Latest / The Modern Hotelier / #312: Relational Wellness is the Foundation of this Hotel | with Elizabeth Mullins
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- The Modern Hotelier #312: Relational Wellness is the Foundation of this Hotel | with Elizabeth Mullins === 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. Buckle up. We got a fun one today. We have on Elizabeth Mullins, the President of Evermore Hospitality. Thanks for joining us, Elizabeth. How are we doing today? Elizabeth Mullins: Excellent, and really excited to be talking to both of you. David Millili: Thank you. All right, so we're gonna jump in. We're gonna go through a lightning round. We're gonna get to know you better, talk about your career, and then dive into some thought leadership. Sound good? Elizabeth Mullins: Yep. Perfect. David Millili: All right. So when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? Elizabeth Mullins: A hotelier. I actually figured out my profession at the age of five when my father brought me to afternoon tea at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston. David Millili: Wow. What's something that you wish you were better at? Elizabeth Mullins: There's so many things it's hard to imagine. But actually, this is embarrassing, I wish I had a better talent for remembering names. David Millili: That's a good one. What's a luxury you can't live without? Elizabeth Mullins: I can't live without travel. It inspires me the most, and for me as a hotelier, it's really important to be inspired in order to create memories that last lifetimes. David Millili: Okay. If you could take someone, dead or alive, to lunch, who would you take? Anyone? Elizabeth Mullins: That's an interesting one. It was recently America's 250th birthday, and it would be really interesting to take one of our Founding Fathers and say, "What were you thinking? How nervous were you to commit treason?" David Millili: Yeah. Elizabeth Mullins: From what you see today, did we shape the Constitution in the way you envisioned it when you wrote it? I mean, I have so many questions. David Millili: That would be a good one. All right, so if you could have a superpower, what superpower would you like to have? Elizabeth Mullins: I'd like to be able to have incredible foresight. David Millili: That's a good one. Yeah. All right. This is the last one. Give us something that's on your bucket list. Elizabeth Mullins: I have so many on the bucket list, but right now my bucket list is the Dolomites. I know so many people doing Dolomite adventures, both in summer, doing the trails and the inn and the wine tasting along the way. It sounds beautiful, but also in the winter. The other one I haven't done is Patagonia. So those are the two. David Millili: Okay. Steve Carran: Wow. Very fun. Very fun. So now we're gonna dive into your background, a little bit about what makes you tick. So you grew up on the south coast of Maine, but you consider yourself a New Yorker. First question: how did growing up in Maine shape you into who you are today? Elizabeth Mullins: What an idyllic childhood to be right on the coast, see the water, understand nature, all of those things, and understand what good is when it comes to farm-to-table and produce and all things like that. Nobody knows this, but I had a vegetable stand when I was little, and with my dad, we would fill the stand with all the produce that he was teaching me how to grow. I had a big sign behind me, and it said, "Beth's Organic Vegetable Stand. Five cents or free. With love from Beth." If I wasn't doing enough sales, then I would stock up my little red wagon, walk through this path through a field down to the Shop 'n Save, and pitch my groceries to the grocer, who would usually buy them for, like, five bucks. I don't know if they actually put them out, but just to placate this little girl, they would buy them. Think about how many connections to hospitality that is. So everything was shaped by that. Steve Carran: That's incredible. And why do you consider yourself a New Yorker? Elizabeth Mullins: I've lived in New York City three times and worked in the hotel space all three times. Each time lasted about three years. Hoteliers are notorious movers because of opportunities within our brands and upward mobility opportunities as well. Every time I've lived in New York, I would pinch myself and say, "I am so lucky to be here." The time went too fast. So the second time, I made sure that I was the person exploring more than anyone else. If I had a moment off, I was understanding that city. The third time I came back to run The Fifth, I knew enough about the city to be dangerous, yet there was still more to discover. My love for that city makes me think I'm a New Yorker. Now, a New Yorker would say, "You are not a New Yorker. You haven't met the living-in-New-York threshold. You don't really act like one." But I get to choose what I think I am, and it's that. Steve Carran: I love it. I love it. David Millili: So you went to the University of New Hampshire and, no surprise, you got your degree in hospitality administration and management. You knew that since you were five. So what made you choose to go to that university? Elizabeth Mullins: All right, so when I was with my dad and we were having tea, I said, "Daddy, this is the way I want to feel. This is what I want to do." And he said, "No, no, no, this is the way you feel. Those are two different things." So have that in your mind. Now it's time to go to college, and I look at my dad and say, "I'm going to hotel school." And he said, "We've had this conversation endless times since you were