Andrew Zobler credits his antique dealer grandmother with fostering his love of travel and the hotel experience, as they journeyed throughout Europe on her shopping trips. “I learned to love found things,” he says—and when he turned his profession from the law to hospitality in 2005, he created Sydell Group, hotel ownership, and development company that he named after her.
As founder and CEO, he has redefined luxury with NoMad hotels in New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas; evolved the hyper-local lifestyle space with the LINE, which has properties in LA, Washington, DC, Austin, and soon San Francisco; introduced Freehand, a design-driven, budget-friendly hostel-hotel hybrid to the U.S.; and rethought the membership club-meets-hotel with the Ned in London, a collaboration with Soho House & Co. Next up, he’ll be spending a few months in London for the spring opening of the NoMad London, with a design from longtime partner, Roman and Williams.
Along the way, Zobler has worked with and learned from a revered group of industry icons, including Barry Sternlicht (“the most impressive dealmaker I’ve ever experienced”) and André Balazs (“he understands what makes a room come alive”). Other notable business partners have included hospitality trailblazers Alex Calderwood and Nick Jones, restaurateurs Daniel Humm and Will Guidara, and designers Jacques Garcia and Sean Knibb.
Pressed to name his favorite project, he demurs briefly before pointing to the original NoMad in New York. “Not because it’s better than the others,” he says, “but it was my first, and I was most involved in every single detail. In some ways, it is a nearly perfect hotel.”
As Zobler continues to define hospitality on his own terms (which equates to experiential spaces), he says he’s determined to stay nimble. “We’re less interested in looking at what everybody else has done, and we’re more interested in what strikes us as interesting,” he says. “We follow trends less than people might think. We’re not seeking to build hotels that are of the moment, but hotels that will resonate with people.”
The LINE Austin, architecture by Michael Hsu Office of Architecture with interiors by Sean Knibb
The LINE Los Angeles, architecture by Daniel Mann Johnson & Mendenhall (architect of record) and interiors by Sean Knibb
The Nickel Bar in the Ned in London, in collaboration with Soho House & Co.
The forthcoming NoMad London, with interiors by Roman and Williams
The NoMad Las Vegas, with interiors by Jacques Garcia
The NoMad Los Angeles, with interiors by Jacques Garcia
The LINE DC, with interiors by INC Architecture & Design