From Tough Mudder to Developer: Why Nature-Based Hospitality Is Creating Opportunities Now - Peter Mack, Collective Retreats

Peter: So Tough Mudder is like a muddy obstacle course that's kind of like running an Ironman or a triathlon or a marathon, but instead of just running and swimming and biking, we built these very elaborate obstacles and put them in your way. So it might be that you had to swing over a pit of water and clear to the other side or One obstacle that we put a lot of energy into designing was like this slide, this really intense slide that you had to overcome a bunch of fear to slide down and then slide through a massive wall of fire and into a freezing pit of water. It was cool. I got to be the head of experience and design there, and I really loved it. I had just left Starwood Hotels and Resorts. I knew that I wanted to do what I'm doing now, which is collective retreats, but it gave me a springboard where I could both see the value of harnessing beautiful outdoor places and outdoor experiences and also start to think about my hospitality skills. Now, as I mentioned, in Tough Mudder, we were delivering value by actually getting people to overcome painful, challenging, hard things. At Collective Retreats, we focus on just delivering delightful food experiences, wellness, and a connection to nature. So there's a lot of commonalities, but there's also a lot of differences.

Josiah: Well, people I know who have experienced Tough Mudder can't stop talking about it. And I feel that in this world where more people have access to more things, the ability to evoke feelings feels increasingly rare and hard. I'm curious if you learned anything through that process, such as leading experience and innovation at Tough Mudder. Was there anything in that sense of kind of making people feel things that you've brought into the world of hospitality?

Peter: Definitely. I mean, one of the things that was really clear was that by taking people who are really caught up in their very busy schedules, deeply connected to technology and generally living in pretty urban or suburban environments and bringing them out into the wild, just the amount of joy that you could create by making that accessible, right? A lot of people struggle with like, I've never been camping or I don't like going into the woods. At Tough Mudder, It was a little bit different because we were bringing them out there and helping them overcome fears and experience pain. With collective retreats, we've thought a lot about what People would want, we sort of give them the permission to come out into nature by creating a really beautiful space and really nice design and like a fantastic bed that's in a comfortably heated or cooled environment and really good food and beverage. And so I was able to take what I learned at Tough Mudder and see how you could unlock so much emotion and connection to each other, frankly, and to the place that you're in by creating really nice experiences that connect people to nature without extracting from it or bulldozing it or plowing over it.

Josiah: I want to talk more about collective retreats, because you said this is something that was on your mind for some time. It sounds like it wasn't something that just happened overnight, right? You take a little bit of time outside of the hospitality industry to learn about experience and connecting people with nature. How would you describe collective retreats for someone unfamiliar with it? You touched on elements of it. What's the business?

Peter: Yeah. So Collective Retreats... in the industry, people have started to call it outdoor hospitality, which I love, but it's really beautiful nature-based and nature-inspired experiences in the outdoors, but with a nice layer of hospitality. So we really focus on creating fantastic rooms, dining experiences, wellness experiences, and things that connect people to nature. And what I was mentioning before is that I have spent a long career in the hotel industry. And what frustrated me is that that model, by the way, I was at Starwood Hotels, which was a brilliant company. The people were inspirational, the brands, we were building the W brand, taking St. Regis from one to many hotels. It was a really exciting time, but after doing it for 10 years, I just felt like I was waking up in the same room no matter where I was and that I wasn't actually genuinely connecting to the place that I was in. And so in building collective retreats, the whole objective is to really choose insanely beautiful locations, design them in a way that is designed with nature and not to kind of pull you away from nature and to give people these fantastic experiences that really connect them to the place. And so like with a traditional hotel, sort of the old school formula, at least in the resort business, was to knock a bunch of trees down to kind of bulldoze over nature. build a big building, put people into it, and then have like a beautiful balcony and a manicured beach that someone rakes every morning. And I see how that's appealing, but we think that it's important for humans to like truly connect to nature. So for example, some of our properties have tree houses and you actually feel the wind blowing through the tree house and you can smell it and feel it and be a part of it. At the same time, you can kind of close your doors and windows, have heating and air conditioning, and be very comfortable. And so that's what we're trying to do through collective retreats is really connecting people to nature in beautiful ways that they either don't feel like they have permission to do, right? It can be scary to just go out into the woods to camp, to do it the old school way, but we deliver it with really lovely food and beverage and wellness experiences and dining and fully curated itinerary and all that stuff.

