Why Hostels Are an Untapped Investment Opportunity in the U.S. | Mike & Nate E34

We're proving why hostels are one of the most powerful investment models in real estate. In this episode, Mike and Nate break down exactly why they’re going all-in on hostels and how they turn underperforming assets into award-winning hospitality destinations.

You’ll learn:

• Why the U.S. hostel market is ripe for disruption
• The revenue model that turns $100 rooms into $300 cash machines
• How their guest-first brand became a marketing engine
• Why “flawed” properties are actually a goldmine for this model
• What Gen Z travelers are demanding and why hostels deliver
• Plus, some hints on what they're building next in Los Angeles

If you’ve ever considered buying a boutique hotel or investing in experiential hospitality, this episode will give you a whole new lens.

Listen now and learn why hostels might be the highest-ROI play in the game.

Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Email Us at info@hotelinvestorplaybook.com

Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram

Invest with Malama Capital

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Transcript

Michael Russell 0:00

Everyone wants to find that undervalued opportunity before the rest of the market catches on. We believe we've found it. In this episode, we're talking about hostels, a massively undervalued and overlooked hospitality asset class. In this conversation, Nate and I break down why we're investing in them, why the competition is almost non existent, and how we're able to make deals work where others can't, often by turning so-called flaws into features that give us a serious edge. We'll get into the details of how we bought a tired motel for only $800,000 and now generate that same amount in annual net income, essentially earning back the purchase price every single year. If you've been listening for a while and wondering how our model actually works, this is the episode for you. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Hotel Investor Playbook, your guide to building wealth and freedom through boutique hotel ownership, hosted by Mike and Nate. Get in the game, welcome to the Hotel Investor Playbook. We're Mike and Nate, founders of Maloma Capital, and your host on this podcast, we talk story about everything you need to know to make money investing in hotels and hospitality assets. So on today's episode, we've got a special guest. It's the one, the only, my business partner, Nathan Saints here. And I'm having a little fun here, but the idea is we're gonna be talking about our business model. So one of the things we've heard from listeners is that you guys want to hear more about our model of hostels and what we're doing and how we're doing it. So on today's episode, we're gonna walk through what we've built, how we've done it, and get into the nitty-gritty about hostels and how this works as an investing asset. So, Nathan, welcome to the show.

Nathan St Cyr 1:58

I'm actually fired up for this. This is our passion. This is our wheelhouse. So we constantly get asked this. People want to understand, dig deeper in. They hear some of those big numbers where maybe they've heard me as a guest on a podcast talk about how we've made an original purchase for $800,000 and our 2025 budgeted NOI for that property is $800,000. It's it's like an unheard of financial viability metrics that just is a is a unicorn. So I'm I'm pumped.

Michael Russell 2:28

I want to flash back in time. So let's go back when we bought our hostel. Remember when we told people we were going to be buying hostels right in the middle of COVID? That's when we started. Most folks looked at us like we were just out of our minds, right? And now we're seeing institutional buyers like Generator and Freehand that are getting acquired for $900 million. What goes through your mind when you see that?

Nathan St Cyr 2:53

Obviously, it absolutely cements and verifies the vision, right? That we're we're on the right path. But I I do want to go back to what you just said about during COVID because I think that this is a really important part of our story, is that we saw this opportunity with hostels at having so much upside with the US market and where hostels are at relative to the global hostile industry and the US market. We were willing because we were so bought in to the potential that existed. If you go back to COVID, how all of us felt when we were locked in those beginning months, we're literally locked down here in the Hawaiian Islands. If they stopped allowing tourists to come in, there was fear, right? And that's when we doubled down and went all in. And we did so because we really believed in the big picture vision. And so this institutional money coming in, it's for the purchase of generator. And then there was another company in Europe. They just invested $400 million in the urban expansion of their hostels and urban hotels. So it validates what we believed to be true then and the path that we're on. And then what we're seeing in the success that we've had validates that it wasn't just a big grand vision, but that that vision really, really has teeth.