five. So if you want my help with college, you'll go to a place that has both hospitality and business. And if you get both degrees, I'll help you with college." UNH, which was a little bit in my backyard—to be honest, I wanted to go further. I would've loved to go to California or someplace else. But it offered both degrees, and I could get them done in four years. That's precisely why I chose it. Secondarily, it also had a really good male-female ratio and a really good drinking-on-campus reputation. So those two things also weighed in. Steve Carran: Oh, that's hilarious. So I think you might hold the record of the person who fell in love with hospitality at the youngest age, at the age of five. And you've mentioned this afternoon tea that you've had with your dad, and it was at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston. So I have to ask you a little bit more about this. What made that feeling come to be out to tea with your dad? Elizabeth Mullins: So first of all, I was all dressed up to go to tea. I didn't know we were going to tea. I thought we were going to the Nutcracker Ballet, and we did. I just remember nothing about that. But I remember going into the Ritz-Carlton. It was around the holiday time. Back then, you used real trees, real garland, so it smelled like pine and cinnamon. The doorman knew my dad's name. The tea lounge had a harpist. I had never heard a harpist before, so here I was thinking I'm very posh because I'm listening to a harpist. I ate the little finger pastries, which were so fun, and the server got down on one knee and offered me hot chocolate instead of tea, and I honestly did feel like a princess. But I also just said, "I just want to spend all of my life here. This is what I've... this is..." I say I found my profession, but I found a moment, and that moment transformed my entire adult life because I started at that very same hotel, as you mentioned, six days after I graduated. I graduated college with that degree. Six days later, I started as a management trainee. I think there were seven hotels under Ritz at that time. I left 28 years later, where there were 99. So if you think about that, it shows you in hospitality that moments and memories really do matter. They can shape someone's life, and I'm a true person to look at and go, "This is real." Steve Carran: Absolutely. Well said. And now we're gonna jump into your career, and you led perfectly into my next question. Just like you said, six days after college, you went to that Ritz, and you spent 28 years there, and you were leading hotels across places like Hong Kong, Hawaii, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and New York City. What did those early days leading those hotels really teach you that you take with you today? Elizabeth Mullins: The first one is interesting, and that's Hong Kong. I spent about a decade in Asia, and I'll tell you, my husband's from Hong Kong, and we met at the Ritz-Carlton, Washington, D.C. Another story, but he now wanted to go back and spend a little time in Hong Kong. We happened to be opening up a hotel there, and when I say "we," that means Ritz-Carlton. There was an awful lot of development that we had planned in Asia. I was not nearly seasoned enough in my career to get a job, so I applied for it, and they said, "You know what? Maybe next time." And I said, "What would it take?" And they said, "We need a balance of local hires as well as expats," blah, blah, blah. So I went to Hong Kong, married my husband for a visa. Not really—we'd already been together. But seriously, I came back and said, "I'm local now. What do you think?" I think they thought, "She is so crazy, we've got to give her this job." And they did. So what I've learned from that is be fearless. The only thing that's gonna happen is that they say no, and they already said no, so this was my only chance to redeem myself. The other thing I would tell you is that first year in Hong Kong was rough. Remember, these are the days before cellphones. A long-distance call cost a lot of money. There was no internet. So you were literally out there without a friend group or anything else. That first year was rough because I kept judging the place I was in as an American. Once I flipped that and said, "What I really need to do is embrace the culture as it is. The culture's never gonna form itself around me. I need to flip the script," I loved it. The next seven years I was there in many places around Asia, I didn't want to come back. The only reason I did come back was because I was about to be a mother. That's what drew me back to the United States. David Millili: Wow. And so after Ritz-Carlton, you made the move to Disney. You were overseeing hotels, premium services, innovation, and strategy across a portfolio of 50-plus hotels, 55,000-plus rooms globally. What was the biggest shift for you going from the Ritz and luxury to the magic of Disney? Elizabeth Mullins: It was a completely different business altogether. It wasn't the hotel business that I knew, and Disney didn't claim to be in the hotel business. In fact, they didn't understand they were in the hotel business. It's why they wanted someone from the hotel business to take the role that they created for me. What I had to learn is I'm never going to be able to move the needle on things through directive. It's gonna be all influence. This is what I learned: I learned to tell a story. Part of it was from listening to the amazing storytellers, but then you use that when you say, "Do you want to develop the movie of Mary Poppins Returns, or do you want to develop this beautiful tower that's