Josiah: I'd love to hear you talk more about that because outdoor or nature-based hospitality feels really hot right now. You've been at this a while. You just mentioned some of the areas that you're doubling down on, but tell me where, I guess, kind of the unique angle that you're creating and some of the differentiators you're designing and providing from a guest experience perspective.

Peter: Yeah, so from a guest experience perspective, in all of our locations, we really believe that food is one of the things that connects people to a place. So, all of our locations have really good dining experiences. And on the high end, it could mean like a five-course chef table side, hyper-locally sourced dinner where you, you, and the chef actually foraged for your food during the day, and you're helping cook it in the evening. On the more simple side, it could just mean local produce from the property as part of your breakfast, right? The blueberries that come with your yogurt were actually picked over there or came from the community or whatever it may be, but experiences that really connect you to nature and to a place in an authentic way.

Josiah: Got it. Got it. And what's interesting to see you building this business, but also launching the Conservatory Collective. It's very hard to run one business, let alone two. Tell us a little bit about the collective and what was the thinking behind launching this?

Peter: Yeah, so the Conservatory Collective is… Collective Retreats is our signature luxury brand. It has a very specific way of delivering on what I just described, and I'm happy to get more into that. We've just recently launched the Conservatory Collective, a sister brand to Collective Retreats. The Conservatory is a collection of nature-based stays and experiences in really remarkable places. It's both a brand under which we manage properties. We manage this beautiful guest ranch in Colorado, about an hour and 20 minutes outside of Denver, called Tumbling River Ranch. You may be familiar with El Cosmico. Liz Lambert created property in Marfa, Texas that's just off the charts. and several others. But it's also a brand that properties that are like-minded to us can join and benefit from our sales and marketing and a bunch of technology services and things like that. And so we really try and celebrate these like-minded visionaries, these founder types that have created remarkable experiences in extraordinary settings and where their nature-based hotel or retreat connects people to the environment and to each other the way that we believe in. And that's really the core of what Conservatory Collective is.

Josiah: Did I hear you right that through the Conservatory, you're managing properties as well?

Peter: That's right. So we've been at it for about 10 years and we currently manage, we have almost 10 properties. We're about to announce one or two more that we're managing ourselves. One of the things that we've found is that there are lots of creators, really brilliant visionaries in outdoor hospitality who have created a spectacular place and either after a couple of years have just gotten really exhausted and flabbergasted by being a hotel operator, which is just hard. And it takes a different skillset to operate a hotel than to envision and create a beautiful outdoor nature retreat, or who have said, we want to take this to the next level, either through being part of something bigger, through technology, through programs, through people. We have the best team in outdoor hospitality. I get to be surrounded by the most amazing people every day. And so we, over the last couple of years, we've evolved not just to manage the Collective Retreats brand, but on within conservatory collective, which is more of a soft brand to be able to manage these fantastic other locations on behalf of other owners.

Josiah: I imagine that creates a really interesting ecosystem because it's difficult to create a very remarkable property. But I would argue it's harder to manage and operate it on an ongoing basis because there's so many moving pieces there.

Peter: They're both hard. I mean, there's challenges to creating and developing beautiful properties. There's also really significant challenges to managing them. And I think they're both hard. But I do know that they take very different skill sets. It takes a very different set of skills to design something and build it from zero or from little as it does to operate it every day and do it with beautiful consistency and really satisfying high expectations and things like that.

Josiah: Well, let's maybe dive into kind of both of these skill sets. If we could, I'd love to talk about your Governor's Island property because it looks so beautiful. I see the photos. You really worked with the space of what it is. It's a really remarkable space. So I wonder if you could kind of walk through that project a little bit as a way to showcase how you think about developing extraordinary properties. And then we'll talk a little bit about the operations side.

Peter: Yeah, so first off, let me just point out that Collective Retreats is a B Corp, and we're really the first hospitality brand that's not just one property somewhere, but it's actually managing properties around the world and country to do that, to be a B Corp. And we take that very seriously, and it's very much part of who we are. And so, one of the things, we have a phrase internally that we say, which is, luxury doesn't have to be extractive. We feel very strongly about designing and building with the land, not on it or against it. And so Collective Governor's Isle is a great example of that. That property is just insanely valuable real estate. Instead of a 10-story building with 30 keys a floor or 20 keys a floor, we've built a collection of really beautiful luxury safari tents, really beautiful modular structures, and tiny homes that were designed to go with the land. So all of the materiality of the features everywhere we've put a view or a deck or even where you sleep is really carefully designed to deeply connect you to Governor's Island and to the nature of New York, New York City. People don't know this, but if you just rewind a few hundred years, New York City was this insanely beautiful forest and some agricultural, some farmland. And we've looked back at a lot of the drawings, frankly, and old photographs and things, and there's so much beauty to that place that's just kind of been paved over. And we've really worked hard to design with the land and with the place.