Michael Russell 4:18

Yeah, absolutely. There's there's a proven business model. We're not pioneering something that hasn't been done before. We're just recognizing that there's an opportunity to do it better here in the United States. If you look at, for example, like Google, everyone now just defaults to Google when you do an internet search. But if you were around when I was in college when Google was first started, I remember there were other browsers. I think it was Netscape or something else. There are other people doing this. What Google did is they just took the concept and they did it much better. And so the lighthouse for us has been some of these big companies like Generator. So that provided the proof of concept. And now we're just applying it here in the US. And it's it's not like this is something that hasn't been done before. We're just executing it very well here in the States. But let's go back in time to where we were. So we're not hostile people. It's not like we've lived this life of passion for hostels. Can you take us back to when we first started looking at actually apartment buildings here in Hawaii? And I remember that the numbers just didn't work, right? But what was the shift for us? What did we see in hostels that we weren't seeing anywhere else?

Nathan St Cyr 5:26

I think it's important to understand. Why were we looking for apartment buildings? We found that through our single-family homes, long-term rentals and through short-term rentals that we'd been investing between the two of us over the course of decades in those assets. But the thing that was missing was the opportunity to, especially with your short-term rentals, was force appreciation, right? We wanted to do something big and we knew that we could do something really well. And we wanted to be able to capitalize on what commercial real estate allows you to do. And that's the better that you run your business, the more NOI that you generate, then you are paid back in forced appreciation and equity. So we're like, all right, what are we gonna do here? That's where we went into the apartment building. But comparing it to your short-term rentals, the margins were crap. It was frustrating. But we did know that ultimately it was gonna take time and we would be able to leverage the opportunity of what commercial real estate can do. And that's that's force equity over the long run. And we could build significant wealth that way. But in looking at that, I get asked this all the time. Are are you in hospitality because your passion is for hospitality? Or are you in hospitality because you feel like there's a great opportunity to make money? Frankly, it started with being an accident. It started with that first apartment building that we went we went to call on in the Hawaiian Islands on Maui. We picked up the phone and we call, we asked the question, hey, we'd like to take a look at this apartment building. And the broker said, Well, hey, it just went under contract today. But we had picked up on this little comment in the listing notes, and it said, previously been run as a hostel. And we're like, What? And that little moment when we asked that question of, hey, what does this mean? And that real estate agent picked up on that our curiosity and just started bombarding us with information about the the US market and how far behind it was versus places like Europe and Asia. That moment, that light bulb went off for us, like, could this be real? Man, this makes a lot of sense. And as we just dug and started doing research, we really recognized that there was not just financial viability for a single asset purchase, but for a massive disruption in the US market in this asset type.

Michael Russell 7:51

Yeah. So you referenced my short-term rentals, which here in Hawaii, they crush it. Hotels are expensive here. And so we were oftentimes looking at the cost per room type model when we were trying to evaluate how can we scale this? And you mentioned some of the hurdles, there was regulations. So as we were going on that exercise, we didn't really get very far because we knew that we were kind of getting shut down on the short-term rental model. But from a financial perspective, we had this idea in our heads of what it costs per room for an accommodation, whether it's a hotel or a short-term rental. And so I think this is an important distinction because I want to break down for people what happened when we applied that concept to the hostel model, where we were kind of comparing the same footprint, right? A standard hotel room versus occupying it with bunk beds and what the revenue difference looked like. So can you touch upon that, like that epiphany we had when comparing hotel rooms versus bunk bedrooms?