gonna last for seventy-five years?" You have to bring them in and learn how to engage them in that story in order to actually make inroads. Little by little, once you've had successes, you'll earn your way to a place where your vocation and your voice matter. I didn't understand that before I joined Disney, and it was hard. I'll tell you a couple little things. The first one is when I got there, I said, "Okay, I have my first presentation." It was this huge presentation, and my boss said, "What's it on?" I said, "Something I think is very important: Make travel easy." So I go in. This was 2016. Now we look at this and go, "Exactly. You've got to remove friction and make travel easy." I give this pitch. Two things happen. Number one, everybody says, "Good job." So I say to my boss, "Hey, everybody said good job." He said, "Elizabeth, 'good job' really means your work sucks. We're Disney nice, so 'good job' is like nothing." I'm like, how can people argue with "make travel easy?" I realized that I just wasn't hitting any buttons on that one. So I had to recalibrate. Everything I knew had to be recalibrated for Disney in order to succeed in that environment. I think I learned more in my first year or two than I had in the last ten years with Ritz-Carlton. I look back often and say, "Did I stay too long?" With hindsight, I go, I probably did. Twenty-eight years is a big chunk of your career, even if you're moving everywhere. That said, I was always challenged, and sometimes you don't understand the difference between challenge and learning. So I misconstrued being challenged and loving what I do with learning and being pushed to actually do more. I hope that answered your question in a roundabout way, but I'm literally grateful for both of those in my career because it certainly made me who I am today. Steve Carran: That's great. And I have to ask, if you were a Disney character, which one would you be? Elizabeth Mullins: I think I would either be a villain or I would be Tinker Bell because I want to spread a little pixie dust all over. Steve Carran: There you go. There you go. Peter Pan was actually my answer. It was my favorite movie growing up. All right. So after Disney, you made a pretty big shift to Flanor Hospitality. Am I saying that right? Steve Carran: Flanor Hospitality. Awesome. Thank you. And you opened up the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and the Fifth Avenue Hotel is quite an independent jewel in New York City. Can you tell us more about the process of opening the Fifth Avenue Hotel and really how it became one of the most awarded independent hotels in America? Elizabeth Mullins: Happy to. But first I'm gonna tell you why I left. After seven years, remember I had this epiphany: had I been with the Ritz too long? So now it's at the seven-year mark, which is when a lot of people start thinking about their future. I made a list of things I wanted to do, and the biggest thing that came out was I wanted independence and to be able to create my own playbook. I have to give credit to The Fifth's owner and founder, Alex Ohebshalom. Alex is this 34-year-old tastemaker with no hospitality experience. In fact, outside of his family's real estate company, not a lot of work experience. But he had a tremendous vision, and he had tremendous design taste. Literally, the first thing you recognize is the beauty of the jewel box, and that's important, especially against the backdrop of New York City. My goal was to never be corporate. We started with that as a baseline—to be the antithesis of what a branded hotel was. In my mind, brands had gotten a little boring. Alex had designed a jewel box that did not look like any brand in the world, and I needed to come up with the service structure that matched that vision. So we did. We spent a lot of time on the guest journey and the small things that matter to a guest, especially in an urban hotel, and we revamped it. We said things like, "Look, you're modern hoteliers." I looked at modern butlers. What is modern butler service, and what does that mean? To me, it really meant concierge on the move. One out of 100 might ask for a little unpacking service, but one out of two asks for a little concierge help. So really reinventing what that means. Then we said, "Okay, what are the other things that really matter when people travel?" It's food and beverage. So we developed a bar that, bar none, was incredible, and that's the Portrait Bar, and it's won its share of accolades. Then we worked with NoHo Hospitality to develop our other signature restaurant, Café Carmellini, also a big award winner. Now you've got a bar that matters, service that matters, an incredible design, and a backdrop on Fifth Avenue. The one thing I didn't mention was we had the blessing of history and heritage because half of the hotel is a new-build tower, and half of it is actually a Gilded Age mansion. Guess what was becoming the number one TV show? The Gilded Age. We opened at the perfect time. Everything came together. Literally, we were really lucky that travel was moving in that direction, and we were able to capitalize on the moment. That was honestly Alex's vision, and capitalizing on the moment was the success. ________________________________________ David Millili: So about a year ago, you joined Evermore Hospitality to be president. What attracted you to Evermore? Elizabeth Mullins: They showed up in the lobby at The Fifth, and I'm busy. It's like 7:30 at night, and they're like, "Hey, can I buy you a drink in the bar?" I said, "I'm doing a few things right now, but if you're still in the lobby in 15 minutes, I'll