"Hotels Seemed Like the Adult Version of a Nightclub" - Mike Baxter, House of Gods

Danica: I just want to take us back a little bit because I think it's really important that our listeners who maybe haven't met you or had the joy of hearing you on stage. You've gone from selling tickets as a teenager to bars, to rave culture, to property development in interiors, to hostels, to House of Gods. So take us right back. What is selling tickets as a teenager, what did that teach you about people, about demand, about anticipation? What did you learn about that energy before you even entered your career?

Mike: It's funny, we get a little bit careful here, right? I'm never careful. I'll always do controversial.

Danica: You don't have to be careful. It's Hospitality Daily, we say it how it is.

Mike: So when I was about 16 years old, in the UK of course the legal drinking age is 18. When I was about 16 years old, I was very fortunate to look older than my age. I was one of the few guys. I didn't quite have the beard then, but I looked a little bit older than 16. And I remember I would start going to the bars, often with the girls from my school because they could make themselves look older. And all my pals were like, hey, how come you were getting to go to the bars?

I just loved nightlife. From day one, my parents were both academics and scientists and I'm absolutely the black sheep. I just love the excitement of the night out, right? Whether or not it's dinner, a hotel, a bar, a nightclub. And the kind of getting dressed up and that entire sense of occasion that would come along at the weekends. And I also really wanted to get into business from day one. So I think economics was the only class I ever passed at school.

And I realized that if I was to go along to these nightclubs, which I knew were really quiet during the week, and tell them that I was from the rowing club at the university and that I wanted to run a university party, they might rent me the nightclub. I then also realized that if it was a Wednesday night and 800 school kids turned up, there was a lot of money stood outside that they probably let in. This was a different time of course. This was like 1993, something like that.

So I started this business and I would just go around and sell tickets to everybody I knew, and it was hugely successful because I had a very captive audience. And that kind of led into nightclubs and bars. I moved around a bit and around a lot of big nightclub nights and I just absolutely loved it. Nightclub culture was huge. I was very young.

I then kind of ended up taking on a bar. Which is actually an interesting thing. It was very easy when you were running around and selling tickets to nightclubs, and then if maybe that nightclub wouldn't work, you'd go to another one. All of a sudden, when you actually own your own venue, you realize that you've got your own Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. It's not always Saturday night. That was a painful learning curve.

And anyway, that developed into nightclub business. And again, a little bit too young, probably a little bit too young to be around that much alcohol. So the reality of getting high on your own supply is true. It wasn't so bad, but it was a fun business to be in when I was younger.

But that kind of moved into more of a property development career whereby, again, because we never really had the money to develop things, we ended up developing them ourselves. So had quite a strong understanding of building. That led into building a company that I ran with a friend at the time and we ended up doing some really, really big contracts. And I just became really interested more in the building side and the aesthetics that you could put into it. So that was, you could kind of see how this is developing from fun hospitality into something a little bit more tangible.

And then after a few years of doing the building, both for myself and for clients, I wanted to kind of get back into that hospitality, that customer focused thing. Most of my time was either spent with a client or with a builder, and I was like, much as wonderful, met so many wonderful people, it didn't have that same energy of new people coming through the building all the time in the way that you would have with a bar or a club.

Hotels kind of seemed like the adult version of a nightclub.

Danica: I love that.

Mike: Right, exactly. And then I could take this newly learned building skill and apply it. And yeah, started with a backpackers hostel still going strong. It's called the Baxter. Which I, of course, narcissistically named after myself because I thought that if it was good enough for the Hiltons, it's good enough for us, right?

Danica: Yeah, absolutely.

Mike: Never quite took off the way the Hilton did. But anyway, so it did great. And then I got the opportunity with a partner to do the hotel in London, which was the first real hotel we did. We knew so little about it that I remember after the hotel had opened, I was in a meeting with one of my business partners friends, who was a very successful hotelier. And he asked me, what's your ADR? And I just went completely white at the dinner table and I nipped off to the bathroom and I texted my brother and I went, what does ADR mean? This is how little we knew about it. It was very much fake it till you make it. And we did that and it was very successful. Then I moved on and created House of Gods and yeah. And then we've got some really exciting things for the future now as well.

Danica: I just love that, Mike, and I think for anybody that's listening, it's just a great reminder to trust the dots. You might not see how they connect, but looking back every career step from selling tickets as a teenager to where you are now, in hindsight makes a very logical step. It's just a great reminder to just trust yourself and keep going with what feels right, which I get a sense of. You are very emotionally led. You kind of follow with what feels right and makes you feel alive.

