
I was recently on Ben Myers' Toronto Under Construction podcast with Ilana Altman (The Bentway) and Rob Spanier (Spanier Group). It was generally a discussion about what makes for great public spaces, how Toronto is evolving its public realm under infrastructure like the Gardiner Expressway, and what it means to design cities with people at the forefront. If you'd like to have a listen, click here. I hope you enjoy it.

I was reminded of this duality the other day while listening to a Scott Galloway podcast where he talked about his love for expensive hotels, and how he travels to hotels, not to places. This is a bit abnormal. Traditionally, people stay at a hotel because there are things they want to see and/or do in the place where the hotel happens to be located. Meaning they choose the place first, and then figure out where they're going to stay after.
But there is also a statistically significant percentage of travellers who work in the opposite direction. Scott seems to be one of them. Now, his examples were all at the highest end of the spectrum, and that makes intuitive sense. If your M.O. is to travel to hotels, and you're kind of agnostic to place, then presumably the hotels are going to be super nice. But I don't think this market segment only exists at the very top. I don't stay at the same kind of hotels as Scott, but I still love hotels.
One example that I have talked about before is Tuba Club in the south of Marseille. Bianca and I stayed here a few summers ago. We read somewhere that it was about to open, we loved the vibe, and so we organized our travel itinerary just so we could stay there. We ended up loving Marseille (so much so that we went back), but Tuba came first. It was the catalyst.
A local example I can give is the Drake Devonshire in Prince Edward County, Ontario. When it opened in 2014, "The County" was not on my radar. Maybe I had been there as a kid? I don't know. But as soon as it opened, I wanted to go, as did many others judging by the lack of room availability. The design by John Tong was a hospitality offering that just wasn't available in the rest of southern Ontario at the time.
This is a powerful position to be in for a hotel. Because it means that through some magical combination of design, brand, service, and experience, you have a product that people
Matthew Slutsky (formerly of BuzzBuzzHome fame and now of Livabl fame) recently invited me on his podcast to talk about some of our current and upcoming condominium projects, as well as about the market in general.
Despite my best attempts, I only briefly talk about NFTs and crypto (in the context of our One Delisle project). So if any of you are sick of hearing that from me, the episode should be overall fairly tolerable.
To have a listen, click here. It's about 30 minutes.
Thanks again for having me, Matthew.

I was recently on Ben Myers' Toronto Under Construction podcast with Ilana Altman (The Bentway) and Rob Spanier (Spanier Group). It was generally a discussion about what makes for great public spaces, how Toronto is evolving its public realm under infrastructure like the Gardiner Expressway, and what it means to design cities with people at the forefront. If you'd like to have a listen, click here. I hope you enjoy it.

I was reminded of this duality the other day while listening to a Scott Galloway podcast where he talked about his love for expensive hotels, and how he travels to hotels, not to places. This is a bit abnormal. Traditionally, people stay at a hotel because there are things they want to see and/or do in the place where the hotel happens to be located. Meaning they choose the place first, and then figure out where they're going to stay after.
But there is also a statistically significant percentage of travellers who work in the opposite direction. Scott seems to be one of them. Now, his examples were all at the highest end of the spectrum, and that makes intuitive sense. If your M.O. is to travel to hotels, and you're kind of agnostic to place, then presumably the hotels are going to be super nice. But I don't think this market segment only exists at the very top. I don't stay at the same kind of hotels as Scott, but I still love hotels.
One example that I have talked about before is Tuba Club in the south of Marseille. Bianca and I stayed here a few summers ago. We read somewhere that it was about to open, we loved the vibe, and so we organized our travel itinerary just so we could stay there. We ended up loving Marseille (so much so that we went back), but Tuba came first. It was the catalyst.
A local example I can give is the Drake Devonshire in Prince Edward County, Ontario. When it opened in 2014, "The County" was not on my radar. Maybe I had been there as a kid? I don't know. But as soon as it opened, I wanted to go, as did many others judging by the lack of room availability. The design by John Tong was a hospitality offering that just wasn't available in the rest of southern Ontario at the time.
This is a powerful position to be in for a hotel. Because it means that through some magical combination of design, brand, service, and experience, you have a product that people
Matthew Slutsky (formerly of BuzzBuzzHome fame and now of Livabl fame) recently invited me on his podcast to talk about some of our current and upcoming condominium projects, as well as about the market in general.
Despite my best attempts, I only briefly talk about NFTs and crypto (in the context of our One Delisle project). So if any of you are sick of hearing that from me, the episode should be overall fairly tolerable.
To have a listen, click here. It's about 30 minutes.
Thanks again for having me, Matthew.
And if you get it right, there's the opportunity that people will even choose you over place.
Update: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that John Tong had passed away. John unfortunately had a severe stroke, but he did not pass away. Sorry, my mistake, John!
Cover photo by Toni Osmundson on Unsplash
And if you get it right, there's the opportunity that people will even choose you over place.
Update: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that John Tong had passed away. John unfortunately had a severe stroke, but he did not pass away. Sorry, my mistake, John!
Cover photo by Toni Osmundson on Unsplash
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