The Modern Hotelier #138: Inside the Apartment-Style, Tech-enabled Hospitality Model of Mint House | with Christian Lee
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Steve Carran: Welcome to another episode of the Modern Hotel Year. We are excited to be joined by Christian Lee, CEO of Mint House today. David, what were some of your favorite takeaways from the conversation?
David: Well, it's pretty cool when you find someone whose journey has led them into hospitality rather than, you know, starting out in hospitality. So it was cool to learn about his journey and really just minthouse what they're doing and kind of this, cool way of kind of still getting an Airbnb type experience without having to actually clean your room.
Steve Carran: I agree. I love the apartment style hotels. Like you said, you, you know, you're making sure you have that security. Of the hotel where, you know, if anything changes, they're going to let you know. But I also love the personalization he talked to, how you almost get to, it's a more homey feel, even if you want to cook at home one day, they can deliver groceries, anything like that.
So, I loved it and I look forward to seeing them grow more. So enjoy the episode and let us know what you think.
David: Enjoy it.

David: Welcome to the Modern Hotelier, Hospitality's Most Engaged podcast. I'm David Melilli.
Steve Carran: I'm Steve Karin.
Jon Bumhoffer: And I'm John Boomhoffer.
David: who do we have on the program today?
Steve Carran: Yeah, David. Today we have on Christian Lee. Christian is the CEO at Mint House. Christian is a global senior executive with extensive operational finance and transactional experience. Mint House is a leader in flexible living that combines the comfort of home and the convenience and consistency of a hotel.
Welcome to the show, Christian.
Christian Lee: Thanks. Uh, thanks for having me on really excited to be here and spend time with you guys.
David: All right. Great. So we're going to go through, we're going to go through a real quick lightning round. We're going to get to know you better, where you grew up, some of your professional career, and then dive into some industry topics. Sound good?
Christian Lee: Perfect.
David: All right. What is something you wish you were better at?
Christian Lee: Uh, yoga, I do it about five days a week, every morning, and I've been doing it for 10 years. It's helped with my back a ton, but I'm, I was looking at those yoga instructors and like, wow, I wish I could do that. So each day working a little, trying to get a little better,
David: Okay. What's the most used app on your phone?
Christian Lee: probably email and text, unfortunately.
David: What's a luxury you can't live without?
Christian Lee: Hmm. I would say we remodeled our apartment three years ago and the heated floors in the bathroom are unbelievable on winter mornings here in New York.
David: If you could trade places with someone for a day, who would that be?
Christian Lee: Oh gosh. I don't know. I got enough stuff to figure out on my own. I don't need anyone else's stuff to figure out. I think just me.
David: What's the best piece of advice you've received?
Christian Lee: Ah, that's a good one. Uh, I think, you know, just kind of showing up is 99 percent of it, right? Just kind of being there. You don't know what's going to happen. Just keep pushing through and things, you know, solutions have a way of finding themselves if you're just kind of there and in it each day,
David: All right. That's good. Yeah. Last one. What's your favorite city and why?
Christian Lee: New York. Uh, I mean, there's, you know, amazing cities to go travel everywhere, but 26 years, raised our kids here, food, work, the dynamicism. Everything's great.
Steve Carran: That's great. So now we're going to learn a little bit more about your background and what makes you tick. So you live in New York now. Where did you grow up?
Christian Lee: I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, uh, and I lived there till I was, uh, just in ninth grade. And then my father used to work for the Drug Enforcement Agency. So we actually lived in Lahore, Pakistan for high school. and that was a Pretty dramatic change going from Fargo, North Dakota to Lahore, Pakistan. We can talk about that.
Uh, I could talk about that for a long time, but you know, really opened my eyes to the world, travel, hospitality, a whole bunch of stuff that we can, talk about, later.
Steve Carran: Yeah, that's great.
David: All right. And so you went to Carleton college and you got your degree in international relations, your master's in international finance at Columbia business school. What kind of led you to those majors and led you to those schools?
Christian Lee: so Carleton's an interesting one. I had, uh, living in Pakistan. I had wanted to study international relations. I really kind of spent a lot of time traveling. And so I looked at a lot of East coast schools, in college. I actually took a physics and a calculus course my senior year, decided I might want to be an engineer.