buy you a drink in my bar." So I sat down with them. I didn't know who they were, and they said, "We're really looking for someone for Evermore Hospitality." I said, "I know that site because when I was with Disney, we looked at that land, and we wanted that land. We had hotels planned for that land. Then someone swept it out from under us. It was the owner of Dart Interests, who owns the property." So I was interested and intrigued because of what had happened in my past. As I started to really understand the premise behind what this was, I realized it's a lot more than what it seems. The site is 1,400 acres directly adjacent to the Mouse, yet still in old Florida. Think about the wildlife of old Florida. That's still prevalent. It's not just the 700 acres we have developed today. It's 1,400 acres. So it's also about what we're going to develop tomorrow. I loved the idea of merging the time I spent in development with the time I spent running properties and putting those together to create what we hope will become one of the three reasons to visit Orlando: Disney, Universal, and Evermore. That's the goal. You've got to think big. As I dug into the interview process, I fell in love with the concepts of relational wellness and residential hospitality. I'll start with residential hospitality. As a hotelier, when you go to different hotels, you never shut off. You're always looking for the next thing. What do they do better? What do they do worse? You laugh about the worse things. You steal the better things. Occasionally my family and I would stay in an Airbnb. What I always liked about Airbnb was that I like to cook, and it gave me space for that. I like common spaces. What I didn't like was there was no sense of connection to a place. You had to figure that out on your own. If the dishwasher broke, you just didn't have a dishwasher. No one was coming in the middle of the night to fix it. I also noticed that you either got the right number of bedrooms or the right common space that you wanted. Worse yet, you had to share a bathroom. Those were the three things that always annoyed me. In speaking with Chris Kelsey, who I work for—he's the president of Dart Interests—he had thought about this multigenerational trend in travel. He'll say, "I got lucky. I wasn't that smart. I just got lucky." He said, "If we're going to build something for group and family travel, we're going to build it from the ground up with all of these things in mind." I'll give you an example. We have homes as large as 11 bedrooms, and they sleep 32 people. They also seat 32 people in the living room, and there are 32 chairs around the kitchen table. The kitchen island has two refrigerators because for 32 people, you need that. There's a double washer and dryer because with that many people and a longer length of stay, you need that. I thought, "Elizabeth, these guys nailed it. You failed." These guys nailed what they developed. I was so intrigued and enamored by living with and figuring out how to work with a brand like this. Unlike some things out there, which are usually owned by homeowners and then put into a rental pool, that's not how we work. We work just like a hotel. In fact, we own a Conrad Hotel right on the site in case you want a more traditional vacation. We have all the amenities centered around a 20-acre crystal lagoon. Literally, it's built for connection and togetherness. I told you earlier that I really wanted foresight as a superpower, and I love leaning into what the future could be. I think this is the moment for that. This is what the future of travel is becoming because we're more disconnected while we're more connected. We're connected like this, but we're not in the same room together. Those moments now in hospitality make this the golden age for us. I see this concept as the next generation of what travel can become. That's why I joined. That's why I'm excited about the brand. Steve Carran: That's great. And you've given us a few things that are part of Evermore Hospitality. But for those that aren't familiar, can you give us really an overview of what Evermore Hospitality is? Elizabeth Mullins: Yeah. So Evermore Hospitality is built for togetherness. That's what we're built for. And so we took the best of both worlds, the best of hotel worlds and the best of Airbnb worlds, and we merged them together. So Evermore Hospitality builds unique destinations, and we're growing the company, right? We have to prove ourselves in Orlando first. We're two and a half years old, so we're still babies. We have... And so literally, it is a concept that we'll take beyond the walls of Orlando that says we are experts in group travel. Not traditional group, like IBM coming, but group as in families, friends, and those travel parties traveling together, and we know how to build and create for connection. That means we can build architecturally for connection, and that also means that we can build experientially for connection. And let me give you an example. There aren't too many places in the world where you can walk in with a party of 20 as a walk-in in a restaurant and get seated, and that's what we do. We excel at that. So, in Orlando, as I'd mentioned, it's 1,400 acres. Seven hundred are already built. I'll give some approximate numbers. We have a 400-room Conrad that anchors one side of the bay, and then around this huge 20-acre crystal lagoon and beach, which completes this as a beach destination, there are three category types: villas, homes, and flats. Villas are two to four bedrooms. They are legacy villas from our Grand Cypress Golf days. We have two Jack