Aliya Khan

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi. I am here with Aliya Khan. Aliya, thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?

Aliya Khan: Good, thank you for having me. It’s nice to see you. Also, happy birthday. I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that, but it is your birthday, and I love that I get to do this with you. I don’t love that you have to work on your birthday, but listening to whoever’s listening, she shouldn’t be working on her birthday.

SSR: Well, thank you. Well, it’s fun to do this with you on my birthday, so, all right. So, we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

AK: I grew up everywhere. So my father used to work for Exxon, and those were the days of the glorious expat packages when people got to move around the world and take their families with them. So I lived in Hong Kong, then we came to Houston, then I went to Singapore. And when I was 10 years old, he decided that he wanted my sister and I to grow up in Pakistan, which is where we’re originally from. Because he said my kids need to learn how to speak their native language and they need to know their grandmothers and they need to not be these complete foreigners when they go home. So when I was 10 years old, I went back to Pakistan and lived there for 10 years before I came to college in the United States. So genuinely, when I say all over the place, I wasn’t kidding.

SSR: So how did that influence you today, moving around and then spending formative years in Pakistan? And also, what was it like? You didn’t know the language, so did you have to learn it completely when you got there?

AK: Yes. So, two things. To answer both questions, I think the moving around at an early age just set this tone for showing you how easy it is to move and how normal it is, and it demystified things at a very early age of just like, oh, this is what it means to pack a suitcase and go, or this is what it means to pack a box and go. And I remember seeing my mother do it, and packing and unpacking, and she made it look easy, which now as an adult I know is absolutely not easy, particularly not with two children, but I think it just creates this sense of just like you do what you do, and there’s always adventure, and there’s always opportunity on the other side. And I think that that’s something that stayed with me now, and I am very grateful for it.

I think the language thing was fascinating because yes, I show up in this new school and everything was in English, but I had to take Urdu class, and I literally had to start from kindergarten grade Urdu. And I had straight A’s, and then I had a D in this one class, and I had to be tutored. And it was rough. It was rough. I was recently paid a compliment though, and I was told that I had very good Urdu. And I attribute that fast-forward to working as an architect there. And when you work with tradespeople, contractors and tile layers and bricklayers, they don’t speak English. And so somewhere along the way, I was able to make up for the deficiency, but it was a little rough there when you’re 10 years old and you had no idea what was going on and you had to figure it out.

SSR: And what did you learn from your parents too? I know they were very influential in your life.

AK: I think they’ve always been people who’ve tried to teach us through experience. They would always put things in our plate and say, “Eat it, try it once, don’t say no.” They always wanted us to travel. It wasn’t always fancy travel, it wasn’t always elaborate travel, but it was always interesting travel. They always wanted us to see things. I remember as a child, I was so young, and my sister was even younger. I think she was maybe even still in diapers, but she was this little thing, and she kept up. And walking in Paris and walking in cities and holding their hands and just walking and seeing things. I remember being taken to museums and art galleries. And it’s funny because now when I go and I travel, that’s what I do, is I walk. And you’ve seen the meme of the person who walks 20,000 steps on vacation. That’s me.

And I think it’s just learned behavior that’s started as a child and it’s like how I like to experience new places. And I think came from that. They always wanted us to walk, they always wanted us to see things. They always wanted us to try things. It was everywhere, all over. And I think those things that you experienced as a child certainly stay with you and become a part of who you are. And it’s interesting to me now also because when my sister travels with her children, the kids tell me how, I asked them, they just went to Turkey. I was like, “What did you do?” And they’re like, “Oh, we walked everywhere and we did this.” And I was like, ‘Sounds familiar.” So there’s clearly something about childhood behaviors and things that you learn from your parents that we all carry through. And I’m so grateful for it because they certainly demystified travel at a young age and gave me the confidence to want to do this and try new things and go to new places and not say no to anything.

SSR: Yeah. Which is great to learn early on. Were you creative as a kid? Was there any inkling that design would be your career path?

