting a boutique hotel in Barcelona with an incredible rooftop spa.
Dry and steam saunas, a hot tub, a cold plunge, and an epic view of Barcelona. All nested in a jungle oasis 🌿
It costs 39€ per hour (or 260€ if you want it private)
This type of longevity place will pop up in all Western cities in the next 2-3 years.
Very few will be profitable, imo...
Same as before with coworking spaces, cafés, or Pilates studios. When everyone wants to have one, nobody makes money.
I don't think SaaS is dead, but "audience building" is definitely overrated.
This launch post has 1.2M views, and the guy who posted it has 400k followers.
Marc built an alternative to Mailchimp/Beehiiv that costs 83% less. My X timeline is full of opinions about it.
And yet, in 5 days, Marc sold only 23 subscriptions at $19/month.
I vibe-coded beehiiv, and it's 83% cheaper.
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"Buy that hotel in the Mediterranean climate" buythathotel.com
once ASI is here and living somewhere because of "work" becomes pointless, people with money will just move to the nicest places on earth
Mediterranean climate, ocean, mountains, good food, beautiful isolated towns
places like this are going to become insanely valuable
probably worth buying real estate there now
My theory is that Airbnb increased its commission to 15.5% last year to give a cut to anyone who brings conversions.
The same way Booking and Expedia pay Google.
Airbnb will make deals with companies that have the most popular AI agents.
Direct bookings on vacation rental websites will grow, but they will still be a small % of total market volume.
Airbnb is dead. Well it’s not dead but it’s going to be dying soon.
The Bear case for Airbnb.
I’ve been bullish on Airbnb as a company for many years. But my outlook on the business changed this week.
Let me tell you why.
In 2012 I purchased my first Airbnb property. Over the years that one property has turned into a portfolio of high-end Airbnb’s that generates almost $1M a month in rental income.
Using ai agents for the first time this week has completely changed my outlook on the company.
Airbnb is facing an existential threat that most of the market is completely missing.
With Airbnb pushing its mandatory host-side commission to 15.5%, the middleman tax has never been higher.
Enter AI agents. (Hark, Dot, Muse, Grok Bot, etc)
Right now, booking a vacation rental requires navigating a siloed app and paying heavy platform tolls.
But your AI agent won't care about Airbnb's brand wall. When you know the property you want to book and you ask it “what’s the cheapest way to book the property” it will query property management system APIs directly, find the exact same home, and execute a direct booking that saves everyone 15%.
Airbnb's entire model relies on holding supply captive behind a closed interface.
When AI agents can autonomously search, verify reviews, negotiate terms, and book direct with property operators, that walled garden turns into a leaking pipe.
The middleman tax's days are numbered.
I’m predicting that Airbnb’s growth rate will slow down significantly in the next 24 to 36 months. And within 5 years they will be seeing negative growth.
The same can be said for most other online marketplaces that don’t have unique inventory that can only be booked directly on their platform and nowhere else.
Linear is holding its company offsite in Montreal 🇨🇦 this week and has taken over this incredible space.
It looks like a library or a palace, but it’s actually a coworking café called Crew.
Back in the 1920s, the space was the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Canada.
Who is going to buy this 30-room apartment hotel in Greece for €690k?
It's fully functional, in decent shape, and located only a 30-minute drive from Heraklion Airport in Crete. Marketing and automating operations - that's where I see the opportunity.
What I would do:
- There is no website, no concept, 38 followers on Instagram - fixing this is the easiest part
- Now, the majority of revenue is made during the summer (still with poor results) - this needs to be changed
- The main challenge is seasonality, and this is a problem for all Greek islands
- The airport has 10M passengers per year but the problem is that there are 14x more passengers in August than in February
- I would first fix the foundation: upgrade the room design, good photography, set up PMS software, dynamic pricing, and add more distribution channels like Expedia, Airbnb and Trip (now only on Booking)
- Completely automate the operations (no reception, online check-in, support AI agent) and outsource housekeeping+maintenance, so it can be later operated without you being there
- This would maximize the summer season, but we still have to figure out what to do with the remaining 9 months
- I would focus on people who, if they make an effort to come in the low season, will stay longer (2-6 weeks), and something around coliving and digital nomads would be the concept to bet on
- That would require some destination marketing (I would try to hire Goncalo Hall to help me with that) and a different pricing strategy
Game plan: with all these changes, properly executed, you can sell this property in 2-3 years for at least double the price.
