In this email you’ll discover:
Hospitality & tourism = immersive wellness
Great hoteliers are “professional friends”
Jenna is creating a special place where you: sleep really well, inspire and rejuvenate yourself, eat *yummy* food, make amazing friends, experience the best of Barcelona, and float to incredible destinations nearby
Ready? I’m so excited to share this with you -
A Place to Explore From
Jenna Matecki’s Insights on a “Different Kind of Place to Stay”
The “travel” industry is changing:
...where people can gather, put aside the concerns of work and home, and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation - are the heart of a community's social vitality and the grassroots of democracy.”
- Ray Oldenburg’s concept of a “third place”
“Travel” is a misnomer unless you’re talking about being in transit, places you stay at are a mix between hospitality and tourism
The place you stay at should, at the very least, function as a “third place,” and be well-connected within a larger community
“Time well spent” literally changes lives and leads to deeper empathy and humanity
Exploitative over-tourism is solvable through 1. local policy (people who travel just for the photo are helped just as much by those regulations), 2. places to stay at that are truly special, and not another big box with endless hallways of the same rooms
In the experience economy there is actually a level above “experiences” which is “transformative" experiences (think of an Italian Nonna teaching you how to make pasta, you’ll never make pasta the same way again, that’s a mini transformation)
It is entirely possible to have a serene trip in a big city, as well as to be incredibly inspired in the most remote of places
Here’s how you should travel:
“I remember staying in a treehouse in the jungle in Kauai. The owner of the property built several treehouses to put them on Airbnb to build a house for his wife and his mother-in-law. (I later found out that as soon as the house was done, he took down the Airbnb listings!). He later invited us to a party at the house with his friends. We were some of the only people wearing shoes. He had planted the property with all manner of tropical fruits, and chickens roamed everywhere. Hungry? Grab a coconut off the pile, there's the machete. Here are some fresh eggs that I just gathered. Hot? Walk down the path to the water. Giant spiders? Well, they keep the cockroaches away. Again, it made me feel like I WAS HAWAIIAN, not that I was an outsider traveling to Hawaii.”
- Jenna Matecki’s future of travel research survey respondent #4
Stay at a place that is local, small, genuine, and most importantly: unrepeatable
Leave room for the visceral: a sky filled with stars, punch-you-in-the-face beautiful nature, the unexplainable and unplanned
“Immense comfort” should be a baseline, not a feature
Magic happens when new local friends care about your trip and take you behind-the-scenes, treat you as a new local and not as another person to be checked off
Moments connecting openly with the people you’re traveling with, or new friends you made along the way, are the memories you cherish the most
Self-discovery happens alone, but is sparked by others
Witnessing all the different ways you can live your life helps you truly *live* yours
The place you stay at should come alive at night
In the age of Covid, if people don’t trust the local medical system and public safety baselines they are less likely to go
New friends and transformative experiences are the best souvenirs
Hospitality and tourism, when done right, are a form of wellness
Here’s who is going to host you:
“Running hotels, we got sick of the one-star Michelins. Out with our friends we asked for a simple salad, piece of ham, good wine, bread. That’s it. And with that you can have the best night of your life.”
- Jenna Matecki’s future of travel research hotelier interview respondent #1
There’s a reason the best hosts call their places “homes,” they still treat every guest like they’re a friend at their house and serve (and solve problems) from that place
The best hosts exhibit extreme thoughtfulness in every interaction and detail
Your place must give off “vibes” not “design”
The hotel/airbnb/guesthouse team must be warm, calm, and friendly
Traditional hotel lounges are places where “dreams go to die”
There is no “most important” staff or MVP leader - this industry exhibits the strongest teamwork and collective success that I have ever witnessed
Operations needs to run like Formula One pit crews in order to avoid burnout of your best talent
You can’t win with your guests if your room isn’t clean and functional first
Hospitality leaders care deeply about their colleagues and operate as a team in an individualistic world
Community dinners, breakfasts as a group, experiential programming all contribute to your place being a “third place” - this includes programmed downtime and ambient lighting and music
Automate everything but the personal
It’s about the full journey, not just when they’re staying with you - you start hosting them long before they arrive and your first job ends only when they come back to stay again
The finer things in life are to be fully appreciated: truly savored and enjoyed
Don’t mistake your personal preference as a business differentiator
The business has to work well first, the money must flow, only then can everything else happen (the creative, the experiences, the magic, the happy)
Practice real estate “Best Use” to diversify revenue and capitalize on the assets that you’ve already got
If your space isn’t already deeply connected with the local community, it cannot positively impact that local community, no matter how smart the program
Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to simply give it time, space, and attention
Both saunas and circularity are underrated
The best people in hospitality are all genuinely awesome, speak multiple languages, are well-traveled. In tests hospitality leaders are the highest scorers in “Openness to experience” and cultural sensitivity. They also are very “young-at-heart” and “work-hard, play-hard.”
Great hoteliers are “professional friends” - they are beyond cool and you want to hang out with them and spend as much time with them as possible
What Jenna is Building:
Feel free to reach out and schedule time with me to talk about it.
Wink. Wink.
I’ll leave you with two hints -
You’ll stay in a room that feels a lot like this:
Run by an incredible team that operates just like this.
… And be inspired to live your life more deeply and explore your joy.
Can’t wait to have you over.
Love,
Jenna
Recent reviews of The Hours Before Dusk by Jenna Matecki:
“I just finished your book yesterday and I loved it SO much. It is wonderful how you know to capture the funny little details every time. And I found it really positive and inspiring too. Thank you.” - Text to Jenna from AK
“WOW. I just got your book today, and – I'll be honest, I had other plans for how to spend my evening (I got sucked into watching Game of Thrones when I had COVID in early July, and now, halfway through Season Six, I cannot stop until the end... but I digress) – but just so happened to go through the mail and see your book had arrived. "Hm," I thought. "Let's check this out!"
Beyond the lovely personalized poem + postcard that I will be holding on to forever (how many of those did you have to write?!), I flipped to the back, read a couple descriptions, to the front, and the slipcover, thumbed through the first few pages.
And then I was hooked.
I'm not sure I *entirely* understood the full premise of the book from our initial conversations about it – art looked really cool, approach sounded really intriguing, I know from prior experience that any project you touch turns to gold – but I was still trying to figure out how the hybrid narrative thing would work in practice... yet somehow, having the book in my hands and reading it in physical form was a state of zen that I haven't had in such a long time.
It's refreshing.
It's rewarding.
It's inspiring.
It reeks of authenticity – and I mean that as the highest compliment I can possibly give.” - Email to Jenna from JS