AK: I don’t know. I know that I spent a lot of time drawing. There was definitely a lot of that. I think some of it was also we’d get taken everywhere with our parents, and it was always like, here’s my coloring book and crayons. And they went everywhere with me. And that was like, you sit, and that’s what you did. Now I laugh, I see kids with their iPads, and I’m like, well, my iPad was the coloring book or the craft paper and crayons. And it was constantly that.

I do remember, and I was telling somebody this recently, I thought, also being South Asian, there was a moment in time where it was like, “Oh, you’ve got to be a doctor. You have to be a doctor.” And I didn’t want to be a doctor, doctor, but I had this fascination with plastic surgery. And now I laugh, because of course, when it got down to pre-med, I was like, “No way. I’m not doing this.” Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. But the fact that I think I picked plastic surgery makes me laugh now. Like, “Okay, I see a parallel here.”

SSR: Trying to fix it.

AK: Or try and make change something. I can’t say make it better, but certainly try and change something. So I think there’s some truth to maybe earlier things. I also think there you have to believe. If you are constantly looking at art as a child and constantly being shown buildings and constantly being exposed to, whether it’s your own culture, because we do come from a culture of color and textile and pattern, all of it had to have landed somewhere. Now again, I am one of two siblings. And my sister is not a designer. She will tell you she’s not creative. She is a mathematical genius. I am not. So who’s to say how all of that early exposure actually gets divided, but-

SSR: Very true.

AK: You’ll have to tell us when your three grow up, who gets what.

SSR:  I mean, it’s funny to watch siblings. I mean, my sister and I are the same way. We’re complete opposites. She does back end programming for healthcare trials. And I’m like, “What?” I couldn’t stare at that spreadsheet. I would die. So it’s really interesting, nurture versus nature. But then you ended up going to Pratt, like you said, in the States. What drew you to Pratt? 

AK: So when I was in high school and time came to start to pick what I wanted to do, I knew that, at some point, I made the decision, didn’t want to go to medical school, thought okay, architecture felt like a good medium of something that was creative and interesting where I could actually feed myself, actually have a career. And I started my architectural education in Pakistan. And I came to Pratt as a transfer student. I actually first got into Tulane and thought I was going to New Orleans, but literally, at the 11th hour got into Pratt and I was like, “Oh, New York.” And sort of managed to convince my parents, my mother, particularly, that yes, of course Brooklyn in 1994 would be an excellent idea.

And now I laugh because that whole neighborhood is phenomenal today. And just the infrastructure and the neighborhood and what they have done from a regeneration standpoint is outstanding, and what the real estate is and public education, it was not that when I went to school. And for her to agree for me to go to what was known as Murder Avenue, Myrtle Avenue today, was pretty brave and bold on her part. But I loved it. I mean, I thrived in Pratt. It was this amazing melting pot of global influences and people, and it was a really open program because it wasn’t completely technically derived. So you had the opportunity to touch other disciplines and meet students from other departments. It was a range of faculty, and it was really quite the broad program. So did I learn how to detail a kitchen cabinet? Maybe not, but I did learn that in my first job, and it was certainly I think the right move for me.

SSR: Right. What did you learn there, though? Sorry, let me start that again. What did you learn there that helped you cement that this was the right thing you wanted to do? And what did you learn from those years in Brooklyn at Pratt?

AK: So the funny thing is that I think I was in my fourth year of architecture school, I actually questioned if I wanted to be an architect at that point in the traditional sense. And of course, every parent loves to hear their child say, “I don’t want to be an architect.” And it was like, “Oh, hell no, you’re going to finish this program.” But what I will say about that program is yes, of course I graduated, of course I went and I got a job in residential design and did that. Looking back on it, I think the part that I now am so grateful that I had was I did a number of courses around architectural theory and the writing of and architectural thought and thematic. I find that now, fast-forward decades, literally decades later, as we start to do work on design strategy, all of those threads and lessons become more and more useful in a way that I could have never imagined.