Nathan St Cyr 8:51

I'll start with the comparison of why is it that a short-term rental outperforms a long-term rental in the same asset, right? Why are the margins bigger? Just when you do that first comparison, or when you look at an apartment building versus a hotel, why is the hotel more valuable than the apartment building or the short-term rental? Why does it create more cash flow than the long-term rental? And the reason for that, it's like the opposite of Costco. So you've got the Costco effect where you know you go in and if you have a certain need and you go and buy in bulk, right, you get a discounted price per unit because you're buying in bulk. Well, that's the same thing as a long-term rental or an apartment building, right? You're you're getting a lease for a minimum of 30 days, but a lot of times six months or a year. And so when you break that down into what a short-term rental does or whether what a hotel room does, now you're taking away the bulk purchasing discount and you're charging a one night premium. So those that can execute on this hospitality concept of offering these one night at a time stays, you're overcoming the bulk purchasing discount. And so we recognize that in your short-term rental versus the long-term rentals that we had. But it goes even further with the hostile model versus it's like a multiplier effect, right? Let's say an economy-based hotel room that's running for $100 a night. That room, that average daily rate of that room is $100. But man, based on its size, we could put three bunk beds consisting of six total beds at $50 a night. That's $300. So we just took the per room average daily rate of $100. And just by reconfiguring it on a per bed basis, we turned $100 into $300. And we utilized this model as we went through as whoa, is this is is this real? Could we really do this? We were extremely attracted to this financial viability piece in what we saw in just really, really simple terms.

Michael Russell 11:08

Okay, so you're quite frankly describing that there's an economy of scale there, or there's something that we can take advantage of to increase density and ultimately generate more revenue. But it is not just as simple as like, oh, we'll just take an asset and we'll just put bunk beds in there and it's going to thrive. There are some other elements here that we noticed when we took on a we bought this tired asset. I mean, it was it was an old quasi-hostel, more like motel. Can you touch upon what are some of the biggest levers that we pulled to really not only keep cash flowing, but to just grow the value over six times to get to have it become six times more valuable?

Nathan St Cyr 11:45

One of the biggest benefits that we had, obviously, was that we we we had zero experience with with hostels. So we really came in first and foremost looking at this from the financial side. And because we didn't know hostels, but we had standards and we knew people and human beings, we said, let's go obsess over the guest journey. We understand that there's this big missing gap in the US marketplace with having some of these legitimized hostile experiences. How can we go and figure out what it is that people really want in this business model? And if we do that and we go and think guest first, we're guest-centric, obsess about them. What ultimately we believed would happen and then did is we increased the cost per bed, our occupancy increased substantially. So we started recognizing by focusing on the guest, fulfilling the human emotional needs, that in the at the end of the day, it was amplifying the financial viability.

Michael Russell 12:50

So making the numbers work, right? How do we get comfortable bringing investors into a model like this that most people haven't seen before? Like, what gives us the conviction in the returns?

Nathan St Cyr 12:59

Well, we really looked at Maui as let's go, let's go all in on developing a prototype and then let's go and and grow from that. Like us, you and me, we went and put our own capital in, 100% of our own capital. We bootstrapped this thing. So we're like, okay, let's let's go prove this concept out. We saw it from the beginning, and everything that we've seen as far as our vision goes has really become reality. Also, we were able to learn all of the challenges. Sometimes you learn as much about what you want to look for as you go and grow by the things that maybe don't work, right? We didn't know what we didn't know in the beginning. And so our ability to number one create a prototype on Maui, number two, go off island. So that was big for us to be able to then go and say, all right, well, let's go do this on another island where we're able to do a full renovation, build a team, do everything remotely. If we wanted to go there physically, we had to go and get on an airplane. And in going through that process, and then everything we learned about the differences between the prototype we'd developed on Maui and what we learned about that second property on the big island in Hilo, it really allowed us to say, okay, number one, now we got a ton of confidence that we can do this. And I think the other thing that we did is we were able to say, okay, let's identify the team that's necessary to really help us dial this in. So from making moves like hiring a business advisor, but let's make sure that we're most impactful and efficient with our team, responsibility, allow us to put in place the systems that will allow us to create our playbook and our brand. So from a business advisor to a CFO to go and really be able to look at, man, I remember all of the time and energy that we put into those details with our CFO in going through what is every percentage that exists within our business model? What makes it successful? What are the things that we need to identify as far as targets and markets for us to go and duplicate this level of success? So I think when we go and put it all together, our experience, it paid off. Our focus first on guest, that put us in a position for us to become award-winning, right? Within three years, we were awarded the number one best small hostel in all of North America. So that kind of proved like our operational playbook. Like, yes, guest-centric, we're differentiating ourselves here in North America. And then, second to that was that experience also allowed us to identify what team and systems and processes do we need to put in place and build and create the infrastructure that we can go and build upon and scale. I think that the combination of those two things have been extremely helpful and created a massive amount of confidence for us to be able to go and duplicate this. Hey guys, quick heads up. If you're passionate about hospitality investments, excited by the upside and want to get involved, but you're not quite ready to take on a full project yourself, listen up. We've secured a flagship property in downtown Los Angeles that fits our hospitality model perfectly. And we're targeting 20% plus returns for our investors. We're opening this first to our accredited podcast listeners. You'll get early access to the full investment overview plus a behind-the-scenes look at how we're bringing the project to life. Just hit the link in the show notes to check it out.