Carleton was the only liberal arts school I had applied to. So I could look at a variety of different majors. so I went there. it turns out I was not going to be an engineer. and so, uh, I ended up doing international relations, but it was still an amazing school, met my wife there, I'm on the board of trustees there, really love it as an institution.
and then I thought about doing international development, uh, you know, World Bank or, you know, something internationally given the international background I had. But, You know, I got some advice that it would be much better to kind of go have some skills that could be useful, if you were going to go do that, as opposed to just teaching English or something else right out of undergrad.
So I went into investment banking. I then did corporate, development at, uh, what was then AOL Time Warner. but I sort of still have that interest in, do I want to do something in this international development world? So I went back to Columbia to study that. Uh, I actually spent the summer in between my first and second year, helping a friend who was starting a, uh, basically investment fund in Afghanistan. so I did that for three months, super interesting, spent a lot of time talking to people who worked at the UN or, you know, different international institutions and, you know, my conclusion was, um, that was, it was interesting, uh, but it would take you 30 years to get something done just given the bureaucracy and all the things.
And that's just sort of not my temperament. I kind of wanted to go. Do stufF&Build stuff. So I decided that as much as I was interesting and maybe something later on, uh, the private sector was probably where I was going to spend the bulk of my career and, and so, and that was great to learn, uh, at that time.
Steve Carran: That's great. And one of the organizations that you're really passionate about is BronxWorks. Can you tell us more about this organization and what makes you passionate about it?
Christian Lee: Yeah, I mean, thank you for asking. it is, uh, to me, one of those things, as I said, New York's my favorite city in the world, and, you know, it is, in some sense, a microcosm of America where you see these just, you know, very different things, whether you're in kind of, you know, Fifth Avenue and Upper West Side, Upper East, versus kind of going into certain parts of the Bronx.
My wife's a doctor. Uh, she did her residency and fellowship at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, and so I was, uh, spending a decent amount of time up there. and you just saw some of, again, just the inequalities that were there. And so I was looking for an organization, um, that I thought was sort of helping, um, you know, serve, uh, residents of the Bronx in a way that, you know, was thoughtful, was engaging.
And, um, I got introduced to Bronx Works. Um, they basically, you know, they would say feed, Teach shelter, um, residents of all ages across the Bronx. And, it really grew a huge amount in COVID, unfortunately, just given they have food pantries, they have, uh, homeless shelters, they have, uh, senior centers, just a lot of needs that were there.
And so, uh, it's just been an incredible organization to be a part of. And, um, I've been now, I guess, for almost 15 years and just seeing the growth of, you know, the way they deliver services to so many people. It's incredible.
Steve Carran: That's great. So now we're going to go on to your career, how you got to be the CEO of MintHouse. after college, you were an associate at Citigroup. What did you learn in those early days that you still take with you today?
Christian Lee: So, yeah, that's a great question. I. The early days, um, I, I came into banking and I knew nothing about finance. I had never taken an accounting class. I'd never taken a finance class. I mean, I knew nothing. and so a lot of it was, I had to teach myself. I mean, they had training courses, of course, but I had to spend time learning from the other analysts, from, you know, the training programs, from people who are around me.
And a lot of it was, you know, just how do you absorb information? How do you sort of take the skills I was taught in sort of an undergrad of how do you sort of, um, have different types of things, synthesize them and then bring them to bear. So I actually worked in the industrials group. So I spent a lot of time in the chemicals industry, which I.
Clearly knew nothing about, but spent a lot of time just on my own, you know, you're working 80, a hundred hours a week, but I was like, well, I have to learn more. And so kind of just diving in and learning, like, how are different chemicals made? Where does it come from? So that I could actually add value in some of the meetings.
And so if anything, it was, how do you go into a situation where you don't know as much about, learn about it, teach yourself about it, learn from the people around you, synthesize that and be able to, then use that to deliver value to, to clients.
David: And then you went on to Time Warner and you were the director of M and A. You left for a year, you came back, and then you played an integral role in Time Warner Cable's spinoff into a public company, and then eventually the merger with Charter. Can you tell us about that experience, please?