Because at what? The age of whatever, 22, 23, I thought, “How is any of this going to land? I’m supposed to go and build homes and understand concrete foundations.” And it wasn’t coming together for me in a way that I understood. And what I thought was the obvious path was something that I was like, “I don’t know if I want to do this.” But in retrospect, things happen for reasons, and one thing leads to another, and I’m so grateful that that was the program that I had and not something that was more technically derived because I am certainly benefiting from that early exposure today.

SSR: Love it. And so was your first job out of school residential then?

AK: Yep. First three years was residential architecture, which, from a structural standpoint was really good because that’s when you do learn how to detail kitchen cabinets and plumbing and all of that. And working with clients, clients who like to change their minds, and learning that the client is always right, and all of those things.

And then at some point, I worked for a studio that then started to take on more commercial work, which I was like, okay, this is definitely more my jam, working with brands that have formulations or perspectives on what they want. And I was like, “Okay, I don’t think this residential stuff is for me.” I have immense respect for anyone who can do residential. It’s phenomenal. Let’s just call it that.

SSR: Yeah. Leave it there. So how did you get drawn into hospitality? What drew you? You started with W Hotels back then, Starwood, now Marriott obviously, but how did you get there and what drew you to the hospitality world?

AK: Would you believe it was an accident? Actually an accident. So after working in residential for a little while, I went back to graduate school, and I was doing a master’s in industrial design. And while I was doing my master’s, I was working for an agency in exhibits and doing my thing, learning things. Again, common thread, learning what I like, learning what I don’t like. And I was getting ready to present my thesis. And I was like, I don’t think I want to do this exhibit design job anymore. And I quit. And everyone was like, “Don’t quit, don’t quit, do it” my dad was like, “Don’t quit.” Nobody quits till they have a new job in hand. Don’t do that, don’t do that. And I remember, I distinctly remember looking at how much money I had in my bank account. And I’m like, okay, if I quit, I can get through thesis and I have enough money to figure something out, to ride it out for three months. And if I don’t get a job in three months, then we have a problem. I also had a visa thing in the air where I was like, “All right, I have to get a job quickly.”

And so, I did what every sensible student would do, I quit. And I was talking to my friend’s boyfriend at the time who very graciously said to me, “Why don’t you just come work with my company for a little while? We’re looking for some temp help. We have a bunch of drafting that needs to be done and some space planning, and you can use the time to find a job. I’ll help you. This is good for you, this is good for me, this is good for everyone.”

And I was like, “Great.” Didn’t really know who he worked for, didn’t really get into the details of it. I was like, “Sure.” He said job, I need a job. This is great. Get a phone call the next day. “Hi, calling from Starwood Hotels and Resorts, I believe you’ll be joining us from Monday.” And I was like, “Yes, yes, I believe I am.” And I was living in Brooklyn, and she’s like, “Great, we look forward to welcoming you in White Plains.” And I’m like, “Okay, this is good. Got it.” And that was the beginning. And I went to White Plains to join the W design team. And that three month assignment became 13 years. And that was it. And once the bug bites, it’s a little hard to step away from, right.? And it pulls you in so many different ways. And now you look at it, and you’re like, “But nothing else is fun. Nothing else is this.”

SSR: And you’re like, so what were you doing for them? What were the early days at W? Because it was kind of still-

AK: Yeah, the early days was, and this was very early days, so a lot of the work was still done in-house. I remember we were getting ready to open the W Montreal, so literally Joan Cardy was purchasing it, Aaron Richter was directing it, and everybody had a part to play. I was helping on one portion, there were other designers helping on other portions, and so much of everything was done in-house. It was every piece, every item. And Barry Stern was very, very much involved in all the details, and he used to review everything. And it was that immediate level and that immediate connection to the product. And it wasn’t just new builds, it was always this constant upkeep around the existing product and working with GMs and this passion around what the product was.

Brad Wilson was in the mix. Brad was always keeping everything moving from an operational standpoint and keeping the product fresh. And we used to do stuff for Fashion Week in those days. So that was always exciting. So there was a lot of experiential marketing renovations, helping new builds, and then W really took off at that point and went international and suddenly got very big. And from that point on, I think the trajectory of the growth and the team also changed. And I moved on to help with the launch of Aloft Hotels, which was also a great opportunity because now you’re using a different part of your brain for W. You’re like, “Oh, I can spend $200 on accent pillow.” Now it’s like I have $200 for all of my accent pillows.

