Excerpt from Bloomberg
'At Studio 54 you had regular people next to celebrities,' he says. 'Everyone was there to have a good time.' The same communal sensibility can translate to hospitality.
The next big disruptor in hospitality, according to Ian Schrager, is co-living spaces.
“Communal living is blurring the distinction between residential and hotels,” the hotelier and Studio 54 co-founder argued during Bloomberg’s Year Ahead: Luxury conference in Manhattan on Thursday.
The mastermind behind the Public Hotel urged audiences to look at millennial buying statistics as evidence of this trend, which has seen growth in so-called co-living, where residents buy into furnished, semi-serviced apartments, either by the unit or by the bedroom. These are sort of communes for digital nomads with pop design, Casper mattresses, Nest thermostats, and other covetable accoutrements of the startup set. Critics have called them “dorms for adults,” while more evangelical residents praise them for the instant community they create.
“When I was growing up, I couldn’t wait to get a car!” Schrager said, comparing millennials’ lack of interest in cars to their evolving living habitats. “Now my daughters don’t want a car.” Relying on Uber and Lyft or car-sharing pilots from Porsche, BMW, and Mercedes was once unthinkable—now it’s de rigueur. “It’s just things are changed,” he said.
Schrager kicked off the afternoon summit, a first for the lifestyle group Bloomberg Pursuits, which focused on the latest data and innovation in the fields of fashion, travel, dining, autos, wellness, real estate, the arts, and design. He urged attendees, who included CEOs from such brands as Equinox, Shinola, Harry’s, and Oscar de la Renta, to think about luxury at an accessible cost—like his Public Hotels, where rooms often start at $150 a night.
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