Latest / The Modern Hotelier / #324: How Boutique Hotels Can Stand Out & Thrive | with Jorgan von Stiening of Palisociety
Transcript
- The Modern Hotelier #324: How Boutique Hotels Can Stand Out & Thrive | with Jorgan von Stiening of Palisociety === David Millili: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Don't forget to follow, like, subscribe and let us know in the comments what you think about today's episode. Steve, who do we have on the program today? Steve Carran: Yeah, David. Looking forward to this conversation. We have on Jorgan von Stiening, the president of Palisociety. Thanks for joining us, Jorgan. How are you doing today? Jorgan von Stiening: I'm doing very well. I'm very happy to be here David Millili: All right. Well, we're excited to have you. So we're gonna get started. We're gonna go through a lightning round. We're gonna get to know you better, talk about your career a little bit, and then dive into some industry thought leadership topics. Sound good? Jorgan von Stiening: I'm ready to go David Millili: All right, here we go. What did you wanna be when you grew up? Jorgan von Stiening: I wanted to be a commercial airline pilot, but I couldn't because I was colorblind David Millili: Okay. That's a good one. Something that you wish you were better at Jorgan von Stiening: I wish I was better at doing nothing. I'm not a very good sitting still person. So I would like to be a little bit better at that David Millili: All right. So what's a luxury you can't live without? Jorgan von Stiening: I get my hair cut every week, and I would really struggle to not do that David Millili: Okay. All right, so name a person dead or alive that you would like to take to lunch Jorgan von Stiening: So I knew you guys were going to ask me this, so I thought about this for a little while over the weekend. And I think I have a great answer. I would have lunch with Marie Antoinette, and she would have to host. Champagne, cakes, we're gonna completely do it up. I think that's the best and final answer for this question David Millili: All right. I like it. All right, what-- If you could have a superpower, what superpower would you like to have? Jorgan von Stiening: So I would have what I call like a probability nudge. So outcomes would just slightly favor my side. Luck, I guess you would call it, just to have slightly better luck than the average person David Millili: All right. That's a good one. So give us something that's on your bucket list Jorgan von Stiening: On my bucket list, yeah, I've done a fair bit of traveling in my life, so but one thing that I've not ever done that I'd love to do is live in Europe at some point. I'm a big Europhile, so I think that would be high up on my list David Millili: Well, let's make sure you and me Steve Carran: Yeah. Yeah. That was impressive. Usually we're the one doing research on the guest, but it looks like you did your own research on those questions. Jorgan von Stiening: I had my answers ready to go. Steve Carran: That was impressive. That was good. So now we're gonna dive into your personal background, Jorgan, kind of what makes you tick. So you grew up in New York, is that correct? Jorgan von Stiening: I did. I grew up in Westchester County Steve Carran: Awesome. How did growing up in Westchester County shape you into who you are today? Jorgan von Stiening: I guess that's an interesting question. I, my mother was, is South American, and I spent a lot of time as a kid going to South America. I spoke Spanish at home. So, a lot of ways, I was sort of unique in that sense. There was just not a lot of people with that same background where I grew up. I always felt that element, getting on an-- going to the airport, getting on a plane to go visit family in South America was among the most exciting periods of my youth. And it definitely geared me into the travel and the hospitality industry. There's no question. I definitely don't get the same excitement anymore by going to LAX. That certainly has faded. But that definitely, that sort of tie into that culture was a very powerful force in my life. You know, I was fortunate enough to get a great education. Public school system in Westchester County is fantastic. I went to a great state university school of New York in Binghamton. So I was just exposed to great people, great communities, great families. So I had a very fortunate upbringing, I would say. David Millili: All right, so you covered, so you got your degree in accounting at Binghamton University School of Management. I've actually been on that campus many, many years ago. What led you to stay local, and what made you decide to get that type of degree? Jorgan von Stiening: Yeah, I was very focused once I realized I couldn't be a pilot, of course. Business was really sort of the next step. Both my parents were generally business people. So, that's the course that I took. I think it was just a natural fit. I just saw that as my route. Once I left school, I started working at Ernst & Young, where I worked for about 10 years. Initially in their management, their mergers and acquisition practice, and then I sort of forced my way into a niche practice that they had in real estate and