But it was learning something new. How do you create a prototypical brand? And David Rockwell, Rockwell group did the prototype. And learning how do you take this vision of a prototype, but make it scalable and at a price point that everyone can afford and roll out? And what the early days of that story was, and what we were trying to do. I mean, there was nothing like Aloft at that time. There was this very consistent classic courtyard brand with Marriott, but Aloft was the chance to do something that had a little bit of a design point of view. Little did we know that decades later the two would be sisters and really side by side.

So that was a different exercise. And learning that was something new. Then coming back to do more of the luxury stuff and helping with Le Méridien. Then Starwood had acquired the brand and Kemper has laid the foundation for what the brand strategy was going to be, and then helping roll it out globally. And then I helped renovate the St. Regis, New York 10 years ago. And now they’ve just completed a new renovation. It looks beautiful.

I’m so excited to see it in person. I mean, the photos are spectacular. I’m so incredibly happy for everyone who’s been involved. There’s some pretty great images. And I’m excited to see it because the building, if I’m not mistaken, is 1904. And how do you take this classic New York icon and position it into this new world of luxury? And I understood what that meant 10 years ago. And look at where we as a culture and a civilization are today, and what luxury means today, and who the new luxury traveler is. So I’m really pleased for everyone, and I’m looking forward to seeing that. But 10 years ago, it was a different assignment. We piloted the Bentley Suites effort, and I got to work with. That was the first time I got to work with Margaret and Ben.

So it’s also, as you hear me, what we get to do in hospitality is so much fun. It is like this group, these group of family. And it is these people and these partners, and it’s all these stories of partnerships. And when you look back, every milestone is a story about a partnership. And there are people that you work with early. There are people that you work with later. They are people that you get to rework with, and there are things you get to revisit. I helped launch Aloft. And then when I did join Marriott, one of the first assignments that I had was to relook at Aloft so many years later. I mean, how often do you get to look at something you worked on and then determine the next steps? And who do you blame for the failings? No one, you and yourself. You’re like, “Who did that?” And you’re like, “Oh. Me. That was me.”

And it’s funny and it’s humbling and it’s educational, but it’s fun. It’s fun. So sometimes the stories come full circle and then they continue on a path, and it is this world. And just being able to be a part of those stories, is pretty fantastic.

SSR: Yeah, no, I was thinking as you were talking, Kemper Hyers, Brad Wilson, David Rockwell, Margaret McMahon, all the amazing people that you’ve got to work with in your career must keep you, as you were saying, it’s the partnerships and the collaborations, but also it must keep you inspired too because you get to work. I mean, you’re brilliant and creative, but also to riff off with these other creatives that are helping change what the industry looks at year after year.

AK: And the things that you learn from people like that. I was lucky enough to partner with Lauren Rottet on the new. It’s not even new, it’s now four years old, but the Marriott at our headquarters, and that was a project that I helped on during COVID, and I had never gotten to do a project with Lauren. And so, being able to listen to her thought process and how she develops things. And we were sitting in a room one day, imagine there were many people in a room all with masks, and we were talking about a carpet design. And the carpet design just wasn’t landing. And she was so committed to taking the narrative to the project and the relationship of the Potomac and Bethesda Stone. And literally, I’m not kidding, she pulls out this evocative oil painting that was very much all of those things. And then she used that oil painting as the departure for a carpet pattern. And it was done effortlessly.

And in that moment, you have that realization or you are reminded of how people have all of these fantastic references that they can pull out so seamlessly. And they aren’t Pinterest references. These are references from fine art, from architecture, from years of exposure and travel and experiences. And then they can pull them into carpet. And it’s that easy. And that is the beautiful carpet that you see today. And it was pulled from an oil painting that she was able to recall in that moment and use that as the basis to create something.

So you’re constantly learning how people navigate, and they’re inspired, and how they pull things. And you’re like, it never gets old. It’s always interesting.