Michael Russell 16:32

Yeah, if you've been a listener for a while, you've heard us reference this before, but we've talked about we're building a $400 million company. And part of that was inspired by what we saw with these institutional investors that are buying major European hostel brands. And so we had a guiding light. And so when we talk about systems, like you're talking about the team and the infrastructure, the coaching, the CFO, all these elements that we put in place. Like one would not ordinarily do all that if you were just going to operate one location or even two. But from the very beginning, we've had this vision of scale. So everything, all this attention to detail has been prototype and scale and building out the house, right? You start with the pillars, the foundation. And we've been building this foundation now to where we feel like it's rock solid.

Nathan St Cyr 17:16

You just said something to me that I'm like, I don't know that people get this. We're building this brand, and within that brand, there's enterprise value. But one of the things that is just pure upside, like when we go and underwrite other opportunities for investors as we bring investors in in our underwriting, we don't provide any additional value for the brand that we've already created, like zero. Like we don't go and say, okay, well, this would be underwritten based on averages at X, but because of our brand, we're gonna increase the valuation to Y. We don't even include the Y. The Y is the upside, right? And so when you look at what we've done from a from a playbook standpoint, it's already proven out. It's already the best in North America. We already know that. That's coming with us taking over as the operator. Secondly, what we've been able to figure out from a marketing standpoint that our brand has done, man, you go and look at, well, what's a 24,000 email subscriber list? What's the value of that? When you look at the millions of impressions that we now have on social media, when you look at our social media following, our first reservation ever at our second property, the website hadn't launched and OTAs hadn't launched. The first reservation actually came from, if you remember, do you remember where it came from?

Michael Russell 18:36

Yeah, it was Instagram, right?

Nathan St Cyr 18:37

It was Instagram. We put out a promo on Instagram, got booked before we even launched on OTAs. So everything that we've done from a brand standpoint, it's it's multiplying. So as we go and add the next property, that's going to be a multiplier for the next property. The domino effect keeps occurring. As we continue to grow grow as a brand, the underlying real estate continues to prosper from that. Does that make sense?

Michael Russell 19:06

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You're you're you're getting the tailwind from the brand that's lifting up. So each time you open a new location, you're not starting from scratch. You've got this built-up following of people that are excited about your new location. And our demographic, they're prone to visit multiple locations. When they go on a trip, it might not be like your typical family vacationer that's got a week off for spring break. They might take a month and be able to visit all of our locations. They might just jump from LA to Maui, or if we open up elsewhere. So having that brand integration with each and every real estate location, there's added value that we're not even accounting for.