hospitality management consulting for several years in New York, and then for several years in the Miami office. And that's really where I fell in love, I think, with the industry. Not really from an operations side, but from an overall management side. You know, one thing that I didn't mention is in college, I worked in restaurants, and I worked in some very high-end restaurants. And that is one thing, you know, I worked at a restaurant called Blue Hill at Stone Barns for a while, and that was really where I first understood higher taste levels and an air of sophistication. And that was really captivating to me. So, accounting is not necessarily something that ties in directly with that industry, but I did find a way to blend the two Steve Carran: That's great. So you mentioned earlier that you have traveled quite a bit. A couple of your fun journeys, you've had a 13-hour train ride in Myanmar, and you also called the Soho Farmhouse in the UK one of the best hospitality experiences you've ever had. Have you had any travel recently that has really blown you away or a favorite place that you've gone to recently? Jorgan von Stiening: How did you guys find this stuff? It's so interesting. Places that I've gone to, places that I've gone to recently. I was able to do a boat trip last year in Greece, which was just incredible. I'd never really sort of spent time on a boat. But, in European summers, the level of hospitality is just absolutely next level. And that's something that really stuck with me for sure Steve Carran: Awesome. Was it like a yacht, catamaran, cruise Jorgan von Stiening: It was a catamaran. It was a ca- it was a catamaran, yeah Steve Carran: Very nice. That is one of those things on my bucket list as well. So, Jorgan von Stiening: That's on your bucket list. Yeah. Steve Carran: absolutely. One of these days. But so now we're gonna dive into your career, how you became the president of Pali Society. So you started your career conducting equity and bond research at UBS. What did those earlier days in your career teach you that you still take with you today? Jorgan von Stiening: Yeah. So that was an internship. Wow, you guys really did your homework. That was an internship that I had in college, but I would say what really, you know, what helped me tremendously in sort of where my career is today is working at Ernst & Young. The level of detail and granularity and diving into the numbers is just unbelievably important. You know, my background is not in hospitality. I do not know how to check someone into a hotel. That is not my skill set. That is what my incredible team of people are experts in doing. But what I do is I'm detailed, I make good decisions, and I know how to lead a team. Those are fundamentals that I learned and I gathered through years of working at Ernst & Young with incredibly talented people, in an incredibly rigorous environment, I would say. So those are, sort of just fundamental building blocks that I still carry with me to this day, and I think I ingrain in everybody that works for me David Millili: So you talked about ENY. So you spent years helping developers and investors decide which hotel concepts, brands, and operators that made sense for those projects. What made you move from advising hotel companies to helping build one from the inside? Jorgan von Stiening: Yeah, that's a great question. I was looking for something different. I was looking for a new challenge. I was actually looking for a move to the West Coast, and I knew I wanted to do something a little different. I was introduced to the founder and CEO of Palisociety, Avi Brosh. And it was really one of those sort of fortuitous meetings in my life, I would say, where, we talked about luck a little bit earlier. I think that was a lucky introduction. At the time, Palisociety had three hotels, all in Los Angeles. So it was a local branded hotel company with a lot of cachet. It was very ingrained in the LA zeitgeist. And they were going to go on an opening spree. So what Avi was looking for is someone to join the team that could help him scale the company, develop the infrastructure that was required to, you know, be successful as a nine-hotel company, or as successful as a nine-hotel company as they were with a three-hotel company. And it was, you know, it was no question my dream job. I could not have described a more perfect opportunity for what I was looking for at the time, what was piquing my interest at the time, and what my skill set was adept to be able to do. And, you know, the rest is sort of history. I joined the company in 2018. In 2019, we took the company from three hotels to nine hotels. And 2020 obviously was a different story. We'll probably talk about the rest of the future of Palisociety a little bit later. But, yeah, it was really one of those moments where luck was certainly on my side. Steve Carran: So from that conversation with Avi, was there like one or two things that really stuck out where you're like, "This is my dream job"? Jorgan von Stiening: Yeah. I would say the focus on the brand and the aesthetic was really important to me. I had no interest in going into working for a big flag or anything like that. I