How did you get into the hotel world?
[After I was in banking], I started MP Direct in 2004, [which handled] procurement for builders, developers, and hotel groups out of China. We ended up with offices in Australia, China, and the UK, facilitating the procurement and fit out requirements for in excess of 15,000 hotel rooms. We learned the hotel business pretty well.
Why did you want to start Tribe Hotel Group, which specializes in prefabricated rooms?
The hotel users of today have an appetite for something with a legitimate designer aesthetic but they don’t want to pay any more than what they would be paying to mainstream hotel brands. We had a solution. Cofounder Melissa Peters and I grew up in hotels and appreciated the opportunity to bring many aspects of the luxury hotel groups to the broader market at an accessible price.
What made you try your hand at something new?
I was never a big believer in a textbook education and thought spending much of my childhood in classrooms trying to understand algebra and Latin wasn’t going to help me in my post-school life. It turns out I was right. Challenging the conventional is something that I have done throughout my childhood, as well as my business career. We all spend a lot of our lives getting conditioned to fit the mold, which in many cases is not an advantage.
How does the company challenge the status quo?
Tribe stands out on its own in many respects; however, we have a secret weapon that underpins the entire offer: We are one of the few hotel groups globally with an integrated modular manufacturing capability that enables us to develop our hotels at a more affordable rate than our competitors. This reduces our construction costs and project lead times, and these savings get passed on to our guests. We see this as a true competitive advantage. The more cost effective the build is, the more competitive the room rates can be.
After Tribe Perth’s debut, what other markets are you interested in?
Due to our modular building technique, we need to find sites that work with our system. We have projects commencing [throughout Australia] in Adelaide, Hobart, and Melbourne.