Nathan St Cyr 19:45

Yeah. And I think that what we've learned, I think one of the things in building a business and scaling and then really dialing in okay, how do you become the most effective, efficient, and profitable? That this has been an area of recognition for me personally. Personally, is getting extremely dialed in on what your avatar is. I think it's important for investors to understand when they're looking at different asset classes. And let's say they have a passion for hospitality experiences and they're looking at investing in hospitality. Well, well, why this asset is so incredibly powerful is that there may be a stigma of hostels for in the US. And I think that that's what's really held the US back. But when we look at our avatar, our avatar is Gen Z and younger millennials. They have grown up in a different world. They have grown up with a different mentality, right? They've grown up in a world where from kind of jump, they've been used to this shared accommodation, whether it's co-living or whether it's I mean, think about Uber. Yeah, just a shared economy in general. I mean, it obviously shows my age, but it was like Uber comes out and I'm like, there's absolutely no way I'm getting in some dude's car. But now anywhere I go, that so I'm someone that had to like get chipped away at, chipped away. Cause I already had my own map already created. But when you look at the younger generations, they are craving this. I just looked this up when I was doing some research. 76% of Gen Z travelers prefer a hostel over a hotel room or an Airbnb.

Michael Russell 21:24

What do you think it is about the hostel experience that is driving them to prefer hostels?

Nathan St Cyr 21:29

This generation is craving community. Their entire lives are spent with technology. So the value of real human connection is so critically important to them. Secondly, when they do stuff, they want to do stuff and be cool. And so they want to go and do these experiential things that are extremely Instagrammable and show that they're social and show that they belong and that they're a part of something that's happening and all of these exciting things. So it's kind of set up this perfect storm of a dynamic that this generation, they need this connection deeply. And then they prefer to have that community, community-oriented bringing people together. I find it's like the perfect storm.

Michael Russell 22:17

I I heard you say this previously, but you called it like social glue for travelers, right?

Nathan St Cyr 22:22

Yeah. It's when we look at everything that we've done from design to creating a team, everything is designed to facilitate bringing people together, to kind of help people through fighting their little bit of human nature that might make you want to go and isolate and hang out in the corner or do this, but kind of forces you to meet each other. And so having a business model that gets people to really come together to create a connected experience and a community, there's massive value in it.

Michael Russell 22:55

So there's a lot of upside. And we've talked so far about from a financial perspective that we can maximize revenue from a social perspective, it's a feel-good business because you're bringing people together. But let's talk a little bit about some of the risk factors with a hostel. So, where do you think the biggest risk lies with investing in hostels?

Nathan St Cyr 23:15

I think that number one, you there's a couple of key components that you have to have. Volume of traveler. Right. So when you look at risk in a hostel, going from a buy the room model to a buy the bed, it's great when you go, okay, I can take this hundred dollar room, put six beds in it, and now it's a $300 room. But that doesn't matter if there's not the people to fill those beds. So I think that that's a key piece is understanding your market. And then number two is transportation, right? When we went and did a study for the county of Maui, we went and studied over 100 participants that were either hostile managers or owners. And what we found is that on average, depending upon the country, one out of eight or one out of 10 people actually have a rental car. So they're dependent on transportation. And so that's another piece of the puzzle that's critical to solve. If you have an unbelievable location, let's just say it's right on the coast, but it's difficult to get to, right? It's expensive to get there. You're gonna have to spend a hundred bucks on an Uber to get there, or you're gonna have to rent a car. That is not going to be an optimal hostile location. This community wants to have access to being able to explore the culture and the region. And so having transportation from a major metropolitan airport is a key metric that if you don't have that, then then it gets more risky.

Michael Russell 24:50

So what you're describing is all right, the perfect hostel location is somewhere that has a high density of travelers, ideally, like a top-tier vacation destination, people want to go there, or perhaps an urban location. And immediately what I associate with that is well, that sounds expensive, right? But when we're looking at these hostile properties, they're oftentimes purchased for less than what I guess comparable asset classes would go for. And so why do you think that hostels are kind of still flying under the radar or buildings or facilities that can operate as hostels?