Nicklaus golf courses on property. Flats are four bedrooms that overlook Evermore Bay, have the kitchens, the living rooms, et cetera. Your toes are in the sand in, like, two seconds. And homes are bigger units from six to 11 bedrooms, in-home theaters, slides from one floor to another, right? Great spaces. Every home comes with its own pool, its own grills. We do chef experiences for you. So it's really taken the idea of what Airbnb did well with accommodation size and space and pulled it into what hoteliers do well, which is creating an experience around an entire destination. So between golf, accommodations, a Conrad, a spa, and a 20-acre lagoon, we've got quite a setup from a destination standpoint. What's next is another 700 acres and beyond, so it's pretty exciting. Steve Carran: I think I found the next destination for the Carran family reunion, and I'm gonna put that 20-person walk-in to the test. Elizabeth Mullins: We gotcha. Please challenge me. We gotcha. Steve Carran: Awesome. I love it. I love it. So one thing you mentioned earlier in our conversation was relational wellness. Can you define what that is and what inspired your team to develop that? Elizabeth Mullins: Yeah. I go back to residential hospitality, the inspiration to actually be designed for, quote, unquote, "group travel," which we are. So that's designed and that's in place. A lagoon is a magnet for togetherness. We knew that we were designing for a gap in the market, but the construction of Evermore started before the pandemic. It opened on January 1, 2024. It had already started. After the pandemic, these incredible stats emerged, and the stats basically said one in six people in the world suffer from loneliness. The stats said that being lonely is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It lowers your lifespan if you're lonely. It comes up in markers in your blood work. And so literally, we've now built something for togetherness, except we don't fully understand how we can do more. All we know is we have a concept, and we know that one of the fastest-growing trends in hospitality is wellness, is the wellness space. And we know that this sounds like wellness to us, but we're not scientists, so we need someone to help us along our journey to determine what this means. Is this a thing? The stats are saying it's a thing. So we engaged with the world's foremost social scientist. Her name is Kasley Killam. And we asked her a question. We said, "We see it. We know that you just went to the World Health Organization. We know that we saw in our research that you had the World Health Organization name social wellbeing as another pillar under wellness." That just happened a few months ago. That hasn't been long. And so we said, "Kasley, can you come out and say, 'Is Evermore a place for social wellness, what we call relational wellness?'" And she was a little skeptical, and she's like, "Yeah, sure. I'll come and see." And I said, "Well, we were built for togetherness." And she said, "You know, my Harvard thesis was on building places for togetherness." Now I'm nervous that she's coming out, right? Because she could go left and I'm going right. But she comes to visit, and I take her to dinner after night one, and she said, "Elizabeth, I feel this. I feel this connection. I can actually see that you're built for togetherness. Your homes, your flats, your villas. The bay is the anchor point. How large it is to fit all those people, and even in the restaurant where we can walk in and get a reservation for 20. This is highly unusual." And I'm like, "Okay. Well, can we do something together?" And again, she paused and said, "You know, I'm a scientist, so let me think about it." But she came back and we shook hands not too long ago, about a month and a half ago, cementing a deal between us. And what she's going to help us with is making sure that every single thing we do starts with togetherness first. So I'll tell you something. The first thing we did together is take a look at all of our programming, and she said, "Elizabeth, is all of this programming inspired by togetherness? Were you intentional when you developed this program?" And I had to say, "We weren't at the time. Some of it we lucked into, and it was about togetherness, but some of it we clearly need to redo." So we'll redo every single element of our programming. We're about 70% there, to make sure we've leaned into this concept of togetherness. The next thing she said was, "What about your own employees? What are you doing for relational wellness with them?" And I said, "Well, our culture is built on togetherness. It's what we talk about. It's our purpose." She said, "Let's do a little research on that. Let's look at hospitality specifically." And I challenged Kasley, "Let's do a little research, and let's see what it says." And I said, "Hospitality people, they're gregarious. They're outgoing. They don't suffer from loneliness like everybody else does. That's why they travel into hotels." You know what came back? Hospitality actually has a larger population of loneliness than the general population. And you know why? Because we deplete ourselves. Our whole role is to give our energy to everybody else, to make sure that they're having a great time. And then we go home, and we just have to curl up in a ball and say, "I need to recharge for a minute before I go and do it again." And I am the most outgoing person out there, but when she said that to me, I'm like, "I do that sometimes." I do. If I'm honest, I do. And she said, "Are you lonely?" And I said, "I never thought of myself as lonely, but I think sometimes I