Mike: I think I touched on this earlier. This is my why. It's my why, right? I wanted to create something in the world that was House of Gods. It didn't exist. We didn't kind of listen, we borrowed from everyone, right? But the concept and the way it's been presented and the experience that you have is unique. And of course, people come along and do things that are very similar. But that is very honest in the sense of it was an amalgamation of my experiences and my why. But all I did was set the building blocks there and the foundation, set the fire, and then everybody else has really created what House of Gods is as a world.

Danica: And you guys have done so well. I mean, in a relatively short amount of time you've won so many awards, you've become such a big household name in that boutique hotel space globally, which is fantastic. You're opening your third property in Canary Wharf.

Mike: Yeah. Canary Wharf is obviously a really interesting one for us. It's a very different property. We've gone from Edinburgh is 22 rooms, Glasgow's 28. Glasgow was really when we first introduced kind of like real, a larger F&B service. So we obviously have this glass rooftop box. And then we've gone to Canary Wharf, which is obviously kind of it. It's wonderful the amount of attention the brand's able to generate as well by its location.

It's a big gold bus. It's a crazy building actually. It was, I think it was originally built for the arts club, so it's a giant floating gold hull. Stunning. It's incredible building. And we have a 300 cover rooftop that's kind of dressed like the Garden of Eden that has a retractable glass roof. So really, I'm really excited about the rooftop. I think there's something very unique for the area. I know there's some amazing rooftops in London, but I think there's something really fun about this one that we have there.

Canary Wharf is an area that traditionally I think people would've questioned. Obviously it's history and association with finance. But the guys there have just done such an incredible job of developing into this almost like little city in London where they, I think at the moment they're about 3,000 residents. There's gonna be 7,000 next year. All the restaurants are there. There's great bars. The shopping's fantastic because they are able to curate the experiences around the sites. They have all these things going on all the time. It's just so fun. I'm really glad we've been put in the heart of it.

And listen, these guys could have gone with anyone. Anybody would've taken that building. But they believed in a tiny little brand from Scotland. And they said, listen, we want you guys to be part of that story that says Canary Wharf isn't just X bank, finance about, it's a place that there's just so much to do. It's wonderful and we just honestly can't wait to get this place open because I think it's gonna be such a wonderful summer.

Danica: Definitely. Living in London, I never understood why Canary Wharf was so far. It was so close. So for any international guests, it's such a fantastic location to have London, all of London, still accessible on your doorstep. So I can't wait to come and check it out.

Mike: Not to do too much of a sales plug on the area, but the Elizabeth Line is the new line in London that takes you right there and it's like 10 minutes to anywhere and it's just so convenient. So much so, actually it was interesting. I remember one of the first times when I was going and looking at the building and I was thinking, there's the humming in the hang. And I stopped and had a coffee and I was leaving Canary Wharf at six o'clock and I ended up actually going against the traffic of people coming in and I was like, that doesn't make any sense. Because you would imagine that the businesses are clearing out, everybody's leaving. I was going against the traffic. I was like, right. That was the deciding factor.

Danica: Yeah. The people live here. We're ready. We're good to go.

Mike: Yeah. Exactly. People are there, they're coming to entertainment and things.

Danica: For dinner, like you say, there's a fantastic F&B scene there.

Mike: Yeah.

Danica: So Mike, I think a lot of our listeners have opened hotels themselves. Have built hotels themselves. Certainly worked. Talk to us about the delay. How's your sleep in the evenings at the moment?

Mike: I'm fine. It is kind of something that's out with our control. We unfortunately had a technical issue with the building, so we're now I think three months late. And we're at the mercy of having that sorted out and signed off and everything, everybody being happy. It's been very difficult because we're living in limbo of expecting it to open this week, expecting it to open this week, expecting it to open this week. And yeah, it's been a really challenging time for the brand because of course we have bookings and at times we're having to let people down, which is really heartbreaking.

But it is what it is. We try and make it good and we're just really concentrating on that moment where the hotel does get open. But this is not the first time we've been down a difficult road. If you get into business, there's nobody that gets this stuff easy. You have to inherit it to get it easy.

Danica: Yeah. And I've never found a hotel that's opened on time that's been special in any sense. So I think it just adds to the grit and the resilience and the vision that you're creating there. So I wish you the best of luck, Mike.

Mike: Oh, thank you.

Danica: We'll have to come back and find out how it's doing. So what I would like to know, Mike, is when we first spoke in our interview, we spoke a lot. I mean, you've had such a fantastic journey. You've created amazing brands and properties, and you really are this kind of creator. I see you as such a storyteller and you choose your message quite intentionally. So I want to know, let's talk about the future. You are entering, well, I think it's like a new chapter. We spoke about how you're more mindful about doing interviews like this with us and what message you want to share. So I want to ask you, with your authentic honesty, what do you think right now the industry is getting wrong? What frustrates you when you go to a conference or you meet people from the industry? Is there anything that you get frustrated about that you think needs to change fundamentally as an industry?

