We were lucky to catch up with Anke Bodack recently and have shared our conversation below.
Anke, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?
I see a big trend going towards smaller properties, away from the big branded hotels and also a big movement for more sustainability and wellness. A small anecdote for this could be, that we receive a good amount of wedding night bookings, even though we have excellent larger hotels on the ocean and or with many more amenities and luxuries that we are not offering.
This tells me, that the guests are loving the personal connection, the sustainability and even the small intimate, yet intentionally designed spaces we have. The small local wellness offerings and our strong focus on sustainable design seem to be very relevant to them. We also see those topics discussed in depth and always so incredibly well curated at the annual Design Hotel Arena meetings, which is hosted once a year for all Design Hotel owners and affiliates.
One year in Greece the overarching topic was Sustainability and it ranged from hotels sourcing the majority of produce from their own farm and even beyond hotel initiatives. Furthermore presenting companies who up-cycle fishing nets for furniture and instruments to weighing the the food waste to then adjusting the menus and portions accordingly. I think the holistic approach to sustainability and wellness as well as the movement toward smaller scale boutique hotels and resorts is an urgent and absolutely necessary one. As the tourism industry carry a huge responsibility to the environment, the natural habitat as and the residents.
Anke, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My background is Product Design, but most my career I worked in Automotive Design and was doing the CMF (Color/ Material and Finishes). I have worked at the Design studio at Nissan in la Jolla, which for sure formed my way of designing and thinking. It was very creative, multi disciplinary and an amazing place to grow my skills as well as personally. I then spend some years in Start Ups. Incredible stories continued for example then at V-Vehicle, a company that ended up not producing, but an extremely small design team, lead by Automotive Legend Tom Matano designed a full car. Sustainabilty also back then was always my passion and in that case we were able to design the car body without paint and most hard surfaces in the car were Fibro Wood (similar to what later on was seen at the BMW i3).
After about 20 years in design, I organically slipped into hospitality with an Airbnb I had designed in part of my house and it was easy to always rent it out and I loved the guest interactions so much, I realized I needed to change my career a little. I started researching and after about 3-4 years after permist with the city, figuring out my funding and selecting the right builders, I had my dream B&B/ small Design Hotel built (October 2019).
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
From my design background, I was used to schedules and milestones to get the project done and delivered. But once it was done, no changes were possible. Except lets say in a year or later on, when there was a model minor change, for example in the automotive industry. In hospitality on the contrary, of course after the project is designed and built, it’s much more fluid. To be honest, I was not really sure what I was doing and or what I was getting myself into, but the great thing is that I was able to adjust, change and of the operational details. It takes away a lot of pressure, knowing that it all does not have to be 100% perfect from day one. Some very brilliant soul from Design Hotels told me this and that was a huge pressure off my back. So we just have been fine tuning and adjusting things, we felt did not work. Also bad reviews made us aware of certain aspects we may have not communicated well and or we needed to change, if possible. Luckily we are blessed with mostly excellent reviews, but the very few not so great ones, we used for adjusting some aspects of the operation.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I think like with any other business owner, especially I would assume the small business owner as most likely all your savings are toed up and beyond, you have to have a resilient mindset. It’s like you know it’s this marathon and you have to mentally and physically stay strong until the finish line. we opened in October 2019, then in mid March when COVID 19 hit pretry hard, we had no guests for a few months. Luckily I still had some of my design consulting on the side, we were able to get some SBA disaster loan and I also loaned some money from my parents. I feel once you are in this mode that you know you need to financially survive a very challenging phase, you just keep going. Especially I felt this was my dream and heart felt project for so long. In hospitality also you need to have a very long breath, as there are phases of months where you will work every day and the hours may also be quite long. But since its’s my passion and I love all aspects about it, it will keep me going and in a great way give me positive energy. Especially that we are lucky with pretty mich all our guests. When they love their stay, they can relax, love the breakfast and we may even discuss sustainable materials, that was a very fulfilling day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.twelvesensesretreat.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twelvesensesretreat/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankebodack/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOlRbRGwNhw
- Other: https://www.designhotels.com/hotels/usa/california/encinitas/twelve-senses-retreat/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20352886488&gbraid=0AAAAAD5m-ASQjTZA_Gi13-Wopa1ecbLBl&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz4Oi5_vJjQMVOwutBh2DOx7jEAAYAiAAEgIKUfD_BwE
Image Credits
Kate Berry, Justin Nunez Studio