am." And she said, "Okay, so what are we gonna do for the employees?" And so my people and culture team and I met for weeks, and we took everything from the moment a job is posted, to the moment of the first hire, to the moment of onboarding, to 30 days after you start, to our recognition programs, to measuring it through a cultural survey. Every bit of that has relational wellness woven in. And I don't know that I would've thought to do that without a scientist pressing me to do that, because I simply don't think like that. And so that's what relational wellness is. I do think it matters because, as I said before, we're living in a very interconnected world. We spend more time together online through text, through social, and we spend less time actually together. And Steve, you mentioned something important because you said, "I think I might have found a place for my family reunion." You're thinking about your family reunion because you want to be together with people. That's why you're thinking about it. And so imagine, I just look and go, what if one family, just one family today, leaves Evermore and says, "We enjoyed dining around our home table every single night during the vacation. We're gonna make it a rule that we're gonna have Sunday night supper all together. The rest of the week, we get it. It's gonna be crazy. But that one night is the time we're gonna sit down together as a family." That one thing is going to matter as we get more disconnected through AI and all of the other attributes that are happening right now. Travel is entering this golden era where people will travel to be connected again. It's why we're seeing the events business blow up in front of us. Think about it. It's because people are going to events so they actually get energy from people. Steve Carran: Yeah. Elizabeth Mullins: And so that's really what relational wellness is and why I'm passionate about it, because I really do think it matters. Steve Carran: Agree. Agree. David Millili: And so what does that... It's all very fascinating, and Steve will be there with 19 other people. What does it look like? I get the concept, but in practice, what does it really look like? The relational wellness. Maybe some samples, or what does that look like in the nitty-gritty a little bit? Elizabeth Mullins: Sure. And so one of the things I told you, we're reprogramming everything, right? So if we're a concept about togetherness, we need to own Thanksgiving. Evermore, the holiday of Thanksgiving, should belong to Evermore. And so literally, we've been spending the last three weeks or so asking, what does a three-night journey at Evermore look like so there is some transformation at the end of it? Instead of what you typically do, which is plug in a bunch of activities to keep people busy—I mean, that's what I always did, if I'm honest—you plug in these things. Maybe you have a special brunch or something on Thanksgiving, whatever. But now we look at it and go, how does this interweave and interconnect so that you can be transformed at the end? And so instead of just doing random stuff to make people happy because it's something for everyone, we actually said what we really want to anchor on is togetherness. So whether it is the little Thanksgiving parade where people decorate their golf carts and families show up, and we give out the balloons, and they march down Evermore Street, those little things, everything was done intentionally with togetherness as the end goal. And literally, when you start doing every single activity and part of the programming about togetherness, you will transform because you're just so focused on what that looks like. So we've added things like a tree-planting ceremony. If you want to plant your family tree, you can do that at Evermore. We'll take pictures of it every single year, and you can watch your roots grow. Now, wink, wink, nod, nod, I hope you come back to see it later. But honestly, it's a moment of togetherness that you can still talk about as a family. Our goal is to say, as the father, the grandson, and the son are out on the golf course, they're never gonna remember who played the best. But they're gonna say, "Remember when we were out on the course at Evermore, and we talked about the bass fishing trip that we took? Then we cooked, and then we asked the chef to prepare bass for dinner that night." It's those kinds of memories that come back to me as a five-year-old and say, "If it shaped my whole adult life, this can actually do the same for families and for friends traveling together, and make them feel a little bit better than they did before they came, even unknowingly." Steve Carran: That is awesome. That is awesome. So one thing you said earlier, hospitality... I mean, we've always brought people together. We've always had events or things to do at our properties. But this sounds like more of a meaningful connection, and I think it's becoming more of a focus for hotels. Why do you think that's happening now? Elizabeth Mullins: I think for all the reasons I said. I think it's because we're more connected online and less connected in person. When you watch society going analog, vinyl lounges are crushing it across the world. I'm gonna open one here just for that reason. But when you look at that, you say, "Hey, we now need reasons to travel, and if we can travel together and reconnect as families, as friends, even as colleagues, we're gonna be better at the end of the day because of it." And so I think what we're seeing is that as more and more goes to AI and people lose touch a little bit further, people are gonna look for more than