Safe Haus
Exploring hospitality with an outside perspective – where curiosity and technology meet
A few years ago, I had a friend who was considering getting an MBA. It was something I'd never really thought about before—MBA programs always seemed like they were for people climbing corporate ladders, not for designers obsessed with building immersive spy games.
But the conversation got me thinking about my own weak spots. I'd been working on The Game for years. Luxury immersive experiences that could last weeks, designed with hospitality at their core. And I realized: I knew nothing about hospitality. Not really.
I'd read Kapferer and Bastien's book, The Luxury Strategy cover to cover, and studied everything I could get my hands on about how luxury brands operate, but I'd never actually been in the industry. I had only a conceptual understanding of operations at the level I wanted The Game to exist.
If I was going to build this at true global luxury scale, I needed to close that gap.
So I looked up the best luxury hospitality MBA programs in the world. When I found Glion Institute in Switzerland—one of the world's top hospitality management schools—it felt right. Their Masters of Science in Hospitality, Entrepreneurship and Innovation program seemed like the perfect stepping stone.
But while in the States, COVID was dying down — the rest of the world hadn't quite opened up yet.
To be fair, I didn't graduate. The program was remote because of COVID, and it just didn't work. They'd never done remote before, and the time zones made it brutal. I'd just moved to Charleston—I love moving around, exploring new places—and joining this program had me waking up at 3 or 4 AM every day, putting on a suit to get on Zoom calls until 11 or noon, then trying to work on group projects with people spread across time zones, before spending the rest of the day freelancing to actually pay rent.
The speed of the program didn't help. We were changing course modules every week or two, getting a different teacher for each new module. In person, that would have been incredible. Remotely, with drastically different hours than my classmates, and group projects that required precise timing, it was exhausting. On top of freelance clients, it just wasn't sustainable.
When I decided to leave a few months in, they told me I could come back in person once things opened up. They appreciated the vision for The Game—the ambition of it, the connection to hospitality, and the fact that it was just enough outside the box that it could be something really special. I liked the program, too — it just didn't make sense to keep going at that pace.
But what I learned in those few months changed everything.
I got insight into luxury hotels, boutique properties, the growth strategies and business plans behind high-end hospitality. We did SWOT analyses on everything from major luxury hotels to more premium-level short-term rentals like Sonder. I learned about operations, about what actually goes into running these businesses, about how they think about growth and guest experience.
And coming from 15+ years building digital products, one thing absolutely shocked me: how far behind the hospitality industry is with technology.
I'm talking high-end luxury hotels running on property management systems that looked like they were designed in the '90s. Operations that could be elegant and automated instead relying on manual processes—spreadsheets, phone calls, staff running around with clipboards. Guest experience technology barely extended beyond keyless entry and smart thermostats. Nothing truly innovative. Nothing that took advantage of what modern technology could actually do.
The gap was enormous. And the thing is, most people in hospitality didn't see it as a gap. They saw it as "how things work." Because they'd never built digital products at scale. They'd never experienced what's possible when you design systems with technology at the core, not as an afterthought.
I could see it because I didn't belong there. I was an outsider with a completely different perspective.
That outside perspective kept revealing things.
I started thinking: what if hospitality infrastructure was designed with technology embedded from the foundation? Not retrofitted. Not added later to solve problems. But architected from the beginning with modern capabilities in mind.
And then there was The Game problem. A fairly signifacnt operational constraint that, at the level of immersion I wanted, had been nagging at me for years.
You can't stage a break-in at a partner hotel.
You can't leave blood on the floor. You can't hide USB drives sewn into cushions that participants need to cut open. You can't lock guests in rooms while actors try to break in. Narrative immersion requiring environmental chaos—spaces that get destroyed and restored, props hidden everywhere, technology controlling access—requires ownership from the foundation up.
Partner hotels have other guests they can't disturb. Staff they can't brief on sensitive scenarios. Liability concerns. Brand standards that don't allow visible chaos. Limited access for extensive prep. The constraints make real immersion impossible.
The realization was obvious: we have to own the properties. Operational control.
But once you own properties for immersive experiences, a question surfaces: what happens when they're not hosting Game participants?
I was in a class at Glion—I can't remember which one exactly—and we were talking about luxury brand strategy. Someone mentioned Dolce & Gabbana t-shirts. How the actual luxury customers, the people buying $30,000 dresses, would never wear a t-shirt with the logo plastered across it.
But people who want to feel part of that luxury world? They'll absolutely buy the t-shirt for $200. It's not about the product. It's about the mythology. About feeling connected to something exclusive without the true luxury price point.
It creates revenue while building the brand's exclusive mythology. Gateway products.
And it hit me: what if Safe Haus properties worked the same way?