Christian Lee: Well, yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot in there. you know, the AOL Time Warner stuff was fascinating. It was the first time I'd ever been at a big corporate organization and to just, you know, you talk, people talk about corporate politics, but this was like the epitome and this was like media, you know, CNN and HBO and Warner Brothers and AOL and it all sort of been together.
And, you know, I was this naive 26 year old coming into it, just sort of trying to understand how the world worked. And so there was just an eye opening, picture into how all that actually worked. I was fortunate enough, the person that I worked with who ran M& A at the time, a guy named Rob Marcus, uh, went over to Time Warner Cable as we were getting ready to spin it out.
he asked me to, to come over to kind of help as we were thinking about spinning it off and, and kind of bring it to a separate public company. Incredible experience of how do you take a company public? Um, we actually spun off like in March of 2009. So like the absolute trough of the global financial crisis.
And so we were supposed to be, uh, you know, 40 billion market cap company. Um, as part of the spin, we put 20 some billion dollars of debt on the company as a dividend to kind of pay Time Warner as we left market cap ended up being like 8 billion when we spun off and it was just a huge lesson. And how do you navigate this time of uncertainty, right?
We thought it was going to be one thing. It ended up being something else. Um, large debt load had to be very disciplined of how you grow the company of where you spend. And so just a real experience into what it can be like. It can different, market environments. that ended up being an incredibly successful equity return.
when we ultimately merged with charter, you know, the market cap was over 70 billion. And so you went from 8 billion to 70 billion and people don't remember the fact that there was like such a massive amount of equity value creation in that sort of time Warner cable story. but it was just a, a real lesson in.
Situations around you are going to be whatever they are. All you can do is sort of, okay, how do I handle the capital? How do I make sure that we're delivering, you know, a great experience to customers? How do I make sure that we control expenses, right? You can control, you can control the environment around you is going to be what it is.
And so just keep pushing forward and, um, you know, do the best you can to kind of get this situation to work out.
Steve Carran: That's great. And from there you were the Manning managing director in Shanghai and the CFO in New York City for WeWork. You grew that business from four locations to more than 200 in Asia. What were some of the keys for growth and how does that correlate to mint house?
Christian Lee: Yeah. So, I mean, I'll just give a quick background. When I, um, when we completed the merger with Charter, um, I had at that point been doing, you know, very big, you know, investment bank, uh, well, Time Warner, Time Warner Cable, these large fortune 100 companies. and it was a great experience, but I really, at that point said, I want to go try to be part of building something.
I want to see, you know, a real kind of, I wasn't necessarily entrepreneur, but I wanted to be supporting an entrepreneur and sort of see how that growth started to develop. And so I met with a number of companies, um, got introduced, to Adam in, I guess, 2014 and, I remember very clearly thinking this is either going to be, you know, very big or blow spectacularly, but it'll definitely building something, and it will be, you know, very interesting to learn about how this type of startup environment works.
and so I went there, uh, originally a CFO and I did that for about two years and then, you know, classic kind of startup. And when I joined there was. 15 buildings total. I mean, maybe 200 employees and, you know, even in those two years we had grown tremendously, but we started expanding overseas. We started going to India, to China, to a number of places across Asia.
And I had both lived in Pakistan and so spent a lot of time in India and traveling around Asia in high school. I had spent actually some time in China in college in the mid nineties studying Chinese. And so it was. You know, Hey, well, I've been to those places. I know, I don't, I've never done business there, but I kind of know enough about how to get around and I can, you know, speak a little bit.
And so, um, I went over and it was, uh, moved over with my family. We spent three years there from 2017 to 2020. I was an incredible experience, just kind of launching and running the Asia business. The, the whole, Goal was to basically find local partners in each region slash country. So to find a local partner in China, the local partner in India, the local partner in Southeast Asia.
And so it was partly getting it stood up and running it, but partly creating the structures around it. So we raised capital independently for China. We found a partner, you know, that we sort of raised capital with in India. We had SoftBank for other parts of Asia and Japan. And so it was, it was both building the business, but then building the infrastructure around it to allow that, to be able to scale, you know, in connection with WeWork, but, but somewhat separately from WeWork.
David: And then you had to stop a CFO of TransFix and then two years ago you joined MintHouse. So what really was the decision behind that and what led you to join MintHouse?