And then last week, I was in Fort Worth, and I was able to visit another hotel that Lauren has just opened. It’s not one of ours, but as I walked through it, now having had the opportunity to work with her, I think I enjoyed that experience even more, just the art that she’s selected. And you see her handwriting, and you understand it. You love and value it even more. And that’s a gift.

SSR: Okay, so you’re at Starwood, and then you did leave for a brief moment and you went to NeueHouse, which is a coworking brand. What made you decide to take a leap or a chance with something else before we get back to you returning?

AK: I think it was a couple of things. I think at its inception, NeueHouse was new, it was exciting, it was novel. Again, David Rockwell and Greg Kepper, they had conceptualized the future of coworking in a way that was far beyond the realm of WeWork. It was this additional experiential, highly programmed space. I think the emphasis around art and culture and architecture was really attractive. At the time that I joined them, there was a discussion or an opportunity around immense global growth. And I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And I thought it was time for me to try something else. And it just felt like it was the right thing.

The founders of NeueHouse were and are incredibly dynamic. They’ve now moved on to their next effort, and it is equally compelling and has nothing to do with co work, but some people just have it. They have that innate ability to find these incredible ideas. And being around the formation of something and seeing it grow into something, it’s like the business education that you didn’t know you were going to get. And I learned so much from that opportunity. And it was great while I was there. The thing I loved about NeueHouse is the spirit of NeueHouse is where do you come together to work and collaborate? And all of the people that I worked with in that time are still in my life. We still text, we still share resources, we still try and help each other out. We’re constantly sharing information. So-and-so needs a stylist, “Hey, talk to so-and-so you need this, you should do this.” “Oh, you’re looking for a gig? Why don’t you talk to so-and-so?”

And so, the fundamental ethos of NeueHouse is something that telegraphed to the entire crew that worked together at that time. And I think that that’s pretty powerful. So it was great. It was great while I was there, but I also realized I missed hotels. And this is a thing, sometimes you have to do something to realize what you want or what you don’t want. And I was grateful for the opportunity, but I realized that was my moment of “Who are you kidding? You love hotels. You can’t not do hotels. Hospitality adjacent is nice, but you really loved hotels.” I remember thinking to myself, “I miss model room reviews.” What an odd thing to miss.

I mean, there’s probably ask the person who’s probably in a model room to review today thinking, “No way. She’s a lunatic.” But I missed the process of it, I missed the science of it, I missed how different groups and voices come together to make something, and then make it better. And there was just something about all of that that I really missed. And that was around the time that the acquisition was taking place. And there was an opportunity that came up, interestingly, with two brands I knew really well, and two brands I knew nothing about.

So Aloft, Element, AC and Moxy. And I was also at that point where I was like, “Okay, I love New York, but maybe I should channel my inner spirit of childhood and try a new city.” And so I was like, “It’s D.C. It’s not that far. Try it.” I make it sound like it was so easy now. It was probably one of the harder things I’ve done. Because turns out, the older you get, moving and making new friends is not so easy, even for someone like me. But it was the right thing to do, and I’m glad I did it.

SSR: And so you mentioned you got to rework on Aloft and you got to rethink Element, right? It was out, but there was a bigger push for that extended type of model.

AK: There was a bigger push for extended, same model. It was also, you’re now in the position where you’re up against your sister brand residence in. So how do you make sure that both of them retain their individual personalities, they don’t cannibalize each other, and they both really sing separately? And just being able to push the model for elements so it grows and it adapts. And we are well over a hundred properties now. So just shaping it and crafting it a little bit more. The good thing about Element is that the original DNA of it was very clear and very strong, and we haven’t really had to tinker with that, which I think is a credit to the foundational thinking that went into it at the beginning.

SSR: And then AC and Moxy, like you said, were new. And then Moxy was a growing Marriott brand. So talk about taking something that was in place but evolving it, and then starting something new.