great service in a stay. I came up where great service was the Ritz-Carlton. "Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen." That's who we are. Great service was our hallmark. Great service now is table stakes. And so if you look beyond service, what else have you got? You've got memory-making, and that leads to transformation. And as a modern hotelier, I look and say, "How do you actually transform people when they leave?" Boy, is that hard to do, and it's a big, bodacious goal. But it's one we all, as an industry—not just Evermore—as an industry, should be working on. David Millili: That's great. And so, listening to you, I'm really curious. How do you see the role of human connection evolving with the whole guest experience and relational wellness over the next couple of years? Elizabeth Mullins: I think it's gonna be pretty tremendous in the hospitality space. What I look at is that AI is now going to be able to remove a lot of these friction points. And once it removes the friction points, hospitality will have more moments to actually surprise, delight, serve, enable—all of the things that we've always wanted to do. But on the back end, we had all this stuff to do that mattered for the back end, but not for the front end of the guest experience. Then I think what will happen are things like... I'll give you a New York example. So you go to New York because you want to go to this restaurant, whatever the restaurant is. Tons of people do this, right? The newest, hottest restaurant in New York—they travel for it. The new Michelin Guide comes out, they travel for it. So now they stay, and they're on their flight. The flight's delayed. They're in the air. They're gonna miss their reservation. AI will soon take care of that for you. So now you get to the hotel where you used to be scrambling to say, "Hey, concierge, any way you can still get me into this place?" Of course, if it's the hottest restaurant, the answer's gonna be no unless you go at 4:30 the next day. So AI took care of the hard part. It made it happen in real time. Then the concierge becomes the expert of the before and the after. So imagine now you come in. You're staying at The Fifth Avenue Hotel. You check in, and the concierge is waiting for you, saying, "I know you know this, but I, too, have your reservation, so that's all set." The concierge greets you and says, "As you know, your reservation is all set. What I want to take care of for you is the before and the after. On your way to dinner, stop by this little wine bar and order this. And after, don't have dessert, because the best cannoli in town is right down the street at Sal's. You won't find Sal's in any guidebook, but that's where you want to go." That's brilliant. That changes the whole trajectory of what an experience or a visit can become. Steve Carran: Agree 100%. So I'm really curious. We have a lot of hoteliers that listen to this podcast. What's the one thing they can do today to create a more meaningful guest experience through human connection? Elizabeth Mullins: Think about it. Don't just think about what feels cool or interesting. Think about how people will connect through whatever you're creating. That's what I was missing when my team and I were creating all of these things at first, and we're now going back to the drawing board. We did what we thought would be interesting or fun or even educational sometimes, and not everything was built for connection. Now challenge yourself so that at least two out of three of those things are built for just that. I think, at the end of the day, your guests will thank you for it. Steve Carran: I agree. I agree. That's great advice. Well, Elizabeth, this has been an awesome conversation. This is the part of the podcast where we turn the tables and let you ask David and me a question. Elizabeth Mullins: All right. David, I'm gonna start with you. Best vacation ever, and why? David Millili: I think the best vacation has been the same place several times. We go to Ocean City, New Jersey. I grew up outside of Philadelphia, and we'd go to Ocean City, New Jersey. That's where my father went when he was a kid. That's where I went when I was a kid. Now I've been there with my kids, and it even got to the point where they liked it so much—the boardwalk, all the stuff—that I asked my oldest son, "Would you rather go to Ocean City, New Jersey or Disney?" And he's like, "Ocean City." Because the family was there. My brother would stay at another house, and we had a house right on the ocean, so you could see the waves and everything. So it's kind of boring, and most people would think, "Why the heck would you pick Ocean City?" But it's kind of piggybacking on some of the stuff that you've said because I've stayed at much fancier, expensive four- and five-star hotels, and there's no feeling there. There's so much feeling in that little town that it's a cool spot. Elizabeth Mullins: I love that. We call that mythology, and it's why people go back to places over and over again. I've already started—everybody's gonna steal this now—but I've already started working on my 2027 goals because it takes a while to really think about those. Mythology is on there for the exact same reason your family went to Ocean City every single year. Okay, Steve, for you, what does it mean to be a modern hotelier? Steve Carran: Ooh, I love this question, and I don't think we've ever been asked it. You're putting me on the spot. I love this. I really think it's being open to new ideas. You brought up relational wellness, and I'd never heard that term before. I think it's being open to how your guest is