was really focused on the lifestyle part of the business. And what I thought was most interesting about the company was, one, that, you know, this founder, this CEO was literally picking every piece of paint and fabric himself. It was, the brand was such a strong reflection of him and the way that he was living his life and then the way he lives his life. And I thought that was really compelling. It was not a brand that was designed to appeal to a certain audience. It was a brand that was a reflection of a specific lifestyle. That was one thing that I thought was really interesting. And the second thing that was really interesting that I hadn't really seen before was that the brand was focused on small keyed hotels. You know, at that point, the average key count in the portfolio was about thirty keys. Now it's about sixty keys. So larger, but still very small by industry standards. And what he had begun to develop was an infrastructure, a core infrastructure that was really able to supply the industry and back office horsepower to these little hotels so that they could outperform what a traditionally small hotel would be able to do. So I thought that was really interesting. I thought that the way that he had structured that was compelling, and I thought that was a very specific avenue towards growth and one that I could really sort of wrap my head around Steve Carran: Very cool David Millili: Yeah, and so let's dive a little deeper. So for those who aren't familiar, you've given some great insight, but can you share more about Palisociety and what that is? Jorgan von Stiening: I can. Palisociety is a Los Angeles-based, branded hotel management company. We operate with a few sub-brands, Palihouse, Palihotel, Le Petit Pali, Arrive, and a small independent collection. And we focus on small keyed hotels under these brands. We don't operate anything that is not branded. And really what makes us unique is a couple of things I alluded to in my previous answer. One is, we only do things that fall within a brand. We have a very specific, very proprietor-led point of view. We have a very specific point of view and mentality on hospitality and how it should be and how somebody should feel when they come into one of our hotels, regardless of the brand. And then, everything that we do is in-house. We don't use third-party designers. Everything from the graphics, the social media, the scent program, the design, absolutely everything is done in-house by our team of employees, so we can control the process, we can control the cost, we can control the outcomes. The second is, as a small key hotel company, we have a very large, very robust corporate team, filled with unbelievably talented people within the industry. And we're able to use that structure and our brand to, I think, amass some of the most talented people in the industry. So, we offer this big engine to these small hotels, and as a result, they're really able to outperform their comp sets, their markets, and drive margins that most small keyed hotels are not really able to drive. So it's sort of a unique place in the hotel industry. There are not really any true competitors to us that are branded and small keyed. And it's one of the factors that's really driven our significant growth over the last several years This episode is sponsored by Sip Tea. Most hotels serve tea. Sip Tea helps independent hotels create a tea experience guests actually remember. Through property-owned signature tea rituals, Sip Tea transforms an ordinary beverage into a meaningful part of the guest journey. From arrival and lobby service to guest rooms, spas, and evening rituals, each experience is shaped around the property's identity and designed to be simple for hospitality teams to deliver consistently. Supported by hospitality growth partner Signaltide, Sip Tea helps independent properties turn overlooked guest experience gaps into stronger loyalty, differentiation, and revenue. Discover Sip Tea at the Independent Hotel Show Miami, September 16th and 17th at booth 255, or visit sip-tea-path.com Steve Carran: Awesome. Awesome. Perfect segue into our industry thought section where we talked about thought leadership in the hotel space. So as you mentioned, Palisociety has grown across several brands and different markets, but its appeal really comes from the personalization, that creative side, and like you said, feeling independent. As you scale, how do you decide which parts of the experience should be consistent across your portfolio and which parts shouldn't be standardized? Jorgan von Stiening: Yeah, I would say the way that we operate is, as I mentioned before, all of the design, all of the aesthetics, the brand is really driven by the sort of proprietor element of the company. That is not difficult to scale. We have a team of people, it is again led by Avi. Everything that you can touch, by the way, in the hotel, all the furniture, all the paint, all the... You know, that's Avi. Everything you cannot touch is his wife, Kirsten. So it's a really very specific, very dynamic, creative team. But we have a full design team, we have a full marketing team, we have a full social media team. So all of that