Mike: I think I touched on it earlier when I talked about the difference between chain hotels and boutique hotels. My industry, the industry that I represent and love, is boutique hotels. It's about experiences. It's not about an accommodation solution. I use hotels all the time as accommodation solutions. If I need somewhere to stay, I spend most of my life in hotels to be absolutely honest with you. I use them for different purposes. If I have a meeting tomorrow and I need somewhere, my filters are, does it aesthetically look good? Am I gonna be comfortable? And what's the price?

I believe that boutique hotels are purpose driven. They're about the essence of what hospitality is. And we live in a world that is becoming, we're becoming more and more removed from each other. Everything's frictionless, right? You can have an AI agent run your life now. You can book things so seamlessly, which is wonderful for certain things. So you're not spending your time doing things that are process driven and trivial.

However, especially with the way social media is and the way that we spend a lot of our time on our phone, that move away from the hospitality part is a real great opportunity for boutique hotels to really hold onto that human hospitality part. It's about, in a really digitalized world where you can be very lonely and everything's so frictionless and easy, it's about creating hotels. What boutique hotels do is they see people and they can provide a really incredible human experience. That's the industry that I represent and champion.

And I think that the thing that brands are getting wrong is that boutique hotels get seen as an aesthetic as opposed to a purpose. So the chain hotels buy boutique brands because they inherit a bit of a story and they want to roll them out, and it's an aesthetic. But that's not, that's just a chain. That's a commodity. Listen, I think you can have as many of them as you want. I'm not saying that by having multiple properties it's instantly a chain. It's just, what is the purpose behind it is what's really important.

And for me, going forward, I want to be involved with many new brands and create brands and work with people and brands, because that's the thing that really excites me. House of Gods attracts a certain type of customer, and it attracts a certain type of team member. There's lots and lots of niches and lots of other things that I'm passionate about in life. It hasn't just been nightclub and building. And I want to explore creating hospitality brands that have purpose in other areas.

Danica: I like that, Mike. And look, I think it's needed because I think 2026, certainly from 2025, we have seen a shift in thought leadership around experience, guests wanting to feel connected, guests wanting to feel authentic stays. But what I see is the data's there from the guests, but then the industry and the operators are approaching that with an ROI to guest experience. Like, oh, we can't just sell rooms and beds. We need to sell an experience. So I'm gonna sell a local tour around here, and this is my revenue. And it frustrates me. So I would like to know, Mike, when you think about working with other brands and giving them that essence of really tapping into what does it feel to come and stay at my property, and what is that experience, how will you kind of balance creativity, essence, culture with maybe the business demands of either scaling or the P&L account, spreadsheets? How do you kind of balance that?

Mike: I think it's interesting and I think it's because my experience has been very much bottom up and now I suppose to an extent a top down view. I've experienced the entire ecosystem from painting skirting myself to raising money or sitting in the great offices at Canary Wharf. So I've had this kind of very interesting view.

And I think that one thing that is of absolute critical importance is that you lay down the financial mathematics of a hotel working first. And I think that's where things often go askew, certainly with people that are starting a boutique hotel, which is their lifestyle driven.

Danica: Their vision. Yeah.

Mike: Their why, their vision. There's just a maths that has to work, and it is fairly fundamental. So to systemize all of those things and understand the tech stacks and all the parts that are gonna make this thing work, that's the foundation that has to be laid correctly first.

Then, I know branding experts talk about story and all that sort of thing. I think it's then extracting what you think is gonna be an incredible experience for somebody. Forget the fact that they have to sleep in a bed in order to stay there. That's fine. Then build that experience around that. But it has to fit into the financial foundations that you've laid. I think it's starting there and working out that way first as that full experience.

I think what happens in reality 99% of the time, and you talked about this, everybody talks about experience, creating experience. Well, the really bad end of that is I have a hundred rooms to fill tonight. I will put a bottle of wine in the room and call it an experience.

Danica: To me, that's a minibar upsell.

Mike: That's of course the ridiculous. And I know people do lots of interesting things, but I don't think you can start with, I have these rooms to sell and therefore I'm gonna add this on and hopefully it's not gonna cost too much to sell those rooms. It needs to start with what is the experience at that hotel?

Now listen, it might just be that the restaurant's incredible. Or like, we've put in a super mattress that you'll never sleep better than this. And that could be your story. It's like, we've created the greatest room for sleep systems ever. We've biohacked how you sleep. I don't really understand these words. But that's it. You need to start with something.

It can just be my aesthetic is better than anybody else's. It actually has to be better. It can't just be the same or different. I use this term demand sovereignty. It has to have its own demand on its own. So that's what I think the industry often gets wrong.