{"id":74488,"date":"2021-02-05T22:41:17","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T22:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mytravelleader.com\/?p=74488"},"modified":"2021-02-05T22:41:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T22:41:17","slug":"at-life-house-hotels-you-feel-like-you-belong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mytravelleader.com\/travel\/at-life-house-hotels-you-feel-like-you-belong\/","title":{"rendered":"At Life House Hotels, You Feel Like You Belong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\"  style=\"height: 2.4rem\" alt=\"AFAR logo\" src=\"https:\/\/img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net\/tenant\/amp\/entityid\/BBtrX7L.img\"><\/p>\n<p>\n <span><\/p>\n<p><span><br \/>\n <span>&#169; Courtesy of Life House Hotels<\/span><br \/>\n At Life House Hotels, You Feel Like You Belong<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n Courtesy of Life House Hotels Guests and locals gather around the firepit at Life House Nantucket like old friends. <\/p>\n<style>\n<\/style>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/static-entertainment-wus-s-msn-com.akamaized.net\/sc\/64\/a8a064.gif\" alt=\"Loading...\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Load Error<\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cThey\u2019re also people you might have never directly met, but you share something important in common,\u201d writes Amanda Mull for the <em>Atlantic<\/em>. \u201cYou go to the same concerts, or live in the same neighborhood and frequent the same local businesses. You might not consider all of your weak ties friends, at least in the common use of the word, but they\u2019re often people with whom you\u2019re friendly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>I\u2019ve been thinking about weak ties a lot lately, searching for ways to reinvigorate these exchanges as we enter the <\/span><em><span>longest<\/span><\/em><span> shortest month of the year. I keep coming back to a weekend spent in Nantucket last summer, when COVID cases had slowed and regional travel had resumed (albeit briefly). My husband and I had booked a getaway with just two priorities: take a few nights off from parenting and eat at the <\/span><span>Nautilus<\/span><span> as often as possible. We didn\u2019t realize we\u2019d receive the gift of chitchat\u2014that blessed interaction that occurs with total strangers when you travel, be it in a line or a lobby, a bar or a backyard, connecting you to a place. It had been so long I almost forgot how to do it. Thankfully, I had the opportunity to relearn that weekend at <\/span><span>Life House Nantucket.<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>\n <span><\/p>\n<p><span><br \/>\n <span>&#169; Courtesy of Life House Hotels<\/span><br \/>\n The rooms are well appointed and comfortable, but you probably won\u2019t spend a lot of time there.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n Courtesy of Life House Hotels The rooms are well appointed and comfortable, but you probably won\u2019t spend a lot of time there.  <\/h2>\n<p><span>At first glance, Life House Hotels, founded in 2017 by New York\u2013based entrepreneur Rami Zeidan, are like many other 21st-century boutique properties: digitally savvy, artfully designed, locally sourced, and Instagram friendly. (I may have \u2019grammed a photo or two of my welcome cocktail and the hotel\u2019s tiger-print carpet on arrival.) But get past the promotional materials surface and you\u2019ll notice there\u2019s something more substantive going on: At the Nantucket property, which just opened summer 2020, the art on the guestroom walls comes with its own primer; the general manager delivers cocktails on the porch and lingers for half an hour to talk about his past; a firepit doubles as a neighborhood watering hole. It feels comfortable, relaxed\u2014no forced small talk here. Like the hotel has managed to create an environment that specifically <\/span><em><span>fuels<\/span><\/em><span> serendipity and discovery. How? Better still, how did they do that during a pandemic, when everyone\u2019s hiding behind a mask?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Core to Life House\u2019s mission is creating a sense of belonging, says\u00a0 33-year-old owner Zeidan, who credits his late brother Mohamed (\u201cMoe\u201d), a humanitarian and doctor who died in an accident in 2014, as a source of inspiration. \u201c<\/span><span>We came from a Muslim background and had a tough experience post-9\/11 in Minnesota,\u201d Zeidan says on a recent Zoom call, recalling how his Lebanese heritage shaped his future. \u201cIt was pretty clear who accepted us as equals, and who didn\u2019t.