aesthetic, all of that sort of brand stuff is really just embedded in the fabric of the company at this point. That's not difficult to scale. What is difficult to scale is the delivery of that brand, and being able to repeat that and repeat that and repeat that every day across all of our 25 locations. That's what's difficult. And we have, for the last, certainly at least 10 years, but really the last 20 years, been systematizing how we deliver that, through SOPs, through training, through hiring the right people, through rigorous quality control that we regularly do to make sure all of these properties are up to the brand standard. That's really the difficult part. And that's really what's dominated a lot of the last 10 years of my career here, making sure that the vision is aligned with the reality of the guest experience that is repeated every day. David Millili: That's great. So Palisociety recently joined Design Hotels, so that gives you access to the reach and awareness of Marriott Bonvoy while still remaining independent. How do you take advantage of a global platform like that without it diluting in what makes the brand distinctive in the first place? Jorgan von Stiening: Well, look, we started a conversation with Design Hotels about a year and a half ago. And we were really talking to Design Hotels and their competitors to understand what that market was like and whether or not it made sense for us. What was really interesting and appealing about Design Hotels was a few things. First of all, they were really the only group that actually had an emphasis on brand, on design, on aesthetics. It felt like really the only one of sort of that group of companies that wasn't just growing for growth's sake. They were very specific and still are very specific about the properties that they let onto the platforms. That was very appealing to us. We have the exact same approach to business development and to growth. So for that, right from the get-go was appealing. Design Hotels is part of Marriott, so we are now a company that accepts Marriott Bonvoy points. And, you can earn and redeem your Bonvoy points. You can book us on marriott.com. So it is plugged into the Marriott system, but it is very important to us to not be a Marriott hotel. And Design Hotels absolutely gave us the framework to not be part of Marriott in that sense. If you've been a customer of us for years and you walked into our hotel, you would have absolutely no idea that this had happened, and that's exactly the way that we wanted to keep it. Design Hotels requires no Marriott brand standards. There's just that, that doesn't exist. There's no dictating what you can do and what you can't do for the guests. You can be, they let you to be, and they want you to be your authentic brand. So that was absolutely paramount to us to the deal being done. Without that component, it wouldn't have happened. Our brand and our guest journey, if you haven't already been able to glean by this conversation so far, is just the most important thing. It's the most important element of the company, and we would not have sacrificed that for anything. That was immediately the number one requirement. In hotels, the size of your customer pool is incredibly important. It's not a matter of just being able to fill your hotel rooms. We can do that all day long. We don't have a problem with filling our hotel rooms. It's a matter of filling it with the best possible customer. What Marriott and their 250 million or so member database has allowed us the opportunity to do is to better segment our customer and to show our product and sell our product to a better and a larger pool of customers. So as an example, the Marriott customer base is, in my opinion, of the major flags, the best. It's the largest, but it also has the best customer. It's the highest rated customer. It's generally the customer with the highest disposable income. So there's a lot of really interesting factors about that guest database. Now, what we've experienced so far, and our properties began rolling out on the Marriott platform about six weeks ago, so I have about six weeks worth of hard data. The Marriott customer books far earlier than I would say an OTA customer, for example. They are more likely to book a higher room category, so the deluxe room or the suite. And their length of stay is a little bit longer than some of our other channels. So what we are able to do through this process is rather than sell an OTA room, we can now sell a room to a Marriott customer. That room is going to be booked further out, at a higher price point, and for the longer length of stay. Those dynamics, when you introduce that dynamic into the mix, the way that that changes your revenue management strategy is just incredibly important. So part of what this is doing is allowing us to, one, appeal to a new customer that, you know, Marriott people like their Marriott points, and they're not going to stay at a hotel that doesn't offer that. So appealing to a new customer and then also replacing maybe the lower category of customer that we currently have, whether that's through OTAs or whatever, with a higher-rated customer. Again, that changes