Christian Lee: Yeah. so I came back from Asia in, kind of the height of COVID. So, um, and that's part of the reason that, that I came back, not surprisingly. and so I was on the Upper West Side where we live and, uh, I bumped into someone I used to work with at Citigroup or Salomon 25 years ago, whatever it was at that point, who was an early investor in Mintouse and on the board.
And, you know, we stopped to just catch up with each other and, you know. Compared notes on the state of the world and what was going on. And he said, Hey, I just invested in this company, mint house. You should get to know the founder will, you know, there's a lot of similarities between, you know, the things you were doing at WeWork and what mint house is doing and, you know, management agreements and, and real estate deals.
And how do you scale, you know, sort of this combination of physical and, um, technology over time. And. I said, yeah, that's interesting. Um, you know, I wasn't quite ready to go back into hospitality real estate. There was, you know, five years of, you know, we worked and coming out of COVID and a lot of the stuff we had to do and across Asia in the middle of COVID with shutdown, and it was just, it was a complicated time.
there was a lot of interest in supply chain and I was personally interested. So I went. I actually threw another friend from business school who I kind of got connected to TransFix through, spend some time there, but I stayed involved. I kind of got to know Will, I got to know the board and I really thought what they were doing was very interesting.
and then I guess now about. Three years ago, they said, listen, we, you know, the company has gotten to a really good place, but we want to bring someone in who can kind of help take it to the next level. you know, Will actually reached out to me and said, would you be interested? And so we started conversations and the more time I spent with them, the more excited I got about, about the opportunity.
Steve Carran: That's awesome. you have a very impressive board at Mint House, but, for those that might not be too familiar with Mint House, can you tell us a little bit more about what makes Mint House unique?
Christian Lee: Yeah. so first of all, we're in kind of what I call the managed residential hospitality space. So you have, you know, of course the Airbnb and the Verbo and all these great platforms of the world where people put their home or their apartment onto it. But as a guest, when you go in, you know, it's not always exactly clear what you're going to get, right.
There might be more chores. There might be less chores, right. Um, you know, the access control. It might be an old fashioned key. It might be, you know, you just don't know what you're kind of getting into. You could get canceled the last second. So the idea then is we put a management layer on top of that, right?
So you have access to 24, seven guest care, you know, it's access control. There's cameras, there's all the things you would expect at a hotel, but with that home style accommodation, right? A kitchen, a living room, uh, you know, washer, dryer, all of that, what makes us unique from other. Kind of manage short term rental operators is the original idea that Will had was to serve, younger corporate customers.
So people who worked at a McKinsey or an EY or, or whatever large corporate who wanted to stay at something like an Airbnb, but whose companies. You know, with the duty of care requirements that they had really couldn't let them stay at those types of accommodations. And so you had this real mismatch of where, especially these younger employees wanted to stay with where they were actually able to stay.
And so if you could build this up and you could service that need, that there was a real opportunity. And that did very well in the early days, uh, until COVID in which case all business stay just stopped. And so the company had to pivot and had to think about, well, how do we serve, you know, these digital nomads?
How do we serve, you know, leisure guests who might be, you know, wanting to travel or go someplace different than they are at that moment? And so, as they did that, I think they realized that there was this broader opportunity and, and different companies were kind of coming at it from different perspectives, uh, along the way.
and then kind of coming out of COVID it was, was really where I joined. And we said, listen, there's this huge opportunity of, of all these different types of travelers who can be serviced by this type of product. But I've said before for us, the fact that. We came at it from servicing the corporate customers meant that we had kind of a higher standard.
We had a higher server service delivery model. We had to drive efficiency, but we also had the ability to kind of deliver that consistent experience. I think that's one of the things that's really differentiated us from other people in the space is that ability to deliver that. Consistent high quality guest experience to service fortune 500 companies and these large corporates who need something and want something like this, but really just can't have their employees have the uncertainty or not a clean room or, you know, all of the things that go on with, with different platforms.
David: And so a year after you joined MintHouse, you guys closed on a round of 35 million. How was it setting expectations after closing on that round?
