From Open Spaces to Considered Places
Conventional real estate logic says convenience drives demand.
In landscape hotels and rural microhospitality projects, we often see the opposite.
Some of the strongest-performing projects are intentionally harder to reach. Long drives. Dirt roads. Ferry crossings. Instead of suppressing demand, that friction reinforces why people are there in the first place. Guests are not looking for ease. They are looking for distance from their day-to-day lives. The effort becomes part of the experience, and in many cases supports higher nightly rates rather than lower ones.
Another consistent pattern is how guests experience the building in relation to the land. They may not spend much time thinking about square footage or spec sheets, but they are highly attuned to whether a building feels like it belongs where it sits. What sticks with them is the walk to their cabin, how the structure meets the ground, where openings are placed, how views are framed from inside, and how light moves through the space over the course of a day.
This is where the smallest design decisions matter most.
Orientation, proportion, material choices, window placement, and threshold conditions all carry outsized weight. When a building feels truly contextual, like it could only exist on that site, the built architecture recedes and the holistic experience becomes the star.
Scale matters too, and smaller often wins.
Two or three compact units regularly outperform a single larger one on the same parcel, even when total square footage is similar. Smaller units command higher rates per square foot, book more consistently across weekdays and seasons, and spread operational risk across multiple guests. Building less house can lead to more durable and resilient income over time.
The common thread is simple. Successful landscape hotels are not selling lodging. They are selling a relationship to place. At HUTS, this same logic shows up whether we are designing a second home, an ADU, or a microhospitality project.
We let the land lead.