AK: Would you believe that Moxy is celebrating its 10th birthday? And just how this small European brand is now this very global, very present brand. And it’s got its own personality and it’s even grown up a little, but in all the right ways. I mean, we just opened Moxy Band with a Workshop/APD, and it’s outstanding, and it’s really, I think, going to set a tone for what that new sense of play is and how you can deliver a Moxy with a sense of humor that is past the flamingo and a little bit more sort of grown up.

We’ve got a great portfolio in Asia-Pacific. We’ve got some phenomenal Moxy’s in Japan. Barcelona is opening momentarily. We’ve got some interesting stuff that is cooking in the Middle East. So again, how do you take a brand like Moxy where you’re checking in at the bar, but then create culturally appropriate moments, so you can do all of that in the Middle East, but you might not be having a cocktail, but maybe you’re having Turkish coffee or you might be having something else. So you’re not going to a conventional check-in desk. You still have that spirit of play, but it’s like, what is that pull through when you do in fact open a Moxy in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere in the Middle East? So how do you create that continuum?

And that’s been really fun to work through. And I enjoy that also because it’s like I’m almost taking my heritage in a way and marrying it to a brand and being able to do the push and pull. And seeing this brand grow and evolve has been a real sort of, it’s a good design challenge. How do you push it into that next step of what playfulness will be? And I think for AC, Antonio Catalan had set such a clear idea around what this timeless brand would be. It’s almost like how do you honor it and make sure that you don’t make it too heavy, you don’t over complicate it? How do you keep it timeless? How do you still make sure that it hits the right price point? How do you keep…

Something that he said at the beginning, which I love is, and this is just one small thing of many things, art. He always says that you have to secure the art at the beginning of the process, and then design the hotel around it so that the art isn’t an afterthought. How do you take something like that and make sure that that’s still a priority? So for select service, that’s virtually unheard of, but for AC, it is still something that we prioritize. And to this day, when you walk into some of the better ACs, the artwork is outstanding, and it is because of something that Antonio established earlier on that we’ve been able to continue. And so it’s different. It’s different children, different personalities, and trying to keep them all true to themselves and not blurring and really being honest to that.

SSR: And I know when Marriott bought Starwood and everything merged and there’s all of a sudden 30 brands, everyone’s like, “Oh, is 30 too many?” But do you think, and I’m curious, because as brand strategy, do you think now you’ve been able to be more specific and more thoughtful to each brand because you have to be? I mean you always were, but did that actually let you become more focused, more who is this traveler and who are we speaking to? Because you needed to make sure that each brand really had their own identity. Does that make sense?

AK: I believe so, yes. That’s also how my brain works. You could probably quick fire and ask me, and I could rattle off for you. And I think some of it is us looking at our product. And even as you look at who the consumer is and who we’re designing to, some of it is even prioritizing markets. So which consumer in which market, and how do we influence brands that way? Which are brands that maybe we want to keep for business travelers? Which are brands that we think maybe we want to push more towards leisure?

So it’s all of those sorts of factors. And what are the levers that you want to amplify for some brands, and which are the ones that maybe you pull back for others? And then some just sing for themselves. Like Westin. Westin is such a clear, consistent story. If anything, Westin has been the one of how do you continue to reimagine what wellbeing is on the road and how do you keep up with that now that wellbeing is so much more prevalent in every realm of travel, and it’s far more common than it might’ve been 10, even 20 years ago.

SSR: And for those that don’t know exactly, can you talk a little bit about what your role is on the brand strategy side versus the project management side?

AK: Yeah, so actually let’s use Westin as an example because we’ve done so much work with Westin over the last two years. Everyone’s talking about wellness. Every generation, every psychographic is talking about wellness. People feel very strongly about it as they travel, whether it’s business, whether it’s leisure, whether it’s parents and their children, and what are their children eating on the road to how you’re sleeping to every component of the guest journey. So we can talk about all of that from a consumer desire standpoint, but then somebody needs to capture all of those needs and actually make them tangible design solutions. What does the sleep, what does the bathroom, what does this room look like? What does this mean for meetings? If you and I were meeting at a Westin, what would that environment look like where two people could have a conversation? And what would it look like when you have your next big HD event in a Westin ballroom?