Josiah: Can you walk me through what that process involves? Because it seems, if I think about development anywhere, it's so complex. If I think about New York, it seems insanely complex. How did the project come to be and how did you think about going through that development process?

Peter: Yeah, well, it's a great question. I was really fortunate to, I always, when I started collective retreats, people would say to me, well, what's like your dream location? And I said, oh, we'd love to have a retreat in the middle of Central Park. Turns out that's a terrible idea and I can give you five, 10, 20 reasons why. But I was at dinner one night, this is eight or nine years ago, with a dear friend who worked for the New York, for the government in the city of New York. She worked on the Economic Development Council. I was sharing that vision and that dream and she was like, oh no, you have to look at Governor's Island. It's so much better. And sure enough, she and one of her colleagues brought me out there. There was a site that was unused that was perfect. It's now Collective Governor's Island. And I spent a bunch of time there. I camped there. I watched as people used the space, touched the space, interacted with the space. And it took a couple of years, but I pitched the city of New York that we should be using that space to connect people to Governor's Island and to nature. And eventually they said, yep, you're right, we should. A big part of that is that we have a core belief that humans, especially people that live in metropolitan, more urbanized areas, which as of I think 2018, over 50% of the population of the world lives in metro or metro approximate locations, there's just a huge need for people to connect to nature. There's been study after study that shows that our mental health needs it, our physical health needs it, our brain health needs it. In fact, one of my favorite researchers at the University of Utah, Amy McDonald, just recently released a new study on executive function in the brain and its connection to nature. It's a brilliant study that looks at groups of people and how well their brains work after they've had 40 minutes of exposure to nature versus 40 minutes of exposure to an urban environment. And we shouldn't have to be shown this, but the reality is, We just really need it. And so the city of New York had agreed and they said, we have problems with mental health and with people not achieving their potential. And we want to help use this. We want to help you and work with you to use this space to connect more New Yorkers and visitors to nature.

Josiah: That's amazing. I can't wait to see it next time I'm in New York because I think the proximity of it to everything, but from the photos, it looks like it just feels a world away as well, which is… It's an eight-minute ferry ride from downtown Manhattan, and it couldn't be more than a world away.

Peter: I mean, you just feel this insane… One of the things we try and do with all of our retreats, all of our locations, is give you a serious sense of escape. to nature and you take his boat ride from downtown Manhattan and you can just feel all of the worries and stress of the city leaving you as you travel across New York Harbor for eight minutes. You get off on Governor's Island and you're on 190 acres of beautiful park and green space in Manhattan. We have a Manhattan zip code on Governor's Island. It's wild. It's really cool.

Josiah: That's amazing. I wonder if we could talk a little bit more about your culinary program at The Collective. You mentioned this is a core differentiator. I wonder if you could speak more to this, because I'm hearing more and more people ask me, what are people, what are guests, what are travelers wanting in the world of culinary offerings? And as you mentioned, it sounds like very, very bespoke, high-end offerings, as well as stuff that's a little bit simpler. So I guess my question for you is at a very high level, how did you think about the range of offerings that you would offer through The Collective?

Peter: Yeah. So the collective retreats brand are kind of signature luxury brand. All of the locations have really beautiful dining. So, at all of them, it's a real full-service experience, and that's informed. I'm not sure if you've studied Maslow's hierarchy at all, but we take Maslow's hierarchy approach to both experiences and connection to nature. And what we found is that after you've satisfied the need to have a beautiful place to sleep and stay and bed, the next important need is really around eating and drinking food and beverage. And then, of course, we focus after that on wellness and connection and all sorts of nature excursions and activities. But we found that when people truly authentically connect to a place, and we've done a lot of research around this, that their food and beverage experiences tend to be really closely tied into why they've connected to that place in nature. And so we just have this insanely amazing opportunity that our dining room is the most beautiful places in the world. We've coupled that with our culinary team is fantastic. Each of our retreats has a brilliant chef who has both skills in fine dining, but also outdoorsmanship. They really know the local place. Like I said before, we often do food foraging throughout the day so that guests can get involved in where their food comes from. We just have a brilliant culinary team that loves being in the outdoors, loves connecting with our guests, really brings our guests into the experience and makes food a part of the place, not just a separate experience. That's the Collective Retreats brand. The Conservatory Collective, each of the locations does have an aspect of food and beverage, right? We believe that part of what creates the invitation to come and enjoy being in nature or connecting to a place is taking away your problems and giving you delightful experiences. So each of the conservatory collective properties have a meaningful food and beverage program. Some of them are not quite as intensive and involved as collective retreats, and some of them very much so are. There's a little bit more of a range.

