Beyond the Room - How Programming and Nature Are Redefining Hospitality

Fran (00:01): Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Conversations on Experiential Hospitality. My name is Fran, I'm the co-founder of Turneo and with me today are two wonderful people from Prospect Berkshires, Jade and Julia. Hi, welcome and thank you for being here.

Julia and Jade (00:19): Hi. Thank you for having us.

Fran (00:23): Julia, Jade, you want to maybe just briefly introduce yourselves. Jade, maybe if you want to start.

Julia and Jade (00:29): Sure, my name is Jade Carroll and I am a co-owner of Prospect Berkshires. I'm Julia and I am the director of hospitality and programming at Prospect Berkshires.

Fran (00:45): Jade, tell us a little bit about Prospect maybe as an introduction. So you've founded the company. If I understand correctly, but tell me if my research is wrong, you've never done a hospitality project before Prospect. So what made you look at this place where you've built this amazing thing and what made you see something worth betting on?

Julia and Jade (01:06): Well, it was a property in the town that I grew up in and so I was aware of it and always thought it was a really cool piece of land.

It originally was a picnic grounds in the 1800s and then it was a campground. My husband and partner owns a construction development company. And so when it came up for sale, we thought, my gosh, it would be so much fun to do a hospitality project. Not knowing exactly what we were getting ourselves into. And it has been really, really fun, but also a lot of work. So.

But it was like, you know, how do we create something connected to nature? The Berkshires are well known for their connection to nature. It's kind of the seat of where the transcendentalist writers sprouted from. And so, yeah, we just kind of tried to keep, that was the first, that was the, sorry, this is, I'm saying a lot of it.

Fran (02:17): No, that's-

Julia and Jade (02:17): A lot words. That was what our driving force was. How do we create a project that is connected to nature and brings people the experience of being outside?

Fran (02:29): You know, as a fellow founder, I know that when someone asks me what the idea is behind the company I founded, I also like have to stop and reflect because things move

Julia and Jade (02:38): Thank you.

Fran (02:38): So fast that you're like, wait a second, let's go back to the original idea so I can understand that. And then today you've built a hospitality concept. How many rooms do you have?

Julia and Jade (02:50): So they're not rooms, they're actually little cabins and we have 49 cabins.

Fran (02:56): And the idea is connectivity with nature, connectivity with community. Julia, I understand there's no TVs, no phones in rooms, right? How do guests actually

Julia and Jade (03:04): Yep.

Fran (03:06): React and how do you communicate with them? How do they spend time on the property?

Julia and Jade (03:11): Yeah, usually people are, well, one thing she didn't mention, I don't think, is that this was a campground for the last 60, maybe you did say that, but 60 years or so. So I think a lot of people have connected to the property because it was like a place to get together and sort of not be on. technology anyway. Obviously back then there wasn't really that technology, but people are usually pretty happy to not have that. Even some people have asked to turn off the wifi in their cabins because they really want to disconnect. So I think a lot of times usually people spend more time outside of the cabin, on the lake, in the saunas, by the pool, hiking around. We have a lot of hikes nearby and the property itself is 30 acres.

But also we do communicate with them through texting so they can use their cell phones. If they don't want to do that, of course they can stop by the front desk. Yeah.

Fran (04:06): Brilliant. And you mentioned Camp site. Jade I understand the site has 150 years of communal history, picnics, summer camps,

Julia and Jade (04:13): I'm going to keep going.

Fran (04:15): RV parks. How intentional were you about honoring kind of that past and that community? And how important is the wider community today? So wider than just Prospect in, yeah, Prospect running today.

Julia and Jade (04:30): So we tried to honor that energy by making everything walkable. It was really important to us that we were not an island. You go to some resorts and you're kind of like really sequestered off.