Christian Lee: so that was actually right before I joined. That was about six months before I joined. Um, we did raise some capital afterwards. but look, the world has obviously changed dramatically from a fundraising perspective. You know, the capital that was available, let's call it three or four years ago is a very different, unless you're an AI company, in which case, you know, tens of billions of dollars just seem to flow in everywhere.
yeah, but listen, it's been a lot of conversations with the board around. Okay. You know, here was our growth plan. maybe in this current environment, that doesn't make sense. We have to maybe rethink, where do we want to invest capital? Like how do we grow efficiently? Cause growth for growth sake.
I mean, that was, that's like a, you know, a 2019 concept that doesn't really exist anymore. And how it's about, okay, making sure you grow in the right ways at the right pace, you know, with the right return on investment. And, Yeah, there was a lot of kind of when I came in conversations about how do we rethink what the growth trajectory looks like?
We had to, I mean, one of the reasons that I was brought in was to really think about, do we have the right infrastructure to allow us to scale efficiently over time? And that was, you know, probably one of my big lessons from WeWork was if you don't build the infrastructure right, even as you scale, it can just be more difficult than it needs to be to really, you know, grow efficiently.
Steve Carran: Absolutely. So news recently just broke about the acquisition of Local. Is that how you
Christian Lee: Look how,
Steve Carran: Locale. Okay. Of Locale. Can you tell us more about that acquisition and really how it's going to help the long term goals of Mint House?
Christian Lee: Yeah. it kind of ties back into what I was just saying. So, you know, for us, you know, the first thing, of course, is I was the guest experience that has to be the thing that drives everything else. And as I said, we start from this idea of, you know, being able to service corporate customers, which means then we can service, you know, leisures, guests, and families, and doing all that thing is to really drive that amazing guest experience.
But to do that. You have to invest in infrastructure to allow you to do that at scale, right? Whether that's the ability to find people, bring them in to offer, you know, that 24 seven customer care to, do things like stock your stay where we can pre deliver groceries to your rooms, all those things that we think make our experience great, require investment.
And so if we're doing that. Investing over a broader set of properties over a larger scale just makes that more efficient. And so, as we looked around and said, how do we drive scale? There's of course organic growth, which we're continuing to do. We're opening in D. C., Nashville. We have a number of other properties and cities that will hopefully be announced soon.
but the other way is just to combine forces with someone who is culturally and, you know, has a product aligned with what you do. And so when we looked at locale, you know, they're also exclusively focused on high end multifamily apartment buildings, a great service delivery model. I think they've really done a lot on how you deliver that model.
Like incredibly efficiently. And so we thought, Hey, we can take what they have, a very similar product, a very similar mindset from sort of employee perspective, put it together. And then we're able to really leverage that investment across a broader scale. So it's delivering that great guest experience, but able to kind of make those investments across a larger platform.
Steve Carran: That's great. So now we're going to get into the industry thoughts section of the podcast. so you joined Mint House right after the pandemic. How has the pandemic reshaped travel preferences? It seems like there's been a shift towards remote work and extended stays. What do you see travelers really prioritizing right now?
Christian Lee: I think it's constantly evolving. And that's probably one of the most interesting things about being in the hospitality space. So. Right at tail end, during COVID, you of course saw the digital nomads. And there was this idea that people are just going to go live someplace for two or three months at a time.
That happens a little bit still, but certainly less than it used to. I think people, you know, discovered that that was fun to do for a little while, but the reality is like. schlepping your stuff somewhere, you know, different every two months is a lot more difficult than it seems. So there's still some of that.
I would say the bigger trends and you saw this, of course, huge, like, you know, revenge travel of everyone kind of going everywhere right after COVID. that has. Abated somewhat, there's still a huge amount of travel going on, but that's sort of like big revenge travel. I'm just going to try to get everywhere as fast as I can.
I think, again, people have done some of that and they've come out of COVID and said, okay, now I'm back to my baseline. So you've seen these different spikes go through the system. I think the main thing that we're seeing now, at least in our product is this idea that, a large number of companies are going to be hybrid for the foreseeable future.
And so it means that if I, you know, if I live somewhere else, I still need to get back to HQ and I've got to go spend a week or two or, some extended period of time there, because when I'm there, I really want it to be impactful. I want to be. able to meet with multiple teams and, do a deep dive on brainstorming and all these other things.