Josiah: I would love to get some of your thoughts around people, because you said something at the Indie Lodging Conference that really stood out to me. I've shared it. They've shared it. It feels like it's been going around on social media in the independent hospitality community. And you said from stage something to the effect of what you try to hire is lightning rods or catalysts in the community. And I wonder if you could expand on that thought, because it seems the type of hospitality you're offering really comes down to the people. So how do you think about the right people to hire?

Peter: Yeah. People are such a part. I mean, you can't really… You know, one of the things that frustrates me in this day and age is there are corners of our industry where hotels are becoming a little bit more like vending machines. And that's just not hospitality. I mean, it can be thoughtful and it can be convenient and it can be well-designed and it can be satisfying. But to me, hospitality is really about how people deliver on beautiful experiences that kind of blow your mind and for us, connect you to an amazing place. We have just the most talented team on the planet. I've been so lucky to work with some of the people at Collected Retreats for over a decade, and I'm really proud of our people. People are everything for our experience, especially when there are less walls, right? separation between the front of house and the back of the house. There's less separation between your stay and nature. People provide the connection. I did talk about lightning rods. We operate in a lot of remote places, and sometimes it is seasonal. We have a property on an island in New York Harbor. We have a property on the side of a mountain in Vail, Colorado, tree houses in Hill Country, Texas. I mean, it really runs the gamut. And we've found that there are people that we sort of think of as lightning rods that really help both attract the right talent at our retreats beyond just themselves, but also really draw in our guests and make them part of the experience. And when you're taking down the walls, there's a much more intimate connection between staff and guests than at a traditional branded hotel.

Josiah: How do you figure out if someone's a lightning rod? Can you tell that in the interview process or do you have some other way of figuring that out?

Peter: If you find one of those quizzes, those batteries that people take to assess personality profiles that gets to this, please share it with me because we've tried a lot of them and there's no silver bullet. You can't, you've got to get to know them. And, and frankly, I don't believe that people completely blossom until they feel like they're part of a real team that cares about them and cares for them. And so it takes time, but we've been at it for a long time and focus on these really brilliant people from the bottom up and the top down. We have a pocket guide that everyone carries called The Collective Beliefs, and our north star is a life in service to others. I do think that you can, from meeting somebody, and you've probably experienced this, you very quickly know whether there's somebody who is motivated by a life in service to others or not, and that's the first thing that we look for. Then we look for things like empathy. all sorts of other attributes, but we all share the North Star of life and service to others.

Josiah: I love that. I would like to talk a little bit about your operating business, or the operating side of your business, because I feel like there's so much complexity to running places. And honestly, I've experienced a number of nature-based hospitality concepts, and it feels like there is this big opening in the market around just running them really well, right? You have a classic kind of hotel experience. You've also been in this business for some time. I am very curious: as you thought about the management services that you offer, what did you decide to offer and why? I'm curious kind of gaps you saw in the market when it comes to management or operations of these.

Peter: Yeah, so we offer full management, right? So when properties come under our management, the entire team reports to us. We take care of all of their staffing solutions, all of their sales, marketing, technology, finance, human resources, the whole nine yards. We think it's really important to do that. There are a number of players out there that if you want some good marketing technology or you want some good finance technology, you can find it. It's really the people that are the secret sauce. We have books of standard operating procedures and we have all these both proprietary and non-proprietary tech platforms. We have pocket guides and all the things, but the people are really what make it special and make it hum. And so, our management platform offers a full management opportunity. And we think that's important, really owning and manicuring the guest experience from the beginning to the end, being completely responsible for financial performance, top-line performance, bottom line performance, And making sure that it's our amazing people that are adding the touch is really a recipe for success. For the properties that are not interested in that, there's still a place, right? We offer the affiliate program, the conservatory collective, and they can have all the benefits of sales, marketing, and a little bit of the other stuff, but they're still operating their own retreat. You know, we have a huge amount of respect for the visionaries behind these places, and it's really hard to do what they do, and we don't want to Sometimes that is a big part of the flavor, right? Of what makes it special. And we don't want to disrupt that. We just want to help that. So that's sort of how we think about it. There are two options that we provide, and those are the two options.

