The Innkeeper Behind Palisociety: Meet Avi Brosh

Josiah: Was there an early memory you had of hospitality that, looking back on it now, was formative for you in some way and maybe led to the work that you're doing now?

Avi: That's a great question. I think there are obviously the formative moments in terms of when I thought that maybe I would get into hospitality, and then there's also, do I have memories of hotels or hospitality as a user of it, and how that impacted me.

My own personal experience, just before I thought of hospitality as a career or any sort of a career: we lived in the US, but my parents were European, and so we traveled a lot when we were kids. And one of the things that I thought was kind of interesting was we would post up at the same hotel every time we went to Europe.

We would travel to Paris, and we would stay at the InterContinental Hotel. I'm talking now about the 1970s. And we would just post up there, and my dad would use that as home base, and he would travel to his different meetings that he'd have around Europe. And so I really have incredibly fond memories of staying at the InterContinental Hotel in Paris.

It's like any other hotel that you really get to know. The nooks, the crannies, the style of service, the staff on some level, and the restaurants and all the different things. So I really have fond memories of that. And as a young person, I got to spend a lot of time in hotels, mostly in Europe.

And so I think, not that I'm conscious of it as a frame of reference for my work today, but it must. It must have some frame of reference that I'm just not connected to. In terms of getting into the hotel business overall, that was not my aim by any means. As I was coming up in my career, I didn't think of the hotel business as a career.

I was in the real estate development business. That was what I started in. And so I always thought of hotels as some magic that was for people that were maybe not in the real estate business. I always thought of it as a sort of magical concoction of things that were really not real estate.

And so I spent the first half of my career not really even thinking about hotels as a business line, and I really got into it completely by accident, in a very serendipitous way. And because of that, to go full circle, if you look at where we are today and where I started, you can tell that I did this without going into it with preconceived notions about hotels.

I did it in a way which was a little bit more about what I thought was interesting and how to go about doing it, using my business experience and my business acumen to inform the business side of the lodging, but using my own personal taste and my own personal judgment to shape the hotel in the way that I thought made the most sense. And so that's a very long-winded way of answering that question, but that stream of consciousness is what comes to mind.

Josiah: It's super interesting to me. I appreciate the story, because I am always curious about the early life experiences that shape people into the people they become, and the work that they do.

I think for me, the first property I stayed at in your portfolio was in West Hollywood, and then I had the chance to stay at your Santa Monica property and then in Brentwood. And I know from listening to conversations that you've had on other podcasts, and just observing your teams in each project, there is a unique sense of it being a portal, both into a neighborhood as a visitor to the community, but also into another world. It feels like a fantastical world.

I was on my run this morning listening to the conversation you recorded with Dan at Defining Hospitality a couple of years ago, and you were talking a little bit about moving from the East Coast to the West Coast. And it feels like when you pick up and move and have a new life experience, a new environment, that can change you. It sounds like that certainly changed you. But I feel like in hospitality there's a chance to do that as well, and it feels like you're very intentional with that. It feels like your properties are almost portals into these different worlds.

Avi: And I think the decision that I made when I decided to go all in on the hotel space was to do it in a way that was very proprietor-driven. I didn't want to do something that was informed perhaps by what other people did, although I definitely take references from what other people have done. I think everybody does.

But I had, I think, the presence of mind to try and let people into my own personal sensibilities, and I tried to bring to the table something that was very personal in terms of the way that the spaces were set up, designed, operated, the way that they spoke to our customer, the way they spoke to the business community.

I really tried to do it in a way that was just uniquely our own and not something that took a playbook out of what anyone else really did. Now, of course, there have been a lot of people that have done a lot of really interesting things, and I think you have to look at those things as a benchmark for how to do it.

And I think the reason that you've had the opportunity to go to a lot of our spaces, and for us to have the opportunity to do so many hotels by now, is because we are marrying this idea of a really sound business model with using design as an attraction, not really a business model. It's about creating a there there. It's almost like creating honey for bees. Our design is sort of like a leg of the stool, if you will, for how we want to attract customers. So I think that's probably what you're picking up on.

Josiah: It is, it is. And not a lot of founders are also the chief creative officer, or so connected to the details, but it's that maniacal attention to detail that I find fascinating. I think it produces a differentiated product. So I want to stay on this a moment. Tell me about the word proprietor. I feel like you're extremely intentional about using it. What does it mean to you, and how do you think that shows up as you lead the business?

Avi: I really view myself, to a certain extent, as an innkeeper in a way. Innkeepers sweep the entry to the front door. They're probably putting out the breakfast in the morning. They probably have to clean rooms in certain instances, and so they're involved top to bottom. Now, that's an extreme statement, and of course, at scale I can't really do that. But I really think about it in that way, where I'm trying to create a platform by which it feels like I'm there.

I'm purposeful about the way things are. And I am very purposeful about it because I don't know how else to do it. I don't really leave a whole lot up to chance. Obviously I can't be everywhere all the time, but at least from a placemaking perspective, it's incredibly personal. My name is on the hotels, essentially, and so I take it very personally that way.