\u201d In his experience, they were welcomed by those who had been exposed to diversity: \u201cNot just ethnic diversity, but diversity of perspectives,\u201d says Zeidan. \u201cExposure to new things can help us feel more brave. We\u2019ll be open to social interactions, to making connections. That kind of opens doors to really meaningful experiences that stay with you for a while.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Sounds like a fundamental reason why so many of us travel. Perhaps that\u2019s why my weekend at Life House felt like such a safe space to shake off the COVID-born fear of strangers. From its brand ethos (\u201cto make travel more meaningful and more accessible\u201d) shared by the entire staff to the design choices, Life House is built to attract like-minded guests interested in \u201cintentional travel,\u201d as Zeidan calls it. It goes beyond escapism and caters to those interested in learning about a destination from the people they meet. We can Google whatever we want, whenever we want. But how often do we get to create a community that will wonder with us?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>\n <span><\/p>\n<p><span><br \/>\n <span>&#169; Courtesy of Life House Hotels<\/span><br \/>\n At Life House Nantucket, we hung out in the common room, complete with a fireplace and plenty of warm conversation.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n Courtesy of Life House Hotels At Life House Nantucket, we hung out in the common room, complete with a fireplace and plenty of warm conversation.  <\/h2>\n<p><span>Life House has paid a lot of attention to its hotel social spaces, making them more accommodating for working remotely (coffee and food round the clock), taking meetings, and interacting with guests and locals alike. That might mean your guestroom isn\u2019t quite meant for hunkering down. To wit: Our 230-square-foot \u201ccozy king\u201d room in the 200-year-old Nantucket space\u2014a former sea captain\u2019s federalist mansion reborn\u2014didn\u2019t have a dresser and the windows rattled with fury during a rainstorm. Zeidan has set out to create an \u201cauthentic stay\u201d at each of the 10 hotels, either opened or opening, from newcomers Nantucket and Denver to several in Miami. Authentic means local, distinctive, and\u2014surprisingly\u2014affordable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Prior to launching Life House, Zeidan worked in private equity, investing in hotels and luxury brands like NYC\u2019s now-iconic NoMad hotel (part of the <\/span><span>Sydell Grou<\/span><span>p) and sustainably focused line 1 Hotels for Starwood. He started to pay more attention to what was offered at a luxury or ultra-luxury price, and wondered if he could deliver the same quality to even more people. To that end, you could book a cozy queen in Miami\u2019s Little Havana for $169, or a night in a Victorian-era home in Denver for $185. A comparable room at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge or the NoMad NYC might be twice the price.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>On our second night at Life House Nantucket, my husband and I were tucking into a takeout Peking duck dinner, which is as ridiculous as it sounds, in the hotel\u2019s living room when a pair of friends came in, women our age. They sat across the room\u2014far enough that we could take off our masks, but close enough that it would feel awkward if we ignored each other. And so we started to share our stories: where we were from, where we had been, what we had eaten on our trips; how the pandemic had changed our travel lives, our jobs, our homes. A Life House staffer who had befriended the two women brought out decadent, booze-y hot chocolate for us all. (We even started to offer up our Peking duck until we remembered that sharing a meal isn\u2019t quite COVID-friendly.) For an hour, life felt normal. Weak ties felt strong. The connection was real.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>>>Next: The Best Weekend Getaways From NYC<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/travel\/article\/at-life-house-hotels-you-feel-like-you-belong\/ar-BB1dqEJI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#169; Courtesy of Life House Hotels At Life House Hotels, You Feel Like You Belong Courtesy of Life House Hotels<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>At Life House Hotels, You Feel Like You Belong - My Travel Leader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mytravelleader.com\/travel\/at-life-house-hotels-you-feel-like-you-belong\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At Life House Hotels, You Feel Like You Belong - My Travel Leader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#169; 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