ALIS Design+ panel: the draws of emotion, localization

LOS ANGELES — When Daniel del Olmo thinks of hospitality, he often thinks of his favorite Maya Angelou, who said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

“That summarizes hospitality in essentially one sentence,” said del Olmo, president and co-CEO of Denver-based Sage Hospitality Group. “The key to me here is when we talk about how hospitality is meant to be felt, it’s the difference between impression and emotion.”

Del Olmo was part of “View from the C-Suite: 2026’s Trends, Tactics + Takeaways” panel on the first day of the ALIS Design+ by Northstar conference at the J.W. Marriott/Ritz-Carlton Los Angeles L.A. Live. The panel included William Huston, founder and general partner of Bay Street Hospitality; Ben Rafter, CEO of Atlanta-based Hotel Equities and Springboard Hospitality; and Ben Rowe, CEO and managing partner of San Francisco-based KHP Capital Partners. Kevin Carey, COO and senior executive vice president of AHLA, moderated the panel.

Del Olmo said when he thinks about great design, he pairs that with emotion.

“When I think about these beautiful buildings that we all design, great lobbies and beautiful guest rooms,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s emotion. If people go there and they don’t feel anything than we’ve really lost the context of the purpose and of why we’re here.”

Del Olmo said there are three aspects of how hospitality is meant to be felt.

“One is clarity versus complexity. The second thing is bringing operations in early because ultimately, design on its own won’t stand the test of time,” he said. “Thirdly, the design of your place is a given sense of place by how people experience and feel it, and how they move and behave. It’s not just how [well] it photographs.”

Push for localization

Rowe founded KHP with Mike Dapatie and Joe Long in 2015 and the three former Kimpton Hotels and Restaurant executives have been focusing on lifestyle hotel investments ever since. 

“[It] has really been our focus for the last 20 years, dating back to our time at Kimpton and then today, as an independent company, over the last 11 years, working with a variety of different brands and managers,” he said. “We think the lifestyle hotel space is really the most compelling place to invest in the hotel industry.”

Rowe said there are a few reasons for that investment thesis.

“It starts with the growing demand for experiences… more and more people are seeking experiences. They’re prioritizing spending on experiences. They’re willing to pay more money for experiences. So, that’s an important part of it. The second thing is we have more flexibility in how we operate and how we invest in these hotels,” he said. noting that KHP’s properties are either independent or part of a soft brand.

Rowe said that can give owners a lot more flexibility versus having to adhere to brand-mandated PIPs.

“We don’t have the same brand mandates around PIPs. We do have standards we have to adhere to and we can invest our capital in a way that ultimately is focused on improving the guest experience, driving incremental ADR and we can operate more effectively,” he said. “That flexibility makes it easier for us to get a return on the investment that we’re making.”

Another area where lifestyle hotels have an edge, Rowe said, is in F&B.

“It’s a chef-driven restaurant that caters to a local community. It’s a separate bar, maybe it’s on a rooftop. Maybe there are other elements,” he said. “If you get that right, you drive some incremental profitability, but it’s really about the halo effect on the hotel and what you can charge for the rooms. So you drive incremental ADR through that experience… and you turn it into a great lifestyle experience and suddenly you’re charging $100 more a night, and you’re getting a great return on that investment. It’s a really compelling place to invest and create value.”

Rafter said he sees the appeal of the localization draw from a management perspective as well.

“Consumer demand has changed over the last decade, and they’re searching for localization. The tricky part is you have to do it right,” he said. “A lot of hotels that we see now is where somebody slaps something on that looks and feels local, but there’s not going to be a single person from the community at that hotel.”

Rafter said there is a challenge right now for big hotel brands to find a balance between brand-mandated standards that make their hotels feel similar and letting hotels also have local appeal.

“The big challenge is going to be for Marriott, Hilton and the flags to more rapidly embrace content and localization,” he said. “For the first time in forever, content really will be king moving forward. That phrase hasn’t been true, but now moving forward, it will be.”

Draw of hospitality

Huston said the biggest appeal of hospitality for him is creating spaces where people feel welcome. He said when his company was sold, almost half of his team transferred over to the company’s hospitality fund because of their passion.

“They were passionate about using the skill sets that we have to invest in best-in-class operators, developers and asset owners,” he said. “Unlike all the other commercial real estate asset classes, hospitality is great because once you’ve identified an asset, you still have to operate it properly.”

Going back to the Maya Angelou quote Del Olmo mentioned, Huston echoed his thoughts on using design to make guests feel something.

“We wanted to be able to create these spaces that impacted [guests] who might not remember what the color of the wall was or what the design element was, or any of that, but they see that it was an intentional effort to have them experience the space,” he said.