the entire dynamic of a revenue management structure and strategy. And the results so far are pretty spectacular, I would say. So we're very happy with this deal so far. The Marriott customer so far has absolutely loved our product. You don't know what you're gonna get when someone who's expecting a lounge and all of the sort of Marriott bells and whistles comes to one of your properties that doesn't have all of these things. But the experience that they get from this brand, from the customer service of the brand, from the little details that are just so important to us, they have loved it. So, we're really pleased with it. I think their customers are really pleased with it as well Steve Carran: That's great. Great answer. Great answer, and take that Hilton. Jorgan von Stiening: I didn't say it. Steve Carran: No. So you're based in LA. Palisociety's, you know, that's kinda where your headquarters are at. It's obviously one of the most competitive hotel markets, but how do you remain interesting and relevant in a city that changes so quickly and often? Jorgan von Stiening: Yeah, it's a good question. I think we have nine or 10 hotels in Los Angeles right now. So it gives us the ability to sort of be relevant in a really unique and nuanced way in this specific city. Every neighborhood in LA has their own Palisociety hotel, whether it's Silver Lake or Culver City or West Hollywood or Brentwood, they all have a property that is very unique to that specific neighborhood. And all of our properties are designed individually. They all have their own sort of ethos. They all have their own spirit. Most of them have restaurant venues that really sort of speak to the community. Silver Lake, for example, our property is Silver Lake Pool and Inn, and we just have an absolutely robust culture and programming spirit. It's just a bastion of the community. We call ourselves a neighborhood hotel company, so it's really important for us to be a neighborhood hotel, and what a neighborhood hotel means to us is it's the hotel that someone in the neighborhood tells their friend and family who's visiting town that, "You have to stay at this hotel. This is where you should stay. Don't stay at the Hilton or whatever. Stay at this hotel." The restaurants and the F&B is just such an important way of bringing in your community into that hotel space. Without a restaurant, without that sort of anchor, you're not really bringing in the community. You don't have the opportunity to do that as much. So the restaurants are just such an important anchor for these spaces. We wanna be the restaurants in our hotels, they are the Tuesday night restaurant. They're the Wednesday night restaurant. They're not the special occasion restaurant. It's not, "Oh, I have an anniversary. I'm gonna take my wife to Simonette in Culver City." No, this is the let's go eat, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, let's go for happy hour. That is the regular basis... That is how we embed ourselves in the communities, and I think that's just the recipe that we've followed pretty much everywhere we've opened. Steve Carran: That's awesome. I love those hotels where you go in and you're hanging out with locals instead of hotel guests. That's how I have always found the best recommendations of things to do around the area, so... And there's just a different energy as well. So, I love that. So apart from the local folks, there's quite a few events coming to LA. You have the World Cup, you have the Olympics coming up. How does that influence the way you think about market demand beyond the immediate demand spike? Jorgan von Stiening: Well, look, Los Angeles is a really interesting city, and it's gone through an interesting couple of years. I guess the word is interesting. The recovery after COVID in LA was slow, slower than some other markets, faster than some other markets. But, it's a very dynamic city. It is the cultural mecca of the country, of the world. It has a tremendous amount of arts and fashion. So it has a very diversified base. But, it's gone through a couple of hard years. The fires last year were absolutely catastrophic to the industry for at least half of the year, but really more than that. And then, the disruption in TV and film production that's been happening over the last couple of years has been definitely impactful. 2026 has been a fantastic year for the city so far. We're just seeing this rebound of travel and economic activity that we haven't seen for a couple of years. So it's really been exciting to see, international travel has sort of come back, too, in a way that was really muted over the last, certainly over 2025. So that's been great. I think that there's sometimes an over-reliance on things like the World Cup or, you know, the Olympics. The Olympics is two years away. There's a lot that has to happen between now and getting to the Olympics, and realistically, the Olympics is gonna last for two to four weeks. It is a great thing for the city. It's an enormous amount of visibility for the city. It's great for the Los Angeles brand. It is not the be-all and end-all for the hospitality industry. So I think the way that we are getting out in front