Between Game uses, the same spaces could operate as high-end short-term rentals. Beautiful apartments in Paris, Amsterdam, Tokyo. Guests check in, experience curated hospitality designed with real care, and leave happy. Most of them—maybe 90-95%—have a wonderful stay at a gorgeous property and that's it.
But some guests—maybe 5-10%—open every drawer. They find the dossier. They follow the cryptic map annotations. They discover materials suggesting something deeper. Those guests — if they succeed at a hidden, small taste of a mission — might earn an invitation to apply for The Game.
Two revenue streams from one design system. A primary function of beautiful, high-end boutique rentals generating consistent income. A secondary function of potential discovery mechanism identifying curious guests. And a tertiary function — controlled infrastructure available for full Game experiences when needed.
Hospitality as business and funnel simultaneously.
I kept thinking about specific cities — not random locations, but places that feel like locations in a film.
Morning light in a perfect, Haussmann-esque Parisian apartment. Herringbone floors worn smooth by a century of footsteps, tall windows letting in that specific quality of that unique French light at 8am when the streets are quiet. You can see the layers of history in every detail.
Or Amsterdam canal houses with steep stairs, that would fail every modern accessibility standard — but have soul. Those unique, mysterious waterways visible from every window. Bicycle bells and antique shops. The proportions that make you feel the building's age in a way no new construction ever could.
Or maybe Tokyo minimalism. Not the trendy minimalism you see everywhere, but the real thing. Tatami rooms, low tables, shoji screens, precision in every material choice. The bath ritual. City views at dusk. Everything serving a purpose.
These cities haunt you because of specific moments, specific light, specific feelings. Not landmarks you checked off a list. Not what you saw, but how it felt. The atmosphere. The rhythm of neighborhoods where you'd want to live for a week, more than just sightsee for a day.
Safe Haus properties would need to be selected for these atmospheric qualities. Character over amenities.
The difference is presence—and you either have it or you don't.
I kept thinking about curation, too.
"Top 50 Things to Do in Paris" lists are never actually worth reading. Efficient itineraries and landmarks and Instagrammable backgrounds. You see everything, feel nothing. Google Maps giving you the fastest route, traffic-adjusted, turn-by-turn. Efficient. Boring.
What if Safe Haus offered the opposite?
Not "here are 6 perfect spots", but instead, a cafe where locals actually read newspapers — because you have to meet a contact there to get the keycode to get in.
A bookstore to spend two hours in, because there's a clue hidden in one of the books.
A walk to that small park only the locals visit, the kind that actually reveals that neighborhood's rhythms, so you can make a dead drop to return your keys.
Curation over comprehensiveness. Fewer things, better things, and for a reason.
Imagine checking into a canal house in Amsterdam. Steep stairs, original floorboards, that specific quality of light through tall windows. The apartment phone rings—not your mobile, an actual landline, some vintage Bell rotary phone sitting on the desk. You pick it up.
A voice, warm and knowing: "Welcome to Amsterdam. I'm Petra, your attendant." She tells you about the espresso machine's quirks, mentions a bookstore that stays open late on Thursdays, suggests a café locals actually go to. The conversation feels completely natural.
Then your phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number: "Check the desk drawer. Second from the bottom."
You find a dossier tucked under stationery. A name you don't recognize. A photograph of a building you passed earlier. Cryptic notes. A meeting time and place.
Another text: "Interested?"
You respond. The conversation continues—hints, small pieces of a larger puzzle unfolding. Later, the lights in your apartment dim slightly when it's time to leave. Your phone buzzes with a reminder. The door unlocks automatically.
You genuinely can't tell what's orchestrated and what's coincidence. Was Petra's call scripted or real? Are the texts from some weirdly omnicient AI agent? Or a person?
Does it matter, when you're suddenly on an adventure you didn't expect?
This is still just a framework. No properties exist. No attendants have been trained or agents coded. It's academic exploration—developed during and after those few months at Glion—thinking through what becomes possible when you approach hospitality with a completely different background.
But I keep thinking about what studying hospitality from the outside revealed. The technology gaps in luxury hotels. The ways AI might enhance real human experience instead of replacing it. How properties could serve multiple purposes simultaneously—beautiful hospitality for most guests, mysterious discovery for the curious few, controlled infrastructure for The Game when needed.
What I learned at Glion stays with me: when you study something from outside, you see gaps an insider can't.
This is what becomes possible when you refuse to accept "that's just how things work." When you ask: what if hospitality could be both warm and mysterious? What if technology was designed from the foundation, integrated in? What if it all assembled to something more than just a place to stay?
That's what Safe Haus explores. The place where fifteen years building digital products meets hospitality craft, meets immersive narrative design. Where every layer—physical, digital, narrative—is designed with the same curiousity.