Since I grew up in this community, it was important for me that the community, the larger community felt welcome as well. So we have a restaurant called the Cliff House, which has been very popular and the local community is welcome to participate in that along with many of the offerings that we offer through Turneo The Berkshires are kind of the OG wellness community, you know. before wellness was a thing. There was Kripalu which is a very famous yoga place. There is a lot of outdoor things. So it was important to be connected to that as well.

Fran (05:31): And so you've got partners around, right, that are offering these events or yoga classes or whatnot, and you bring them into your property and you take guests out of your property there as well.

Julia and Jade (05:43): Yes, that's correct.

Fran (05:45): All right. So Julia, walk us through a little bit the events calendar. So I'm looking

Julia and Jade (05:50): Okay.

Fran (05:51): At your experiences store on your page and you've got everything from full moon hikes to chef pop-ups to saunas, cold plunges, float therapies, aquafloat. There's so much going on. What's the logic that you apply? What's the kind of curational, let's say logic. How do you decide what to offer and when?

Julia and Jade (06:10): Yeah, I think our programming has shifted a lot over the last year. Opened in a month, we'll have opened a year. And I think when I first came on, we had to prioritize other things a little bit besides programming because there was so much like logistical operational stuff that had to be in place first, especially with our restaurant and just, you know, opening a hotel in general. So I think it actually this summer and this like towards the end of winter in the summer, it started to really take off. A big part of that actually was finding Turneo because we spoke many times last year about how to get people to sign up for things. How would that work logistically? How would we split revenue with people? How would we do all these things? And there's a couple options out there that are very expensive or just more right or only focused on massages or things like that. So, yeah, so when we found that, then that gave us the opportunity to start. building that up. Think the way that I have crafted with Jade and the rest of the team, the programming is just trying to, I think from last summer till now, really trying to understand like who's coming to stay and also who in our local community will come to participate in things because we do welcome both.

For Jade, it's been really important to have the local community be a part of it, to have the pricing be accessible to them, to not feel super fancy and inaccessible luxury, sort of. So yeah, what's really exciting is this year, we have tons of people interested in doing programming. I think we have maybe eight or 10 up right now, but I think there's probably another 10 coming at least in the next few weeks. And we really try to make it about definitely nature outdoors. We realize a lot of kids actually come here, so we're integrating a lot of kids programming for this summer, which is like foraging, how to build a fire, going across the road to the big park that has all these trails. But then also, you know, ways to just disconnect that are really wellness focused. I would say that's back to her original comment about it being a wellness community.

That's what people want in the Berkshires. That's why people come here. You know, it's much different than if you're going to the Hamptons or something. So we try to like listen to the client, obviously put out things. And I always tell all of our facilitators that we're willing to try anything and see if it works. And if it doesn't, we'll just.

Fran (08:34): That's a fantastic way. Experimentation. That's the only way to find things out. You said something there which really got me thinking. You said that's why people come. And Jade, you're running this organization commercially. And I often hear hoteliers talk about the core revenue of our hotel is selling rooms, selling stays. And yet at Prospect, you've invested a lot into... your events, activities, programming, invested time, invested resources, etc. Why is that and what would be your message to let's say hoteliers who are very focused on room and on state?

Julia and Jade (09:14): Well, I think that people want experiences now. I think people go to a place to experience what is unique about that place. So you can be in your room for as long as you would like to be. You know, the rooms I think are very comfortable and cozy. eventually, especially if you are with children, you're not going to want to stay in your room for, you know, you want to go out and do something. I know that when I travel, I want to go and see things that I don't have at home that I don't, that I'm not able to experience or see. So offering that, I think just kind of, you know, creates a picture of what is available here in the Berkshires.

Fran (10:06): I agree. And it's such an important thing today, I think, where people search for hotels and for stays very differently than they used to. I was just doing some research recently on Google ads and people looking for best hotel in XYZ, destination, state, country, or seaside, that dropped drastically. And people stopped searching for best hotel in and they moved it to AI and started searching for Find me a hotel where I can... That could be have my kids run around freely whilst I am in a sauna or do this or do that. But it's such an important thing then to present that because that's how people discover you and that's how people book that stay in the end. And as you both said, I think it's because of the things they can do there. Yeah.