of it... Obviously, I think these events tend to be a little bit... I think they tend to underperform expectations typically. So what we're doing is we're getting out ahead of it, and we're getting as many sort of group buyouts, contracts locked in as possible. And I think that's our strategy for this. But look, 2028's gonna be a huge year. There's no question. But it's a one-time event, and it's still two years away. So, it's not our immediate focus, I should say. Steve Carran: Are you treating the World Cup that was recently in LA kind of along the same lines? Jorgan von Stiening: No. The World Cup was... The Olympics will be far bigger and greater. The World Cup, you know, we had a few games here. It definitely had a pop for those periods, so it was definitely a nice summer. But nothing compared to what the Olympics is gonna be. Steve Carran: Fair enough David Millili: Yeah, we were just at the Hotel Data Conference, and we were talking about how really it didn't deliver the World Cup what a lot of people thought it would, as far as revenue Jorgan von Stiening: I think, for LA, I did not have high expectations for this because, you know, the lead up to this was everybody was talking about how the tickets weren't selling and how it wasn't great. So I did not have grandiose ambitions. But that being said, they exceeded my expectations David Millili: Okay, good. So we talk to a lot of independent hoteliers, and a lot of times the independent hotels receive attention for their design, but, really just having a cool independent hotel doesn't really automatically make it a sustainable business. So where do you see boutique hotel owners getting the business model wrong, and what separates a cool hotel from one that can perform for decades? Jorgan von Stiening: Well, that is a loaded question, but I'm gonna pick it apart. So I think boutique hospitality is sort of a two-edged sword. Everybody loves, in theory, boutique hospitality, right? That's why when you think of a boutique hotel, you think of a cool, really local-rooted hotel that has a point of view, that's distinct, that makes you feel special. Contrast that with a big flagged airport hotel or something, which is the antithesis of that, right? There are a lot of boutique hotels, and the problem and the difficulty with the boutique hotel landscape is that it is just inherently challenging because you do not have scale. So, a small hotel, maybe it's run by the owners, maybe it's been in the family for generations. That's all well and good, and that's very helpful. That's sort of part of the element of hospitality that makes it special. But then it doesn't have access necessarily to the same revenue management robustness or the same marketing robustness or the same sort of accounting talent that other hotels have, and that just makes it difficult. You know, we are not operating anymore, at least not in this current cycle, in an environment where demand is huge. Coming out of COVID, the hotel market has been really, really shaken up. So with certain exceptions, luxury really being the category of the most exception, it's been a difficult time for hotels, for owners, for hotel operators. Interest rates are through the roof still. Access to capital is really tough. Costs are going through the roof. Labor costs are going through the roof. Labor exposure is through the roof. So it's a tough go in the hotel industry, and it's an even tougher go in the boutique hotel industry. So to not have access to these resources makes it very tough for boutique hotel owners, and I think that's one of the solutions that we offer at Palisociety. But boutique hotels are why people get into the hotel business to begin with. People don't typically join the hospitality industry because they're fascinated by an airport hotel. Nothing wrong with an airport hotel, but the spirit of hospitality, the calling that people have for this industry is in that environment where someone that is working at the front desk has a vested interest in what that space feels like and how that customer is treated. That is really the genesis of European-style hospitality, and I think it's something that we hold dear. So the boutique space is, I think, always going to be there. It'll go through ups and downs, and I think it'll adjust to difficult times and demanding times. There's also obviously so many new tools and systems and technologies now that I think are gonna make that a little bit easier, harder. I don't know. It's gonna change things, that's for sure. But I think the boutique scale and the boutique space is definitely here to stay, and it just becomes more and more compelling as the big flags just become sort of more and more monotonous, I would say Steve Carran: Sure. Great answer. So, Jorgan, you don't really come from the hotel space, but now you've become president in Pali. What advice do you have to somebody who may be interested in joining hospitality or hotels in a leadership role but might not have that background working in hotels? Jorgan von Stiening: I think everyone has a different skill set, a different background. So if you want to get into this space, you have to figure out what you do well and how