Meet Peter Mack, Founder and CEO of Collective Retreats
Collective Vail, Collective Retreat’s first location
Collective Retreat’s story is about a founder’s love for both hospitality and the outdoors, and the recognition that a change within the industry was needed
Background
Peter Mack grew up in New England, where Summers were spent camping, and winters were spent skiing in the mountains. At his first job working as a dishwasher in a restaurant, his interest in a career in hospitality was sparked. He later worked as a bartender at a popular local tavern while studying in Ithaca, New York.
Eventually, Peter realized he wanted to invest all of his time in hospitality. After working and traveling extensively in the hotel industry, he realized that the standardization of the hotel experience had begun to overshadow what he’d always loved about traveling and came to a conclusion- that travel had lost its soul.
“We’d lost our soul in travel… and I wanted to make some changes.”
Collective Hill Country
Collective Retreats
Peter had the idea for collective retreats, and began to dig in to traditional hotel model. He realized that hotels are very expensive to build, and that most of those costs were not going in to connecting people to the culture or place they were traveling to.
“If you could create a company where connection to the outdoors is the product, you could reduce some of these costs that aren’t really sensible.”
After multiple conversations with his financial and business mentors, he began socializing the idea for Collective Retreats with family and friends. Peter then left his job in the hotel industry and moved to Colorado to look for a location for the first retreat.
Collective Vail was the first location, and it still operates today.
Collective Governors Island
Something became clear after first few guests checked out: they were captivated by the Collective Retreats experience. Peter knew he was onto something. After the first few months of operation in Vail, he received a call from a landowner in Montana who loved the concept of Collective Retreats and had a great piece of land available for a new site. At the same time as he was looking at property in Montana, a friend connected Peter to a potential investor who was excited about collective retreats. That investor was pushing for scaling the operation and wanted to back the project. They now operate accommodations at five different locations across the US, with more on the way.
Collective retreats has experienced great success through the years by staying true to their values and the initial vision of bringing soul back to the travel industry.
Listen to the full podcast episode featuring Peter Mack here!