And so they're looking for a place to stay that suits that need, right? So if you're staying somewhere for a night, a hotel is fine. I mean, we have lots of people who come and stay at Mint House for a night, but if I'm staying for two or three or four nights. You know, I want something where I can maybe have a couple meals in my room and not have to go out to eat every meal.
I want something where maybe I can do some laundry. I want something where I can sit and actually work at a desk and not be kind of sitting on the edge of my bed. And so there's a huge demand for this type of product. But again, I'm going for a work trip, so I can't have the uncertainty of maybe. You know, the place won't be available after I actually book it, or I don't really want to do chores in the back end.
I'm already doing all my work, you know, it's not like I want to like clean up also on the way out or if I have a question, I just need someone to take care of it. I can't wait and see if the owner is going to get back to me. And so there's this sort of real demand for this type of product. certainly driven around hybrid work and people kind of coming in and out of, of where their, you know, work headquarters are.
we're also just seeing more and more. Young travelers, but really across the board, people saying, I want this style of stay, right? If I'm traveling with young kids, the access to a washer dryer, the ability to make some food at home to not again, have to go out every time or go downstairs to some buffet that might or might not be open, is really important.
And because we can deliver groceries to your room. Hey, I need eggs. I need some juice. I need something we can help take care of all of that. the other thing I've seen is, you know, we don't run F&B So what we try to do is have partnerships with either F&B operators who are in our building, or, you know, we're in these downtown locations that have access to all these great restaurants.
And one thing you see now, I saw some statistic, you know, something like 30 of people actually book their, you know, dinner or lunch reservations before they book their hotel or their airplane. And so they really want to go and experience the great food. So we don't feel the need to. Offer that F&B, but what we do is say, Hey, we have these partnerships that could get it to your, to delivered it to your room, like room service.
But, oh, by the way, there's DoorDash and UberEats and all of that. And we're centrally located to where all these things are. And so you can go experience the best of a city while living in this apartment style accommodation. So we think there's a lot of interesting trends that really, um, suit our model going forward.
David: So what is your outlook on the future of travel and hospitality and what are some emerging technologies or sustainability best practices that you're see kind of coming into the space?
Christian Lee: So obviously somewhat biased, but our outlook is really that people are going to continue to want this type of. You know, home style apartment style stay that that's just something that people are becoming used to, but they're going to want something that's more consistent, that's more managed again, they'll always be room for hotel, but but we think this will kind of be increasing trend both for guests and then the way we deliver that, service for multifamily, you know, operators, Technology trends we see that we're investing in, of course there's huge amounts of data. So we've spent a lot of time on data analysis and building out those dashboards and giving our management, our multifamily owners, you know, sort of the apartment owner, landlords, you know, access to insights and to see what's going on, but from a guest perspective, a lot of personalization. I think that the more we can leverage technology to allow the guests to get the type of experience they want out of the room, the better. So as an example, most People we see want the ability to get in the room by themselves. So kind of sending them the code, sending them, the ability through the app to kind of log in remotely, never having to talk to anyone go in to the building, take care of themselves.
Some people want to have an interaction. Maybe they want to text, maybe they want. And so, okay, well, we can build that, you know, text first, you know, AI based solution that gives them the information they want. And if they want to talk to someone, great, then, we can call and we can take care of that.
But it's also about, because we have. You know, a kitchen, what food you want in there, you know, if you're traveling, you know, is there a way that Is there a type of meal you want or a certain type of wine you want? Are there things that you want in there? So you don't have to kind of go out of the room to get that.
because we have a lot of, we're in residential buildings and so we're connected to residential style. Thermostats and, you know, unit control. Hey, I want to preset my room. I mean, I personally don't like the room freezing cold when I go in. I like it at 72 degrees. Other people like it at 68 degrees, right?
Allowing people to kind of control that before they get in and just thinking through all of those ways that you can personalize the experience, leveraging technology to let people set the type of experience that they want to set. I mean, it sort of has the double benefit of both driving efficiency, because you don't need as many people at the property, as well as a better guest experience, because they get it exactly the way they want to get it.
