MI288: EXPERIENCING UNIQUE STAYS

W/ BEN WOLFF

28 August 2023

In this week’s episode, Patrick Donley (@JPatrickDonley) sits down with Ben Wolff to discuss his strategy of building a “unique stays” portfolio. You’ll also hear about how Ben first got involved in the Airbnb/STR market, how he went about his first unique stay development, how he thinks about taking on risk and making entrepreneurial moves, and how he is building his team at Onera.

Ben is building and managing $65 million in experiential hospitality real estate, including treehouses, safari tents, and container homes through a fund he co-founded.

He is the Founder and CEO of StayOasi, his experiential hospitality management and growth firm. He is also the co-developer of Onera in Texas and the Spirit of Sophia in Palm Springs.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Why Ben feels “unique stays” are the way of the future?
  • How Ben first got involved in the Airbnb STR market.
  • How he handled the fallout from the pandemic.
  • How he went about finding land for his first development.
  • Ben’s strategy has been for raising money for his projects.
  • How they went about finding great designs for the treehouses.
  • How Ben went about building a direct booking engine through social media.
  • How Ben thinks about making career decisions.
  • What the books and people that have influenced his entrepreneurial career have been.
  • How he has gone about building the team at Onera.
  • What his new project in Texas is going to look like.
  • What an average day looks like for Ben.
  • Why Ben and his team are increasingly focused on content creation.
  • Why he feels the higher-end unique stays market has much more room to grow.

TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

[00:00:00] Ben Wolff: We wanted to try a bunch of stuff and really blow people away with unique units and the different options they had in terms of staying with our tents, tree house container, home dome, and part of it was just seeing what does the best, what’s the easiest to manage, what’s the biggest pain operationally?

[00:00:19] Ben Wolff: What’s the most expensive, least expensive? Just thinking about all those things.

[00:00:26] Patrick Donley: Hey, everybody. In this week’s episode, I got to sit down with Ben Wolff to chat about his strategy of building a unique stays portfolio. You also hear about how Ben first got involved in the Airbnb short-term rental market, how he went about his first unique state development, how he thinks about taking on risk and making entrepreneurial moves, and how he’s building out his team at Onera.

[00:00:47] Patrick Donley: Ben is currently building and managing $65 million worth in experiential hospitality real estate, which includes tree houses, safari tents, and container homes through a real estate fund that he co-founded. He’s the founder and CEO of StayOasi, his experiential hospitality management and growth firm.

[00:01:05] Patrick Donley: He’s also the co-founder of Onera in Texas, and the spirit of Sophia in Palm Springs. Prior to getting involved in the unique stays market, Ben grew a short-term rental management company from eight to 200 units in just 18 months. Be sure to give this episode to listen, and also make sure to check out Ben’s unique properties online.

[00:01:24] Patrick Donley: Without further delay, let’s get into this week’s episode with Ben Wolff. 

[00:01:30] Intro: You are listening to Millennial Investing by The Investor’s Podcast Network, where your hosts, Robert Leonard, Patrick Donley and Kyle Grieve, interview successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, and investors to help educate and inspire the millennial generation.

[00:01:54] Patrick Donley: Hey everybody. Welcome to the Millennial Investing Podcast. I’m your host today, Patrick Donley, and joining me today is Mr. Ben Wolff. Ben, welcome to the show. 

[00:02:02] Ben Wolff: Thanks, Patrick. Really appreciate you having me on. 

[00:02:05] Patrick Donley: I am happy to have you on today. Thank you for your time, first of all. So I wanted to get into Twitter a little bit.

[00:02:10] Patrick Donley: You’re known as the unique stays guy. I wanted to hear a little bit about your thesis around unique stays and just if you could go into it and explain it to us in a little more detail, that would be great. 

[00:02:20] Ben Wolff: Sure. I think unique stays, and we also call them one of one stays, experiential stays.

[00:02:26] Ben Wolff: There’s a number of different ways we talk about it. Me and my team believe it’s the way of the future. We don’t think that the modern traveler today is interested in staying at a big box chain hotel that’s the same room whether you’re in Thailand or Texas. Right? That’s not what they’re looking for.

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