Today’s guest is an interior designer with a focus on and passionate about hospitality design. Valentina Castellon is the Principal and National Hospitality Design Leader at DLR Group based in Minneapolis. She enjoys seeing a project work its way from birth to completion. Valentina was also a Boutique 18 Inductee in 2020. Valentina joins the host Dan Ryan to share her journey and thoughts about the hospitality industry in the built environment.

Takeaways: 

• Hospitality is all about opening up your home and yourself to provide a memorable experience for anyone who stays with you. 
• The hospitality industry is not for everyone, as it requires long hours and a lot of attention to detail, but the people who stay are bit by the “hospitality bug” and want to bring great designs to other people's lives. 
• Whenever you think about hotel design, it might look pretty but there is a deeper meaning to it. Not only is the design aspect important, but it needs to serve a functional purpose as well
• Working in a  collaborative process allows you to get voices from multiple different avenues. This can help point you in the right direction for a design or give you more data points for what works and what doesn’t.
• When working on designs for different companies or spaces, you don’t want to stay stagnant. You want your designs to be different and unique to the point that people will be asking who designed rather than it being the same design over and over again.
• When you have an influx of demand, you have to think about the three C’s for your company; Your capacity to do the project, if it’s a creative fit for your company and if you like working with the clients.
• Hospitality is a space that is meant to be shared and enjoyed by others. It allows you to reach people and their feelings all over the world and not just one particular area or group.

Quote of the Show:

1:15 “Hospitality for me is…this idea of really opening yourself up and catering to other people.”

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valentina-castellon-77a35650/
• Website: https://www.dlrgroup.com/

Shout Outs:

5:17 Staci Patton

17:34 Dream Hotel Group

17:40 Hyatt

28:37 Bricklle, Miami

Ways to Tune In: 

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386
• Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGVmaW5pbmdob3NwaXRhbGl0eS5saXZlL2ZlZWQueG1s
• Amazon Music: ​​https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/8c904932-90fa-41c3-813e-1cb8f3c42419
• Podbean: https://www.defininghospitality.live/
• YouTube : https://youtu.be/ugLkgHQK2-M