And what are those in-between experiences? And what are you eating, and what are you drinking? And how are you working out, and how is that unique and different to any other fitness wellness offering out there? And so, we put together actual tangible design strategy, and we share it with our partners all over the world. And then they, in turn, build the hotels. And the thinking is that certainly what you might build in North America will be very different to what is built in Asia Pacific. And what you build in the Middle East will be different to what you build in Europe. Europe tends to be fewer new builds, a lot more conversions, adaptive reuses, the rooms are smaller.

So you have to take all that DNA, that design DNA I’ve taken, and adapt it for a European market differently versus a new build hotel that you might build in Tijuana, which would be a very different experience. And the different design team would handle it very differently. Also, there’s nothing worse than waking up in a hotel room and lying there and being, “Where am I?” So how do you weave the local or that sense of place back into where you are against my recipe for wellness? And that’s where our partners who actually build the hotels, the global design continent teams, that’s where their excellence and their expertise comes into play. They take our strategies and they make it local.

SSR: And Westin’s a great example, but are there any kind of other exciting brands or strategies or initiatives that you’re working on right now?

AK: Yeah, we launched apartments by Marriott. We launched it last year. I’m like, time has no meaning anymore. I’m like, we launched it last year. We opened our first one in San Juan. We have another one coming end of year in Savannah that we’re incredibly excited about. We have one coming to Madrid. We have a number of them coming. But again, this is an apartment style product. You can stay for one night, you can stay for a whole year, and everything in between. But it isn’t a hotel. So it was funny, we were in a model room review recently, and we were talking about the guest room and the window shades. And your first instinct is “these aren’t blackout shades.” But then you also have to stop yourself and think, “Do I have out shades in my own apartment?” No. I have the ability to make my room darker, but I don’t have blackout shades. So what is a hotel expectation? What is a residential expectation?

And being able to divide what that looks like. When you’re in an apartment, you have larger amenities and you need a place to put your hair dryer and all of your implements. And you might be staying longer, and maybe the ironing board is bigger. And maybe your bags need a proper storage and they can’t hang out. And so, how you work through all of those design details and all of that is important. And you want an apartment to actually feel like it is telling the story of a location, but it isn’t a hotel. So it’s got to have that personality. What is the cup you’re drinking coffee out of? And I don’t know, you may decide to fry an egg. So what is that kitchenware look like? Maybe your friend is going to come hang out with you, and you’re going to make a cocktail. Or maybe you’re traveling with your boys, and they’re doing homework and eating breakfast.

And so you’re thinking about the multiple generations of people that’ll work in there and do homework in there and watch TV in there, while you’re trying to do a Zoom call. And maybe you’re eating leftovers, and maybe you’re drinking wine. How are you living at home? But how are you going to live at home while you’re in San Juan for a week or in Savannah for a week or in Madrid for a week? And it’s a different part of your brain. And that’s been really fun to play with. Even things like personality in a bathroom. It isn’t just here’s your white minimum white towels and things. How do I bring the local in? What is the touch point? How do you make it feel less sterile? Or how do you make it feel less only about efficiency and a little bit more like you might in your home. A makeup mirror is a functional thing, but what’s the personality thing? Adding those layers. So it’s been fun to work on some of that. I hope as more product opens, you’ll get to see it and experience it and enjoy it a little more.

SSR:  And I think it speaks to how people are traveling today, which, they want that flexibility, they want to be able to have amenities like a hotel, but have the comforts of their home. So it makes sense with apartments by Marriott and all the branded residences we see coming online. That’s-

AK: Correct. I mean, every parent I meet says, “Oh my God, thank God I don’t have to eat another hotel breakfast with my kids.” They’d rather have cereal in the apartment. And I get it. Makes sense.

SSR: Kids don’t eat that much, so you’re spending all that effort getting downstairs, and then there’s not something they eat or they’re only going to eat two bites is the most frustrating thing. And also, I’m so sick of eating on a clean queen bed. An area that sit and have multiple people in the room is lovely. So I’m all for it. Is there one part of the process that you like the most?