Julia and Jade (10:57): I also think that when I first started speaking to Jade's husband, Ian, who I met before I Jade, something that he always mentioned and we talked a lot about since is rather than the focus being on like how to fill rooms, it was much more, I felt the focus was. how to get people to keep wanting to come back with that same sort of like campsite mentality in the sense that like anyone who's come on site, who's local has told us about when they used to come here all the time as kids and go on the lake. And so I think the idea of like having memories, which wouldn't be a room most likely, memories on site that they want to come back for every year. That was really like a big focus I felt.

Fran (11:37): Yeah. But how do you Julia then operationalize it? Mean, there's activities and experiences and events. So it's a really hard part of hospitality because a room is a room, you know, and you they're fixed. They're literally stuck to the ground and you've got a single, a double, a queen, a king, you know, experiences are a lot harder. So what are your main challenges and maybe how do you overcome them at the moment with programming?

Julia and Jade (12:03): Yeah, I mean, think, as I said, it's shifted a little bit. I think now it's definitely getting easier. We didn't have a system for a while. And so last summer and fall, we basically just paid for facilitators to come in, a yoga teacher, Tai Chi, whatever it was. And we would just offer that for free to the guests. So that made it very easy, transactional, and people would just show up if they wanted to do it, which was perfectly nice, obviously. But when we started talking about offering, know, higher-ticket items and things that include food and beverage or whatever we wanted to, you know, potentially make some revenue off of it. And also get people committed to booking it because sometimes you don't want to put on an event or something if no one's going to come and then you buy all the ingredients and hire staff or whatever. So, yeah, I think finding a platform that helped us connect. you know, the guests to our hotel experiences without having to individually tell them, which is what we were doing before. We were like texting them before they came, tell them about an experience. Now, you know, our front desk team and operations team can tell the guests to go to our website, look at all the offerings, communicate with us, communicate with the facilitator. It's definitely...

You know, there's steps involved getting people onboarded to that. And from a hotel side, need insurance and paperwork on file. So it takes a little while to get it all ready. I think I mentioned this last time that the Turneo piece of it is pretty good. The only thing I would love is to have access to control the pages of the people who own the experience.

Most of the time what I do is I own the experience myself unless it's like a massage therapist or someone who needs to constantly communicate with the guest. But otherwise, yeah, I find that it has helped operationally tremendously.

Fran (13:56): Yeah, it's a real system. There's so many ingredients involved there. Like you got to have the tours or experiences or activities, then the people doing them, then the hotel communicating with guests, the guests getting the right information. It is an operationally challenging piece and it goes beyond what hotels were built for, which is you come, you check in and you check out, right? So there's so much more going on here. But as you said, I do think systems help, but it also helps having a wonderful community that you guys have. as well as a person like you, Julia, managing it. Jade, experiential hospitality is such a buzzing trend right now and a lot of hotels talk about it. So how do you see prospects, this experiential nature you've got, evolving over the next five years? What's the vision? Where are you heading to?

Julia and Jade (14:46): Well, so our tagline is nature is the antidote and I think that, you know, they keep, I keep reading like that the younger generations are into like grandma hobbies and gardening and things that are kind of a reaction to everything being so technical and AI and you know people want to have wanted to that they can make things with their hands or that they can go out and, you know, be in nature and not distracted and not being bombarded with lots of information. So I actually think as we continue, I think we're going to have like a... that we're going to revert back to these older ways of being, or at least I hope so, because I think that's the only thing that's going to save us or save the planet in the end of the day. You know, they say if children aren't exposed to nature and have no relationship to it, then they're not going to care about, you know, taking care of the planet. Yeah, so I'm hoping that as we continue onward as a human race that we connect more to these things.