Nathan St Cyr 25:29

Bro, this is the this is the money question. I think because there's a sweet spot. I think that what's happened in the US is is there's some there's some awesome hostels out there. There's some great operators out there, but I think for the most part, a lot of the hostel owners that we've been a part of in some of our organizations, there's some common theme. They traveled in their earlier years and they did it through hostels, and it became a passion project for them, right? So when they come back, they're like, look, this is what I want to do. And they become a part of the business and then they grow the business and they have very successful, awesome hostels that they create. But that they're coming from it from the perspective of it's their life, it's their passion project. So they're not necessarily looking to expand. Secondly, when you look at uh what you just described, a high demand, you said like urban or a high demand travel destination that has that volume of traveler, when you start to look at the cost of those assets, there are not a lot of operators out there in the hostel space that would look at purchasing a four to ten million dollar asset. So the competition in that golden zone, that sweet spot, there's just not a lot of competition because most of the hostel owners are passion project. And the ones that may have the vision to do something bigger, those that asset level is uh above what their means are. And then the reason that it sets up so well for us in competing with in the hospitality space. I mean, have you heard the word boutique hotel before? It's like it's like the sexy hot word, right? Boutique hotel, boutique hotel just gets thrown around left and right. And and there's this movement, go from short-term rentals to what? Boutique hotels. And I get that. And and really relative, we're pretty early in that stage. But there's a lot of people that are looking for, hey, I want to purchase a hospitality value add asset and turn it into a boutique hotel. And what we find happens with these unique assets that are a lot of times set up to be economy-based hotels, but really they have a lot of times shared bathrooms, they have maybe a shared kitchen to convert them into a boutique hotel. There's a massive infrastructure renovation that needs to take place. Like plumbing, it's it's a huge hurdle, right? And a lot of times people get excited because it's a great location, and then they go to look at, well, what's the cost for me to room by room go and convert this asset into a boutique hotel? It doesn't make sense financially. I'd have to raise too much capital, therefore the investor returns are not high enough to where this would this would make sense from an investor perspective. And so we fit this like this golden zone, right? We fit the sweet spot where we don't have a ton of competition in hostel owners looking to expand. We find assets that aren't the perfect fit from a from a renovation standpoint for boutique hoteliers.

Michael Russell 28:37

Or even, I think it's worthwhile saying an apartment operator, right? Because sometimes apart apartment people are looking to convert motels into economy long-term housing. But even then, we recognize that there's a lot of stumbling blocks in there with zoning regulations and city regulations that becomes very cost prohibitive to make that conversion.

Nathan St Cyr 28:58

Yeah, absolutely. 100%. From a from a stigma standpoint, someone might say, maybe that's not the sexiest asset. Now, if they were to go to our Instagram page or our website, that would probably change their mind. But I could also go and point to Brandon Turner investing in self-storage, mobile home parks. Is that a a sexy asset? No, but we're those early adopters that were going in there and and forging the way in that asset, they're they have billion-dollar portfolios right now. So, in my mind, to cast this vision where we're creating this $400 million portfolio of assets in the sweet spot, it doesn't seem in any way unrealistic. And what we've proven over the past few years is that it's not unrealistic. It's not only not unrealistic, it's actually extremely probable.

Michael Russell 29:50

And ultimately, to go back to where we started when we were identifying commercial real estate as a way to generate tremendous wealth, we looked at, well, you can force appreciation by increasing net income. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if it's a hostel, if it's a mobile home, if it's a self-storage, but if it generates more income, it's worth more. And you were talking about the challenges of shared restrooms and a shared kitchen. And for most investors, that is a flaw. But with the hostel model, it's a feature. It's not a flaw. It's one of the reasons why we're able to purchase these assets in premier locations at a discount because we're not having to account for the major renovations to infrastructure. We can operate them with relatively little structural improvements and generate massive amounts of cash flow or increase net income tremendously because we're able to increase the volume and the revenue by increasing the density. So to bring that all home, at the end of the day, hostels are overlooked because maybe there's a stigma, but we're transforming that stigma partly through our social media marketing, through just having really cool, fun spaces for people to go. And what that's resulting is that we're seeing more net income. And that more net income means the properties are worth more. At the end of the day, if investors are evaluating what they want to invest in, there's the idea of investing in a cool boutique hotel, which is, hey, that's awesome. But at the same token, investing in a hostel, if it can outpace a typical comparative investment, three to one, most people would say, Oh, I'd take the cash. And that's kind of our perspective on this, is we're really not necessarily hostile people, but we recognize this unique opportunity.