The first *cool* capsule hotel I've seen in Europe. Cyberpunk and modern boutique hotel vibes combined 🟣
It's called Otherwander and is located in London.
The positioning is very smart: you can stay in a very cool capsule hotel in a trendy, expensive neighborhood (Soho), or, for that budget, you can book a room in some 6.4⭐ no-name hotel on the outskirts of London.
The night costs between 100 and 160 EUR, and there is, of course, some compromise you have to make - the bathrooms are shared.
I think many people would trade location for a shared bathroom if the concept is an upscale capsule hotel with a high level of quality/cleanliness. You can see it working in Japan (my fav concept is "9 hours").
Very refreshing to see something innovative in this budget segment in Europe!
Peter Fabor retweeted
I met a guy who makes €50,000 from a train restaurant in Poland 🇵🇱
Long-distance Polish trains have a restaurant car called WARS. Rankings often put it at the top of the world's train food services – unlike other companies that just warm food up, WARS cooks national Polish dishes like pierogi, schabowy kotlet, and pancakes fresh
I traveled on one of those trains last week and was amazed at how tasty the food is – I ordered two portions of pancakes in a row, and had to turn off my calorie counter 😅
I said to the guy at the bar that I really liked the food, we talked a bit, and he turned out to be the owner of that restaurant car
I was surprised to find out that WARS trains operate like Polish Żabka or 7/11 – it's a huge franchise network where business owners rent 1 or 2 wagons and operate them like their own business
The parent company still controls the menu and the look of the restaurant, but they get an owner attitude and A LOT of motivation to make money from the franchisees
This business is also quite profitable – in the summer season you can get up to €10,000 in profits after taxes from just 2 cars
In the X bubble, it's easy to forget how many ways there are to make money outside of tech, and stories like this keep my belief in capitalism and human creativity high!
One of the most exciting hospitality projects I've been following in the US was LOGE Camps
They raised about $38 million and very quickly grew to 17 locations. A few months ago, they went bankrupt.
I don't have any intel from the inside of the company, but it seems like a similar story to WeWork, Selina, or Sonder (and many stories are still in the making - e.g., Soho House).
Raising money from VCs, very good branding, innovative product, and terrible real estate deals because they want to grow fast.
Unit economics start eating you in a few years. Investors wanted to burn money to grow fast but now they don't want to give you more money because you are not profitable.
And if you are not profitable, you can't sustain operations without a money injection. So, unfortunately, there is only one outcome...
However, I absolutely love the LOGE concept! They took over distressed motels and inns in mountain locations and turned them into little hubs for active sport people. It was affordable and funky, very recognizable from other hotels in these areas.
Combining bunk beds with private rooms. Strong focus on groups. Some of the locations had a coworking space. In many ways, it was very similar to Selina's concept but for mountains.
They are slowly releasing some properties on the market: I found 2 on LoopNet. I hope someone will take over and develop it more.
A very interesting niche that, if properly executed, will work well in Europe too!
My colleague has his summer base in the middle of Pyrenees 🇪🇸
Came to visit him this week, working together.
Having a workspace with good internet in walking distance from world class hiking, mountain biking trails and epic Spanish/Catalan food is a dream setup.
Almost zero international tourists, seems like a hidden gem.
The main mountain town, Vielha, has incredible vibes, reminds me a lot Canmore in Canada. Haven’t seen anything similar in the Alps.
I’ve never paid €300 for a single laptop sticker
until today 😀
I'm selling ad space on my MacBook
→ 10 sticker spots on the lid
→ live auction
→ 14 days
except I don't own it yet, the auction buys it
→ your logo travels with me and gets seen both online and IRL
BrandMyMac.com
A fun little tool for hospitality geeks (I expect 2-3 likes here):
Book your stay at a hotel that is for sale 💰
We combined APIs of Booking and BuyThatHotel and the result is this fun tool where you book hotels that are for sale.
Planning to buy a hotel in Tuscany? Just ask Claude to use this tool and book you a road trip 🚗
About 30% of countryside hotels for sale mention that the property includes land and that it is possible to add cabins or glamping tents.
