This spring, the Hudson Valley will become home to the first iteration of a new, innovative hotel format.
The arrival of Moliving”™s Hurley House in the town of Hurley, Ulster County, will usher in the brand”™s luxury, eco-focused concept. Located at the former Twin Lakes Resort, Moliving”™s flagship hotel concept will consist of about 60 units.
But that number may be subject to change, depending on the time of year. Moliving bills itself as the “first nomadic hotel concept,” by which it means that all of its units can be moved to a new location at any time. They can be also connected to or used completely off the grid, operating fully self-sustainably for extended periods of time.
Hurley House, which was planned to open this winter but will be pushed back a few months due to material supply chain issues, is just the first step in the company”™s wide-reaching, maximum-efficiency plan, an idea that CEO and founder Jordan Bem came up with along with his sister during a Hamptons vacation.
“The hotels there are ludicrously expensive, because they’re only open three or four months out of the year,” Bem said. “And so they have to generate as much revenue as they can. And it’s not pure profit ”” it’s mostly because the hotel is shut down the rest of the year. So they have employees to take care of, they also have to winterize units and actually do a ton of maintenance because an empty hotel room is the worst type of hotel room. So we came up with this idea of saying, ”˜Hey, what if we can actually build a hotel that’s always a present in a hot market during the right season?”™”
As a result, Moliving created a moveable prefabricated hotel unit, which can be shifted among the company”™s hotel locations at any time based on seasonal demand. Bem calls the units a marriage between the ultraluxury space and mobility space, inspired by luxury hotels like the Four Seasons and Six Senses, and autocamping and tiny home rentals popularized by firms like Getaway, with a key difference being that Moliving offers a proprietary option.
“We sort of discovered this void in between the mobility and the luxury space,” he said. “So what we decided to do was basically create a product that was tailor-made for the hospitality space and tailor-made for that specific niche.”
Although Bem had originally wanted to launch in the Hamptons, he said that the Hudson Valley eventually proved to be a better fit than the oversaturated hotel market of the Hamptons.
“We took a leap of faith and turns out the market’s been unbelievable up here,” he said. “We found a site that’s honestly a gem, really iconic and beautiful, well-located, an hour and a half from the city. And people are craving to be out in nature. They’re craving to get out of the city. And we just felt like the Hudson Valley was more in line with the type of product that we offer than being a follower. We want to be trendsetters.”
The units themselves are 45 feet long and 400 square feet in size, with two 120-square-foot decks on the front and back, floor-to-ceiling windows, a spa-inspired bathroom, a smart TV, WiFi and a wireless speaker, among other amenities. They were designed and built in-house, through a partnership with builder SG Blocks, that specializes in prefab and partial prefab buildings.
They can stand alone or be grouped together to create a multilevel collection of units, although the 60 at Hurley House will be spread around the 60-acre property. The units stand on jacks, so they don”™t impact the ground below, making them an attractive sustainable and minimally invasive option for sites like national parks, where land preservation is especially important.
“They”™re actually a hundred percent self-sustainable if need be ”” every single unit has solar panels and has the latest lithium batteries,” Bem said. “Actually, the model units that we have currently on site have been running for over eight months on solar power. They haven’t been connected to the grid whatsoever, which is pretty unbelievable.”
They also feature a high-tech water recycling system. Used water can be held in a tank if the unit is not connected to the grid, or can be recycled up to seven times before being dumped if the unit is connected to the sewage system on the property.
Aside from all the benefits for those renting the rooms, Bem believes the model is also a smart idea for investors. The company functions through a joint venture partnership model, by which the property owner readies the land for units with utility hookups and even additional amenities to the property ”” in the Hudson Valley location”™s case, a pool, pavilions and event locations ”” and Moliving supplies the individual rental spaces and operational services. The construction and setup period is much shorter and comes at a lower cost.
“The Hudson Valley, for example, is a $22 to $23 million project,” Bem said. “Moliving is actually funding $9 million of the $22 million, by bringing in its units. So the landowner decided when he went to the bank and got his financing, for such a project, he basically went to the bank and said, ”˜Hey, we need a mortgage on $13 million, whereas the project is going to be generating returns of a $22 million project.”™ So it’s very enticing for landowners and developers to actually utilize our services.”
The mobility of the setup also allows the company to move units among its properties, Moliving”™s most key feature. By doing so, it allows more units to go where there is more demand, and reduces the excess units during off seasons, thus also reducing the need for upkeep. It means that the company can maintain peak occupancy year-round.
“Think about it this way: for a beachfront resort in the summertime, demand is, let’s say, 100 (units), but in the wintertime there’s only demand for 20,” Bem said. “So we can roll off 80 units and put them where the demand actually is. But as we’re removing them, if you’re removing an actual building with foundation, you’re destroying all the ground around. We just come in with a truck in 15 minutes, pull it away and that’s it. We haven”™t impacted the ground under us ”” nothing.”
For now, Hurley House is Moliving”™s only venture, but Bem said that the company has plans to expand rapidly through this year, forging connections with landowners, hotel sites and national parks. According to Bem, Moliving hopes to focus on creating getaways in “iconic” destinations around the country, like Napa Valley, Lake Tahoe or Vail. For now, it is looking to create a name in the U.S., but in the long term will go international, and is already seeing interest from landowners and sites around countries like France, Spain and Greece. The common thread among the sites is an emphasis on seasonality and proximity to nature.
“The real beauty of the product is that we respect the land that we’re on, and the idea of providing guests with luxury inside the unit, but untouched nature around them,” Bem said.
