One sanded the wood, someone else followed behind, brushing it with oil. The freshly cut shelves stood drying in the Berlin summer sun, waiting to transform into the new bar shelf. For two months, instead of serving guests and clearing tables, we painted bathroom walls in charcoal grey, dining room walls in terracotta and beige, and sealed the floors in a dark, earthy brown.
Working side by side with the builders, reshaping the space from the ground up, I began to understand how our relationship to a place deepens when we work on it with our hands. You feel the texture of the materials, smell the scent of change, and begin to see the full process of creating a space.
The long wooden tables, the cozy sofas, the bar shelf we built became a second living room for many of us, the team and guests alike. A space where I felt, for the first time, real belonging.
When I look at photos from that time now, I see more than a restaurant.
I see a chapter of my life where work and community were tangled together in the most beautiful way.
HOSPITALITY IS ABOUT BELONGING
Our team, a mix of artists, writers, cooks, musicians, and students, wasn’t “like a family” in the corporate sense. We were friends, in the real, sometimes messy way that only such intense shared work and late nights can create.
We hosted dinners, both at the restaurant and in our homes. We laughed. We cried. We danced. After shifts, we would stay up late, changing the world over whiskey sours, talking life, politics, love, and the futures we hadn’t yet figured out.
They’re some of the memories I hold closest to my heart.
My partner and I managed the restaurant until the owners sold it during the pandemic. It was never our own, but it felt like home. And when I said goodbye to the coffee machine, it took me a while to realize that I was grieving.
We’ve all moved on now. Some friendships faded, but many stayed. The kind that hold through time and distance. Even now, when we visit our former bosses, we say:
“It’s because of you that we found love, that we built friendships that still last today.”
It was during these years that I fell in love with the art of hospitality.
The heart of hospitality is regenerative. It puts people first and gives and receives mutually. If you work in hospitality, you are studying human cultures and psychologies. You are learning to listen, adapt, and meet each other in presence.
Hospitality, in its nature, is about creating space for shelter, joy, and belonging.
This is why in 2022, my partner and I set off on what we called Trip22 – a slow journey across seven countries, in search of inspiration for finding and creating our own place.
Learning from Small Hospitality Businesses on the Road
We stayed in various accommodations, different in form, shape, and size, but all run by families or small hospitality business owners.
In northern Peru, we worked alongside local staff in a family-run beachside hotel, cleaning rooms, helping in the kitchen, and serving guests.
We were making beds for guests when a casual conversation with the Swiss hotel owner, married to a Peruvian, changed the course of our lives. It became the reason we now live in Switzerland.
In Iquitos, we stayed in a hostel full of plants, blooming from the owner’s passion for connection. He told us how he began one room at a time, steadily renovating and building his project with patience and endurance.
We spent a week in the Amazon with a curandera (female shaman), living in a modest hut of wood and sheet metal, surrounded by the living jungle and the unseen presence of spirits. Her hospitality was both humble and generous, a life lived in sacred reciprocity with the plants, grounded in ancestral wisdom.
In Menorca, a family welcomed us into their space, where they were building a concept of slow living, co-working, and community. In exchange for helping care for the chickens and garden, we joined their rhythm of shared meals, creative projects, and guided dance sessions under the open sky.
Small hospitality businesses reflect the values and rhythms of the places they belong to, not just the demands of tourism trends. Beyond the guesthouses, it’s in the diversity of eateries, cafés, huariques, sodas, tavernas, and bars that the daily culture of a place truly lives. They shape the story and soul of a destination.
Travel only begins to reach its full potential for meaning through these personal, rooted businesses and the people behind them.
Why Small Hospitality Businesses Matter for Culture, Community, and Regeneration
More than 80% of global travel businesses are small or medium-sized enterprises.
That number matters. Not just economically, but culturally and socially.
Unlike large corporations, small hospitality businesses are anchored in place. They are run by people who live there. Their children go to local schools. They know the stories of the street corner, greet their neighbors by name. And they remember who always just orders a coffee or the sandwich without cheese.
This closeness makes them responsive to what the community actually needs.
They know when there’s a housing shortage, when local fishermen struggle, and they’re among the first to feel the effect when tourism drives up the cost of living.
Because there are so many small hospitality businesses – and because they’re such an integral part of a place’s cultural and social fabric – their potential to drive regeneration is profound. This is something long recognized by movements like Local Futures, which advocate for the importance of local economies and support small, place-based businesses as key to a thriving, ecological, resilient future.
Each family-run guesthouse, neighborhood café, or respectful tour operator can make small, everyday choices that support the well-being of their community and environment. And when many of them move in that direction, the wave of change becomes regenerative in itself.
Regeneration doesn’t begin with grand technology but starts with presence, with small acts repeated over time, and with a commitment to care for the place you are part of. My heart always jumps when I walk into a place full of character. History is visible on the walls, and every detail tells a story.
Whether the space is carefully designed or put together in a more improvised way, you can sense it immediately when it is more than just a business – when it feels like a living, breathing part of the community.
Policy MatterS
Too often, sustainability initiatives are created with large corporations in mind, businesses that can afford solar panels, energy-efficient systems, and high-level certifications.
But if we truly want regenerative travel, we need policies that support small hospitality business owners. Many of them already practice ecological care, even if they are not certified or branded that way.
Governments can play a vital role in making regeneration accessible to hospitality entrepreneurs by:
- Offering financial support for eco-upgrades and community-led initiatives
- Reducing bureaucratic barriers to innovation and sustainability
- Creating policies that protect local businesses from being priced out or bought out
- Investing in training, mentorship, and grants that help small hospitality businesses grow with integrity
These are investments in the kind of future we all want to live in: one where communities thrive, cultures are expressed, and travelers can experience places in ways that are genuine and reciprocal.
Beyond Profit
Of course, small businesses need to be financially sustainable. People build businesses to support their families, and they should. But it’s worth asking:
Are we building something that is only for us or something that contributes to the place we are in?
At one point, I dreamed of opening a guesthouse in Menorca. I fell in love with the light, the land, the energy of the island. But after speaking with locals, I realized that Menorca doesn’t need another outsider-run hotel. What it needs is housing for the seasonal workers who are increasingly being pushed out of their own hometowns.
I’m not against starting fresh in a new country. But I believe that with that privilege comes responsibility. Even the most beautiful dream must be held up against the reality of a place and build with care.
When based on reciprocity, small hospitality businesses can do more than sustain a family and help nourish entire communities.
SuPPORTING SMALL HOSPITALITY BUSINESSES
As travelers, we hold more influence than we realize. Being a responsible tourist starts with conscious decision-making. Whenever we choose small hospitality businesses over global chains, we help build a tourism economy based on connection, care, and local well-being.
Some gentle ways to make a difference:
- Stay in locally-owned guesthouses and family-run hotels
- Eat where the locals eat, ask them where they go
- Support community-based tourism projects, even if they take more time to find
- Learn the story of where you are staying, and share it
- And most importantly: slow down. The more time we spend in a place, the more space there is to connect, to listen, and to give something back
The heartbeat of regeneration
Regenerative travel isn’t a trend. It’s a way of thinking that asks for collaboration, organic growth, care and support. Small, local hospitality businesses are the heartbeat of this movement.
They hold the potential and power to create meaningful change – not just for visitors, but for the people who call these places home. They act as connectors, educators, and sources of inspiration.
When we support them through conscious choices, storytelling, and policy, we help more than businesses survive. We help places stay alive and revive.