And so that's where we're spending a lot of our time is on the data side, as well as on that sort of technology enabling personalization side of things.
Steve Carran: That's great. And the technology landscape is always changing. whether that's a type of stays people are staying at, the type of technology, trends and sustainability, how do you stay ahead of the curve?
Christian Lee: So we all travel, right? So, I mean, we all are kind of out there. We're staying at our product. We're staying at, you know, all their, whether it's other hotels, we're seeing what people are offering and innovating. We talk to our customers all the time. We have a lot of mechanisms where we're getting feedback.
So we do, um, Basically mid stage surveys, we're saying, Hey, is everything going right? Is there anything we could be doing better? We do post day surveys. We do NPS follow ups. So we're collecting lots of data on what people liked and what they didn't like. And then thinking about how could we solve the challenges they do have more through technology?
How could we make it a better guest experience? How can we get higher on NPS by investing in key things? And again, it has to be both, You know, driving efficiency and a better guest experience at the same time. so there's a lot of just either talking to our guests, getting feedback from our guests, and just quite frankly, the travel that we all do with the organization and the way that we see and learn.
We always, whenever one of our employees goes and stays, we have a forum where we try to get feedback on what did you like? What did you not like? What could we incorporate and do better? So we're really trying to, you know, the proverbial eat your own dog food and figure out ways that we can improve from there.
David: What advice do you have for someone who's not only looking to be a CEO, but to succeed at being a CEO of a company?
Christian Lee: So I'm still learning. So I would love advice. Um, you know, my experience has been. You know, the sort of cliche, what got you there isn't what will get you to the next level. So when I first started getting into leadership positions, you know, it was okay. Am I the smartest person there? Can I solve the problem, right?
What do I need to do to kind of bring everyone together and have the solution? And I'd say the biggest thing I've learned throughout my career, especially in the past. You know, eight, 10 years of kind of going through some of the things we went through. And we worked with COVID coming back, you know, just the changes in, you know, the landscape generally is the more you just put out, of course, division.
This is where we want to go, right? I, we are going here. This is kind of, you know, the North star of what we need to do. But Here's the challenges we're facing. Let's talk about it, put it out there, bring people together, whether that's bringing the organization together and having them understand here's where we're going, here's what we've done, but here's where we're falling a bit short and need to improve to, my executive leadership team and just sitting around and saying, okay, here's where we're going.
Here's a challenge as I'm seeing, what do you think about that? How would you solve it? What's your idea? And kind of trying to make it as collaborative as possible, even as you're still setting the vision, right? someone has to make decisions, someone has to set the vision, but then as you go through that, getting as much feedback as you can, and really trying to empower people, to the greatest ability you can, because I've found that's the way you really break through some of the toughest challenges.
Steve Carran: great. Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. So, Christian, we've been asking you questions this whole time. So we're going to turn the tables here and let you ask David and I a question.
Christian Lee: Well, I guess I'd ask the same question. What do you all see? Uh, you know, you're talking to so many interesting people in the hospitality space. What do you see as the trends that are coming up? I mean, what are things that we might not be seeing from our space that you are seeing from the broad purview that you have?
Steve Carran: David, do you want to go first?
David: yeah, I think you touched on a personalization and we, we hear there's this, there's a struggle. And I say struggle because I think it's true in hospitality about just the guest experience and the lack of embracing. Technology. And so, something you said. I just I loved it because you talked about chores.
And, you know, we just went on a, trip around Thanksgiving and we stayed the final. We did hotels and we did an Airbnb at the end with family for Thanksgiving. And, you know, the last thing I remember. From my trip was stripping the beds and cleaning up like a housekeeper. And I was just like, this is such a horrible way for me to end my trip.
I got a six hour drive ahead of me coming back to Phoenix. So I think it's some of that, you know, the common sense really focusing on the guest experience and some of the points you hit on is just leveraging technology to enhance the guest and the staff experience and not look at it at technology or AI or all these things are going to just take away from it.
Christian Lee: No, a hundred percent.
Steve Carran: Yeah, I think, I think kind of two points. David kind of hit on one a little bit of the hyper personalization. I love what you said about, you know, when you're traveling, people might want to cook in their, in their room instead of ordering out or going out to dinner every night. So I think that personalization, why are guests staying with you?