what you do well can be applied to this space. Again, I don't check people into hotels. I never have. That's not what I bring to the table. That is such an important part of the hospitality industry, but I solve for that by hiring great operations people. I solve for that by hiring great sales and marketing people. I solve for that by hiring great financial accounting people. My skill set, again, is really making sure that I can build a team of people who are passionate about this company and passionate about hospitality, and giving them the resources and the know-how and helping them make really the best decisions that they're capable of making. That's what I do really well. That's what my background has led me towards. And I was sort of able, as luck would have it, to find a space where my skill set really allowed me to do that in this industry Steve Carran: So find out your best skill set and how you can incorporate that into the industry. Jorgan von Stiening: Absolutely Steve Carran: Beautiful. Well said. Well said. So Jorgan, we've been asking you questions this whole time. So this is where we turn the tables and let you ask David and I a question. Jorgan von Stiening: Yeah, I mean, you guys have done this for a while and you've spoken to a lot of people. I'm curious, what's been your most compelling interview and what have you learned from it? David Millili: You can go first, Steve. Steve Carran: Oh, thanks. Thanks. One of my favorite guests that we've had on was Brad Stewart. He owns Caravan Outpost, which is a group of Airstreams that are kind of hidden away in Ojai, California. And he's built a really cool community around it where he does have celebrities that come that just kind of wanna get away. And he has a feel for the property where people can kind of let down their edges, let down their guards, and really kind of be themselves. And he had a huge role in bringing professional snowboarding to the United States. And he had some really cool stories of somebody who used to snowboard growing up. He was one of my favorites and one of my most fun conversations I've had. And like you, he didn't come from the hospitality space, and now he has a hotel or getaway, I'll say, an outpost David Millili: Yeah, so I have two kids, so I've learned quickly you can't have favorites. So I'm gonna say that as the-- We've interviewed a lot of people, especially on the independent hotel side and especially the hoteliers. For me, having run hotels and moved to the technology side, it's really cool to kind of see the passion and you can kind of feel how people love what they do and they love the independent side of it and they just love dealing with people. And we've had a lot of great leaders like yourself who, you know, they've honed in on their skill, they know where their weaknesses are, they've surrounded themselves with great people. And I think for me that's been kind of the cool part, seeing how passionate these people are in our industry, and how much they love what they do. And that's kind of been a cool thing for me Steve Carran: So Jorgan, this has been a great conversation. Our producer, Jon, he's been listening in the whole time. We're gonna pass it over to him for one final question before we get you out of here Jon Bumhoffer: So I'm curious from your perspective, kind of with your visibility over all the properties that you guys run, being smaller keyed, is there anything that you think is different or unique or a different skill set that you look for when, like for a hotel you're running a property like this that might be different than like a branded property or a larger property? Is there anything specific that you're looking for for that type of property? Jorgan von Stiening: I guess the question is for like if for hiring GMs, for example, at these properties, I would say no. You know, we actually do a lot of hiring from bigger box hotel companies and flags. I think we hire more people from that background than we do from the independent space and the lifestyle space. And the reason is what those big companies do really well is systems, processes, procedures, checklists, SOPs. That is just so unbelievably important on how we have built our company. It's just so systematized. So, as I was saying before, the branding is not the difficult part. The difficult part is in the delivery. And when you systematize the delivery so well, you're able to execute flawlessly, and you're able to deliver that brand in its truest form to the customer. Lifestyle hotel spaces tend to not do that nearly as well as the bigger flags, and we have modeled our operating system really on the bigger flags Jon Bumhoffer: Very interesting David Millili: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. This is where you get to let people know how they can find out more about Palisociety and how they can get in touch with you Jorgan von Stiening: palisociety.com and development@palisociety.com comes right to me. So feel free to get in touch. David Millili: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to be with you again soon. Thanks for joining us. Jorgan von Stiening: Thanks so much, guys. It's been a pleasure. Steve Carran: Thank you