AK: Yes, I love the beginning. I love understanding the problem, the challenge. Who are we doing this for and why are we doing this and how are we going to make it different? And I love that early ideation piece of it because I feel like when you can really be thoughtful and differentiate there, that really sets the tone for everything else. So that’s my favorite part, that early story in everything.

SSR: So what’s the most frustrating part of the job?

AK: When you have to convince people who want to get to the end of the story before you’re done with the beginning of the story, where they’re like, “What’s it going to cost?” Or “how quickly can you do this?” And you’re like, “Wait, wait, wait. We’ll get there. I understand that this needs to hit this price point, or it needs to be this.”

Sometimes I have to write the first chapter to get to the last chapter, and it’s the way of thinking. And it’s using time, experience, and influence to convince people that if we are able to solve the problem with thought, with differentiation and with clarity at the beginning, all of those things are going to be that much better at the end.

SSR: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? Or looking back, what would you tell your younger self?

AK: That it is okay to do something and then decide that or admit that maybe I didn’t do it right or maybe I could have done it better. Or to acknowledge, learn from your mistakes, I think. I’m sure there’s a more articulate way to say this, like the intelligence of making a mistake. Don’t just make a mistake and say, I made a mistake or whatever, but it’s more what do you gain from it? What do you learn from it? How do you evolve it? And how do you know that by you making a mistake and learning from it, maybe others have learned something from it or you’ve learned something from it. And I think the confidence of knowing that no mistake without a lesson is a bad mistake.

SSR: What do you like as a leader?  How do you like to encourage and lead your team?

AK: I‘ve been very, very lucky. I’ve always had incredibly fair leaders, all of them, across the board. And I think because of that, I would like to believe that I take that. I know we work very hard, and I know that I ask a lot of the people that are in my orbit, but I hope that because I have been treated very fairly in my life, that I am the same to them. You’ll have to ask them. You’ll have to ask them. You’ll have to take them for drinks or something and ask them. But I think fairness. Fairness is the thing that I really try and drive for because it’s the way I’ve been treated.

SSR: And you get to see so many different things, through lifestyle and select service and the various brands you look after. What are you paying attention to? Where do you see, or what’s on your radar right now, and what’s next for hospitality? I mean, I know there’s no crystal ball, but what are you paying attention to?

AK: I think a lot of it is more the methodology of how to do things and how do you do things with a little bit more thought around the process. It’s a very small thing. Historically, we’ve always done renovations, where “Here are your hundred drawings, and here are your thousand specs, please go renovate this hotel.” And from Moxy, we’re piloting something. And it’s out there right now where we learned so much from retail, “Hey, you like this lamp, you like this chair in the table?” So we’re taking that web approach for Moxy and saying, “Let’s do some pre-pairing for you on this website and some pre-matching for you.” We’ve created some conceptual buckets and things, and it’s encouraging a designer to put their own fingerprint on things, but it’s also intended to be a little bit of a DNA guide to explain our thinking.

And so we’re going to try it. We’re trying it. We’re putting it out there. I have hopes for it. I hope it’ll get us out of this. Please replicate every little thing we do. I hope it’ll be fun because I want designers to have fun with this too. And maybe it’ll set a mark for something that maybe we can pull through for all the lifestyle brands, and get away from this heavy, heavy documentation around stuff that, there’s nothing worse than having a young inspired design firm receive our thousands of pages of documents being like, “I don’t want to do this. I want to do my own thing.”

Rather than, “Here’s what I’m thinking. This is our philosophy. Please take this and now put your spin on this.” And then when we line up the projects together, if the philosophy is clear, it should feel like a collection of Moxys, without being every single Moxy looks the same. So you’ll have to tell me how we’ve done in a couple of years when we start to see these renovations roll out. It’s that kind of thinking, how do we play a little bit more and change the way we do business?

SSR: So we always end the podcast with the title that is the podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way?

AK: Try everything. Try everything. Try everything. Because things lead to other things. You learn things along the way. And you may surprise yourself.

SSR: Yeah. Love it. Well, thank you so much for spending my birthday with me today.

AK: Thank you for having me.