changing, whether that's utilizing different types of technology or recognizing that guest needs are changing in today's age. It's about being open to that and not being stuck in your ways of saying, "Well, this is just how we do things." That would be my definition right there. Elizabeth Mullins: Can I ask one more question for both of you? Steve Carran: Absolutely. Elizabeth Mullins: If there was one business trait that you think makes a great hotelier, what would it be? Steve Carran: I think empathy. Not only empathy for your staff, but empathy for your guests. So many times, hoteliers deal with different types of people, and you don't really know what happened to them before they stepped into your hotel. They could have had the best day ever. They could have been in New York and gone to that Michelin-star restaurant. But often, that's not it. I think hoteliers have a really hard job. Like you said, they have to be on all the time, and it can be exhausting. So I think having a little bit of empathy toward your staff and toward your guests as well. Elizabeth Mullins: Love that. Agreed. David Millili: Yeah, for me, having worked every job in a hotel—I don't say that like it's an award—but I've worked every job in a hotel. I've run hotels. I've lived on property in New York City. For me, it's always been about curiosity because it touches on some of the things that Steve said. The curiosity of what's really going on over there with that family and the luggage, or what's going on with Bob at the front desk. Always looking at things through that lens. You can read TripAdvisor, or back in the day, a comment card, but that's too late if you're not curious right in the moment. The funny thing is, I used to have an argument with my owner because, remember, this was 1997. He would say, "You're never in your office." And I said, "Because there's nothing in there." I didn't even have the internet. I knew what the numbers were. I needed to be out with the people, seeing what's going on. That's how I'm gonna run the hotel. So that's it. That's all I got. Elizabeth Mullins: You know, David, we probably had the same owners because I had the same conversation. It's probably the same ones. That's what I'm thinking. David Millili: I don't want to go on the record saying anything else about my previous owner, so I'll take the Fifth. Steve Carran: Well, Elizabeth, this has been a ton of fun. We're going to bring in our producer, Jon, who's been listening this entire time, and he's gonna ask you one more question before we get you out of here. Elizabeth Mullins: All right, Jon. Jon Bumhoffer: Before I ask my final question, I want to turn that last question back to you because you've seen a lot of hoteliers in your day. What do you think is the number one trait that you see? Elizabeth Mullins: Weirdly enough, I always have two answers, and you wouldn't believe what they are. They're empathy and curiosity. I was sitting there with my mouth open because you both answered the two that I always do. But I'll add one more and say tenacity. It's a tough job. You've got to be able to pick yourself off the floor and go at it again. So now you've got a trifecta, right? Be empathetic, be curious, and keep moving forward. David Millili: We're gonna put that on some of the merch. Steve Carran: Yeah, there we go. I think we also found our third podcast host as well. Elizabeth, we're just on the same page here. This is awesome. David Millili: That's so funny. Jon Bumhoffer: So I'll ask the real question. That was kind of my cheap question, but... Elizabeth Mullins: I picked that up, and I tried so hard. I brought everything I had. Jon Bumhoffer: Well, you did. I felt it. I felt the tenacity behind that answer. My question is, you talked a lot about relational wellness, and that was the biggest takeaway I came away with. But I'm curious, are there any other aspects or things you're doing with Evermore Hospitality that are maybe different than your previous stops that you think are kind of in tandem with relational wellness? Is this a big push you're doing with Evermore that you think is different in the industry? Elizabeth Mullins: Yeah. You know what? It's interesting because we own the Conrad on the other side of the beach, and making sure that the destination is completely seamless is really important to us. I spoke about friction points before, but even though we're two different brands, the guest doesn't understand that. They just want an incredible destination experience, and we're spending more time than I ever have in my past really looking at the bigger picture of how we can impact each other in the right ways. Jon Bumhoffer: Makes sense. I like that. David Millili: That's great. Well, this has been fun. This has been another episode of The Modern Hotelier. Elizabeth, this is where you get to let people know about Evermore, how they can get in touch with you, and how they can learn more in general. Elizabeth Mullins: You can get in touch with me by emailing me at emullins@evermoreresort.com, and I'd love to take questions. But what I really need to pause and say is that you guys are amazing. I loved your questions, and it was really fun for me to be with you today. I'll be energized for the rest of the day, so thank you. Steve Carran: Us too. David Millili: That's great. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier, hospitality's most engaged podcast. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you, and we hope to be with you again soon. Thanks for joining us, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Mullins: Thank you. Steve Carran: Thank you.