Nathan St Cyr 31:44

Yeah. And I'll kind of end on this point because I think you just summarized the financial side of it really well. And in the beginning, that's what we started with. People ask me that question of are you investing in this asset class because of the financial viability or because you're passionate about hospitality? And the bottom line is it started with, and it's exciting to talk about the financial viability, right? It's exciting to talk about the financial upside of this because we've we've found something that's that's rare. And but if we look at the other side of that, what I also need to communicate, sometimes I'll go and be a guest on a podcast. We don't talk about the financial viability at all. We only talk about the hospitality side. Because at the end of the day, I can come from my own life perspective. And I can look at when I go onto our Instagram page, sometimes I'll just I'll literally get tears. Like you can see the experience that we're taking people out into this world and we are providing experiences that have a value that you cannot put a price tag on. We're providing and fulfilling human emotional needs for them. And we've attacked the business in every aspect to go and fulfill all of those things, right? To create awe in people's life, to freaking get them away from the mundane, boring crap that happens, to go and provide security and to make people feel important and significant and bring people together and connect them and make them, it doesn't matter who they are, that they freaking come can come into this space, that they can belong and have an unbelievable travel experience. And if you look at our community outreach and the ability for our guests to go and actually come and volunteer at different projects, beach cleanups, we provide and facilitate these. So we're contributing and leaving the community better than than we left it. And ultimately, in doing that, people they they grow, right? They're like leave better than they they came. And and that to me, although it started with financial viability, now it's fueled. Like in seeing what we're actually doing, I don't know that there's a more valuable thing that I could be investing in from an experiential standpoint. At the end of the day, that's all we have in life. We we we're not promised tomorrow, we've got today. And when you look at what we're providing as far as an actual experience and a memory, it's there's just not a value that you can put on it. And that that fills me. Yeah.

Michael Russell 34:19

All right. So to wrap this thing up, this is that was great, by the way. Awesome, dude. I that touched me, man. It's great. But if someone's listening to this and they're thinking, all right, I get it. This is an awesome opportunity. What would you tell them? Is there still a window for them to get started in this business either on their own? Or what would you tell them how how they can get involved?

Nathan St Cyr 34:40

For us to get to the point where we're having this conversation right here, right now, being awarded the number one hostel in in North America, the financial viability that we've proven, obviously that does not happen overnight. Some of these assets that we've learned in these high barrier to entry markets are probably not going to be the easiest for somebody to get funding on moment one, where someone that's an expert operator like us obviously has that track record. So I don't want to paint the picture that it's just all sunshines and rainbows and butterflies. But yes, there is definitely an opportunity within this space for people to go and follow the follow the playbook with.

Michael Russell 35:22

Well, you can continue to listen to us. We're dropping knowledge each and every week. You can follow us on our social media as well and continue to learn. We're learning by doing. So by no means do we take the position that we know everything, but we've come a long way and we're happy to pay it forward and share what we do know. So if you want to reach out to us, you can see our contact information listed in the show notes. We love hearing from listeners. So if you've got feedback or you want to get in touch with us, please reach out, send us a note, and we'll continue to take feedback and apply it in our podcast. So on that note, I want to thank everyone for listening. And we're gonna sign off. I'm Mike, he's Nate, and this is another episode of the Hotel Investor Playbook. We'll catch you again next week. Aloha. Thanks for hanging out with us today on the Hotel Investor Playbook. If you got even one good nugget of wisdom about hotel investing, do us a favor, hit that subscribe button and leave us a five-star review. And hey, if you're feeling extra generous, drop a quick line in the review section. Something like Mike and Nate are the go-to hotel investing guys, or best podcast for anyone looking to crush it in hospitality. Or, you know, whatever feels right. Those little shout-outs go a long way in helping more people find the show. And they pretty much make our day. All right, appreciate you guys. Catch you next time.