Fran (16:01): That's fantastic. What I'm hearing is more regression or retro going back into real connectivity with nature, not connectivity to Wi-Fi and moving the brand in that direction, which is fantastic. As someone who works in tech space, obviously I know that tech is important to plan something out and to see it and to book it. But then perhaps I want to do all of that before I arrive so that when I arrive, I know roughly what I'm doing in the next couple of days and I can... switch off, disconnect and connect to that nature.

Julia and Jade (16:34): Yes, and that's, you know, that is the incredible thing about tech too. I mean, if you do want to learn how to knit, can, you know, watch YouTube videos on how to do it, or you want to do like, you know, anything that you want to learn is available to you out there. But there is something so satisfying to making something with your hands, you know, painting a picture. you know, arranging a bouquet of flowers. You know, it's something that is in the here and now. It puts you into the present moment. And I think everybody needs that balance right now.

Fran (17:14): Absolutely. To close it off, now you've mentioned a couple of them. You've mentioned, know, bouquet arranging or knitting. But to close it off, maybe with each of you, Julia, you can start. What is your top two or three, let's say, experiences on offer at Prospect? And it's okay to even say some that are maybe just coming that aren't live yet, but will be, or the ones that you're currently offering to your guests.

Julia and Jade (17:41): I mean, think the most interesting one that we started in the fall, just a tiny bit, and we're going to do a ton of this summer is flotation therapy. It's not something that is offered at most places. It's very unique. And you get into these big, silly looking suits and you go out into the lake and you are tied to sort of a mooring. you are meditating and there's a sound bath and you're under the stars and it's, we've both done it. It's amazing. And it's very peaceful. I think that something that I've tried to do is find facilitators who are, sort of umbrella over a few. experiences and the person who does that with us also helped me build out this sauna and cold plunge experience which I think is something that is available in a lot of places but is very popular right now to sort of have a you meditative experience it's sort of action oriented experience with the sauna and cold plunge it's very popular here and yeah it's been great so those are the two that I think are really cool.

Fran (18:49): So, outdoor float therapy and sauna and cold plunge, right? Jade, what about you?

Julia and Jade (18:55): Well, I love all of those kinds of new experiences as well, but I also think there's the tried and true, know, nothing beats a really good massage or a facial or just letting yourself relax and take those moments of quiet. I mean, I think those will always be popular and, you know, things that people always enjoy and it's healing and yeah.

Fran (19:25): Fantastic. Well, that's a great way to end, I mean, for everyone listening, thinking about perhaps even heading out for a little retreat of their own. This is from people who are bringing you these experiences. So Julia and Jade's favorites, outdoor float therapy, sauna and cold plunge massages and facials. Definitely worth heading over to Prospect to try them out. Julia, Jade, thank you so much for talking to me today. I really appreciate it. Was there anything else you wanted to share with the wider hospitality community or have we covered most of

Julia and Jade (20:00): Well, thank you so much for having us. And I think if anyone's thinking of trying out Turneo, they should definitely do it. Yeah, I agree. Hopefully more people will so we can add to the store. And it's also nice to support

Fran (20:13): Thank you so much.

Julia and Jade (20:14): The local community as well.

Fran (20:17): I agree, I agree. One of the reasons behind it always was, think in tourism, destination management goes so much beyond hotels. There's so many participants in tourism and travel from, you know, the transport vehicle to the place where someone sleeps to all the things they do. And I think that the best travel destinations I've ever been to are those where I saw a nice synergy between these different players, restaurants, bars, hotels, tour operators, organizers of experiences.

So I agree that that collaboration is at the heart of it. So it's great to see that working for you as well. Thank you both for joining. Thanks everyone

Julia and Jade (20:53): Yeah.

Fran (20:54): For listening in. This was another episode of Conversations on Experiential Hospitality. My name is Fran and I'll see you guys next time. Bye bye.

Julia and Jade (21:02): Bye!