That's very vague... How many cabins can I add? What are the costs? How much money can I make? What is the ROI?
Once I get a similar "consulting" question more than 3x a month, I start thinking about building a tool. I want to help people, but I don't want to do consulting.
These tools usually won't answer all the questions or know all the edge cases, but they can help "give you an idea".
So we built a little calculator, using our spreadsheets, proprietary data, and know-how.
It's relatively simple and not perfectly accurate, but I can see which direction it can go (upload cadastral data, suggest the exact type of cabin based on your location / budget / preferences, and even generate a feasibility study you can submit to your municipality).
Do you want to organize an epic offsite like Jason, but your budget is way lower than $8,000 per person?
Here are some tips:
- Pick more affordable locations with v good global flight connections (Madrid, Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Vienna, Mexico City)
- Add locations of your colleagues to this tool and get the most optimal location (# of stopovers vs. price) finder.surfoffice.com
- Locations up to a 60-minute drive from the airport into the countryside are usually much better value for money
- Focus on low/shoulder season, and this might be very different for similar locations (e.g. August is not a high season in Madrid)
- Once you know the location and you are flexible with dates, pick the cheapest option with this tool dates.surfoffice.com
Twice a year we fly everyone in our company to a city so we can all hang out, share meals, and work/play together for a week. Given that we're fully remote, these IRL meetups are the only way we really get to see each other in person. They've become tradition, and they're among the most important things we do all year.
We've been doing these meetups for decades now, and people often wonder how much they cost and if they're worth it. They're expensive and they're worth it.
Here's the accounting comparing the last 9 meetups going back to 2022.
Got questions? Post 'em here!
Hytta is the ultimate tech-bro cabin:
♨️ Sauna
🧊 Cold plunge
🛰️ Starlink
🧑💻 Coworking setup
🌲 Middle of nowhere
I’ve followed the project since launch and finally met one of the founders in Prague last week.
It’s built for 3–4 people who want to disappear for a few days, lock in, and ship something.
Also works for remote-working friends who can never coordinate a “normal” vacation.
The cabin is near Zlín, Czech Republic, and the team wants to expand across the country 🇨🇿
We’ve seen a boom in digital detox cabins.
I think there’s an equally big opportunity for the opposite: cabins designed for productive workaholics 😀
A similar cabin I built 7 years ago but designed it for individuals (too small for small teams)
It has been 7 years since my coworking 👨💻 cabin was "launched".
In the first years, I used it quite often when traveling to Slovakia. But for the last 3 years, it has been rented long-term to a girl who uses it as her office and grows flowers in the surrounding garden.
This first cabin was a prototype, with plans to produce them in a factory as prefab structures. Then COVID hit, and this plan never materialized.
What now, in retrospect, I think it was for the better (plenty of strong business opportunities with these cabins, but manufacturing them isn’t one of them).
I'm still excited about the market and believe there is an opportunity for something like a "hospitality cabin" (designed for 2-7 night stays in nature, easy to build with a local general contractor, easy to maintain, high ROI).
Who is going to buy this 14-room historic hotel in Spain for €495k?
It's fully functional (9.1 ⭐ on Booking), in good shape, located in a small town in Andalucía, in the middle of the mountains. The owners are retiring.
What I would do:
- the property in neoclassical style is very unique, and you can hype it just with much better photography and storytelling
- The Instagram account has 9 followers, which tells you everything about the opportunity
- 14 rooms is a decent size to host team offsites and groups - the property has a very nice meeting room and ideal facilities for that
- I would try to build the whole experience around onsite spaces that already exist: private wine cellar, signature arched gallery, inner courtyard, lounge with fireplace, epic views
- Running an onsite restaurant with such a small number of rooms is just pain - better to promote local restaurants in the town
This property doesn't make sense as an investment to be a regular hotel dependent on Booking. But if you can pull a unique concept I described above, the ROI can be insane.
Le Corbusier’s cabin in the French Riviera was sketched in 45 minutes on a table at a restaurant.
A year later, it was built almost exactly as drawn.
Just 3.66m x 3.66m: a bed, table, storage, washbasin, toilet, and two small windows opening toward the sea.
A place to sleep, read, draw, swim, and be close to nature.