I travel so much more differently when I'm traveling for work. Then I do for leisure. So why am I staying at your property? I think is one. And then two, you, you said something else that really resonated with me about guests booking restaurants before they booked their hotels. People, when they're traveling now, they want that hyperlocal experience.
They want to live like the locals live. They don't want to go maybe to the That chain restaurant that they have back home, they want to go eat at that local steak place that may have the best steak in town that only the locals know about. So I think kind of those two hyper, areas of personalization and, hyper local activities.
Christian Lee: Yeah, no, that, that really, that resonates a ton. And I think your AI point is, is fascinating. I mean, there's all this obviously hype about it. and I do think that it will play a big role in hospitality at some point, but, we've experimented with it quite a bit. And, you know, first of all, it takes a long time to train these models, right?
I was like, kind of naively originally like, oh, we can just take all of the. You know, sort of guest care manuals that we use and just dump it in the chatGPT and, and let's play around with it. And, you know, the answers were really bad and, you know, I think it'll get really good eventually, but it does take time, right?
It's not like you can just put it in and it will sort of magically work. It's going to take time to train the models, to figure out exactly what you want to say, what type of guest experience you want to have. And so that is an investment. And I kind of, that goes back to why scale is important, right? The ability to put.
Time and effort in that to make sure that if you're going to roll something out, it actually is again, enhancing to the guest experience. It will clearly drive efficiency, but as enhancing to the guest experience, like, does it make you want to stay there more? Does it feel like it's not a robot talking to you, but actually something that's useful?
So I think there's a lot to come on that, but I think, you know, we're not, it's not exactly as sort of magical as people make it seem to be.
Steve Carran: Absolutely. Well, Christian, we've had a lot of fun with you. Thank you for joining us. We're going to bring in our producer, John, for the final question for you here, and then we're going to get you out of here.
Christian Lee: Curveball. I like it.  
Jon Bumhoffer: One of my biggest takeaways from listening to you talk about mint house was how clear it is that you guys are on who mint house is for, like you mentioned, the young business travelers who want to stay at like an Airbnb style. and then the pivot in COVID when that happened. And so my question is like, how do you, how would you advise hoteliers like really to figure out who their guests are, who their ideal guests are, who they're for, and how to get clear on that?
Because it seems like you guys are very clear.  
Christian Lee: Yeah. It's, it's a great question. And I think that it kind of, it starts from what's your intention when, you know, are you, are you building a hotel? Are you, you know, kind of taking over a chain? And so what's the intention originally of what that product was designed for? But then, you know, I think the thing that Mentos has done well is just listening to the guests and look at the travel trends.
You know, we're out there, we're constantly trying to bring people in. We're on a bunch of different OTA platforms. We have our direct sales force, but just that constant listening to. You know, who is staying here? You know, why did this person say, well, what is it about our product that's really compelling?
Okay. Is there something we should be leaning into more there because we're seeing the kernel of something that maybe we didn't envision originally, but wow, that's pretty cool that that's a use case we hadn't even thought of. And so I think it's both that intention to begin with, but then just really.
Getting as much feedback as you can from guests. And I think we've tried to do it in ways that are non intrusive, super easy. Hey, just give us, you know, a number scale if you want to write a comment, but then we can kind of aggregate that and say, Oh yeah, we're hearing this over and over overseeing this type of use case.
Great. Like let's invest more in that. And so it's the intention. And then just that constant customer feedback and really using it to drive the decisions you make, um, as an executive team and as an organization.
David: Well, that does it for another episode of the Modern Hotelier. Christian, this is where you get the plug away, let people know how they can either get in touch with you or how they can learn more about Minhouse.
Christian Lee: Yeah. you know, go to Mintouse. com. I'm mostly on LinkedIn, Christian Lee, uh, feel free to reach out there. And, uh, yeah, just we're on kind of every major OTA, but Mintouse. com, direct as I was the best, as I'm sure all of your, uh, guests know.
David: Well, that does it for another episode of the Modern Hotelier, Hospitality's most engaged podcast. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and we'll see you next time. Thanks, Christian. We enjoyed it.
Christian Lee: Thanks very much. Really great to be on.
Steve Carran: Thank you.