What Luxury Hospitality Can Learn From These First-Time Hoteliers
Skift Take
On Experience
Colin Nagy is a marketing strategist and writes on customer-centric experiences and innovation across the luxury sector, hotels, aviation, and beyond. You can read all of his writing here.Some of the most compelling hotels in the world are currently run by people who are beginners in hospitality. These rookie hoteliers harness a combination of naivete, the cross-pollination of thinking from outside the industry, as well as dashes of verve and sensibility.
When done well, the result can add up to a destination that matches what luxury travelers — or any type of traveler — claim to want right now. These are the kinds of properties that don’t feel like they were grown in a lab, where you can predict every utterance from the staff. Rather these hospitality projects reflect the beginner’s mind, drawing on instinct and taste to create a singular vision that often delights in contradiction.
An example of this is Kevin Wendle, owner and CEO of Hotel Esencia, a cult property in Mexico. The hotel sits at the midpoint between Tulum and Playa del Carmen and, according to the site, was originally “built as the private hideaway home of an Italian duchess.”
Wendle’s background is far from the traditional routes of those getting into hospitality: He worked in the tech sector for several years and operated in several roles including television producer, network boss, and founder of CNET, the digital media site. In conversation it was easy to notice that he thinks in narratives, knows how to package a story, and also has the audacity of an entrepreneur — characteristics you don’t always see in a hotelier.
Wendle's Weltanschauung is
