Bridging The Gap Between Glamping And Ultra Luxury, This…

Placing a new hotel on Montauk at the tip of Long Island, New York, would send the local resort and vacation crowd into a seizure. The resulting angst could also make the famous Montauk Light House go dark.

But for Moliving Co-Founder Jordan Bem, that scenario is realistic and, at the same time, a dream.

Moliving refers to itself as “the world’s first nomadic hospitality group” and is attempting to make the luxury hotel market accessible to all. Think manufactured housing with a luxury touch. Moliving’s hotel rooms are an end-to-end solution constructed at its factory in Oklahoma. Depending on location and space, they are towed to landowners looking to use property they feel is underutilized.

“The idea was to create a hotel at the right place at the right time to avoid the inefficiencies of seasonal markets,” Bem told Benzinga, adding that the ability to move his hotel properties to another location when the weather changes are one of the benefits of a mobile hotel model. “We’ve avoided the pitfalls of low season.”

The world has rediscovered hotels since COVID and in 2023 they are projected to surpass pre-pandemic levels of demand, according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association’s 2023 State of the Hotel Industry Report. Projected nominal room revenue is expected to reach new levels at $197.48 billion this year, compared to $170.35 billion in 2019. People are ready to get out of their homes again and travel. And with competition brisk, Bem wants Moliving to stand alone in offering scenic views, great service and an overall luxury experience  —even in a place like Montauk, which is one of his stated goals.

“We’re really trying to revamp and recreate what the hospitality business is without hindering the ultra-luxury experience,” Bem said. “We originally started this to be able to accommodate mom-and-pop owners and monetize their underutilized land, but today the people we’re partnering with are sophisticated developers and investors with multibillion-dollar funds. We originally thought we were just reinventing the wheel. The void we’re actually filling is the connection between glamping and ultra-luxury.”

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Moliving plans to open the brand’s flagship later this year — Moliving at Hurley House — in New York’s Hudson Valley and has future plans to open luxury hotels in several East Coast and West Coast locations before expanding internationally. The goal is to have seven Moliving hotels open in the next two years. If you’re wondering about the fees, expect the Moliving experience to cost you between $800 and $1,500 per night, depending on the locale and $400 to $650 in nonpeak season. The rooms themselves have an interior space of 400 square feet and another 125 square feet for two outdoor decks.

One of the more interesting aspects of the concept is the relationship between Moliving and the people who own the land they park their hotel rooms on.

“We are actually joint-venture partners where the landowners provide the land,’ he said. “We operate like any five-star hotel in the world, which is just a management group, but instead of providing key money, what we do is bring a flexible inventory at our cost to the table, which is a major amount of capital. In exchange, we take profits for it.”

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Photo provided by Moliving 

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This article Bridging The Gap Between Glamping And Ultra Luxury, This Company Prepares To Go Where No Hotel Has Gone Before originally appeared on Benzinga.com

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