Josiah: It's super smart because it feels like every business that I've encountered has a different set of cards they're working with. And so maybe their founder has a really strong network and they have amazing people and so they actually need more help with distribution and marketing. I am curious on that side though, if we could talk about the conservatory collective side when maybe they're running the operations but you're providing more awareness and that sort of thing. How do you decide what are the parameters for accepting a property or a business into the collective? As I mentioned, that's tough. There's a wide variance in all these concepts.

Peter: It's a really carefully selected group of properties, right? We won't just take anyone who comes, although we want it to be very inclusive and accessible for guests, right? I mentioned before that one of the problems with connecting to nature is sometimes it's scary or daunting, right? How do I just go into the woods and spend the night or the week? So we want to be very inclusive. The sort of carefully selected group of properties that are in the conservatory collective, we now have about 30 properties in growing fast. All of them at their core and in their DNA, they have to really embrace nature from both the location to the design, to the programming and experiences. And that's important. And we have some specific measures of how they, as a B Corp, we have some specific standards of how they do that that are very important to us. Accommodations that are inspiring, comfortable, and unique, so we don't have motels or 200-room single-corridor properties. The accommodations have to really connect you to the place, and that's important. Experiential moments that immerse the guests in beauty, especially in the beauty of their surroundings, and that hopefully inspire a deeper connection with nature and inspire the guests actually to become part of our army to protect those surroundings. That's a big part of what we're doing as a movement, and that's important to us. And meet several other standards. So the properties have five pillars of criteria: embracing nature, story-driven, the art of experience, crafted by visionaries, which I talked about a bunch before, and intentional and purposeful. And each of those has sub-criteria and things that go with it.

Josiah: Amazing. I wonder if you could expand a little bit on what a B Corp is. Maybe define a B Corp and then why set up your organization this way?

Peter: Yeah, it's a great question. Most businesses are set up as traditional corporations. A B Corp, there's actually a company, a not-for-profit that started out as the Rockefeller Foundation, as an arm of the Rockefeller Foundation called B Labs that has been around for a long time. They certify you, they put you through a very rigorous, it took us years to get certified, set of tests, inspections, standards to certify you as a B Corp. And what it means is that you have a meaningful mission and purpose that's not just profitability, right? So for us, it's about connecting people to nature and protecting and enhancing the environments that we're in. Um, and so for us, the environmental piece of it is, is a very big piece, but it also has to do with how you treat your workforce, how you treat your guests and partners, how you handle waste, how you handle energy, how you handle water. It's very rigorous. And for us, it was really important. I'm very fortunate to have a number of partners in our business that prioritize these things at the highest level, you know, above at times and other times alongside profitability and things like guest satisfaction and other aspects of the business that the bottom line. And so we take that very seriously and it's really a part of who we are in every way. And my take is that we love capitalism and it works, but there are aspects of the travel industry that have just missed the mark. And instead of continuing to kind of bulldoze over, destroy and extract We should be using hospitality, travel, tourism to connect people to beautiful places and help either enhance them or enlist those visitors on the mission to preserve them.

Josiah: I love that, man. It's fantastic. Before we go, is there anything else kind of on your mind or things that you're excited by?

Peter: I'm really excited by the fact that I think we're at a critical turning point. I actually think that I mentioned a whole bunch of really interesting scientific studies, but I really think that the world is starting to say, oh man, we've been missing the boat on connecting with beautiful places in nature, preserving them and needing them in our lives in a meaningful way. And it feels like we're at a tipping point. I mean, you can you can sort of follow all the way from the United Nations down to local communities where people are really starting to value this. And I think the hospitality industry has been a little slow to move. It's an industry that I love and respect, but it's become so standardized and not only standardized in the like sort of Starbucks sense of the word standardized, but also in the way that investment behind it works and the way that people develop and build and grow has become so much, this is what you have to achieve for cost per key. This is what you have to achieve for operational efficiency. This is what you have to do in terms of the unit, like the room or the room night or the guest or whatever it may be. And I think that by focusing on the value that's created out of connection to nature, which is a trend that's really picking up steam right now, it really makes for a better industry, better team, better people and happier guests. And I think that we're at a turning point right now. And I think you're going to see in the next five, 10 years that this is very real and that we make a big change and difference in this area.