👋 Hey, I'm Peter and  I'm building a portfolio of niche hospitality businesses.

I have created a marketplace for business group travel. It's called Surf Office.

We help companies to organize offsites, we help hotels to bring group bookings.

Almost 1000 hoteliers are subscribed to our Hotel Nuggets newsletter.

Before that, I created the first coworking and coliving space for digital nomads. It went well until it didn't.

Weekend projects 🛠️

Around 2019 I started to play with the idea of building a coworking cabin.

It was my inspiration for Epic Monday - a site full of resources for people who are planning to start a cabin business.

Once I'm passionate about something, I deep dive into the topic, run tons of experiments, and sometimes come up with monetization ideas.

Hoodpicker started as a simple survey, then I created a comparison of neighborhoods in Lisbon, and now it's a set of tools for people who want to invest in real estate in Portugal.

With my latest project, I'm trying to redefine the experience of buying a small hotel in Portugal.

Sharing ideas 💡

I have a small team researching ideas that combine hospitality, real estate, and tech. Some of these ideas I share on this blog.

But I share all of them in my personal newsletter. You can subscribe here:

Well done!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Call for startups 🚀

Are you building something in niche hospitality?

I would love to be involved. I'm mainly interested in:

I can help you with funding and distribution.

Happy to discuss your project over Linkedin or Twitter chat.

PS: If you live in Amsterdam, we can meet at the next hospitality coworking day.

⭐ Popular Posts

Buying a mountain lodge in Central Europe

At the beginning of this year, I wanted to buy a mountain lodge. It was an old A-frame hotel in one of Slovakia's less popular ski resorts. With 11 rooms and a price tag of 500.000€, it seemed to be a good opportunity.

Continue reading →

Workations with kids

The pandemic changed everything as single nomads now have own families. There is a niche market for many hospitality concepts in this area.

Continue reading →

Unbundling park4night

I assume that they might be making about 2M Eur revenue a year - nice for a small indie project with a few contractors and a huge margin. With some niches, you can build a business much bigger than park4night.

Continue reading →

Fractional ownership of vacation rentals

Who never dreamed of a vacation home near the beach or mountains? A “stopper” for most people is the price and hassle of maintaining such a property. Startups like Pacaso are trying to solve this with fractional ownership.

Continue reading →

Unbundling Airbnb

There are only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is to unbundle. So the idea behind unbundling of Airbnb is simple: Pick a niche use case with passionate but unsatisfied guests and then build a business around it.

Continue reading →

Buying a House in Amsterdam

The housing market in Amsterdam is crazy and buying a flat is extremely challenging. This is an article I’d have like to read when I started my journey. There will be many insights shared but no recommendations of specific services. No promotional bullshit.

Continue reading →

Remote work and business opportunities in hospitality

Remote work is here to stay and it opens plenty of opportunities for hospitality. The hospitality industry has been very reactive when it comes to new trends which presents an opportunity for those capable of predicting the near future (not rocket science, actually). It's time to build 💪

Continue reading →

The ultimate guide to starting a coliving business

I started a coliving business in 2013. We scaled it to 3 spaces in Spain, California, and Portugal. Then we pivoted, and changed the company into a completely different business (company retreats) while still keeping the brand.

Continue reading →

Building a coworking cabin

I never planned to build a cabin.‍‍‍ First, I wanted to rent one, then I wanted to buy one. ‍‍It was only with desperation after having no luck with these first two attempts, that I decided to build one.

Continue reading →

All Posts

How to start a glamping business with prefab houses

I'm absolutely passionate about the glamping business and the opportunities that prefab houses open. There is a huge disproportion between the price of prefab houses and how much you can charge for them on Airbnb.

Continue reading →

How to prepare your hotel for hosting company offsites

We have been hosting 100’s of retreats in dozens of properties all around the world over the last 4 years. My job for a while was to qualify these partners and I’d like to share some insights from this process. 

Continue reading →

Why Portuguese coastal municipalities should tax camper vans

Camper vans have always been tolerated by the local authorities even if it’s not legal to stay overnight on the beach. But it's no surprise that the current situation has escalated to the point that police have started to fine the campers.

Continue reading →

The most common mistakes when starting a coliving business

Over the years I’ve made many mistakes, and that's why it’s easy for me to spot them now. Through listening to the stories of other coliving founders and observing their businesses, I thought it might be beneficial to write these mistakes down and share them here.

Continue reading →

How to turn your existing hospitality business into a coliving space

The easiest way to start a coliving business is to pivot your existing hospitality business in that direction. You don't have to go all in. In fact, I actually don't recommend it.

Continue reading →

Why should you start a coliving business?

Such a simple question but I had a hard time answering it myself when I started my coliving business. Over the years, I’ve noticed that very few new founders actually think about this before starting out.

Continue reading →

How to choose the right location for your coliving space

When I first opened my coliving space, I had a very hard time deciding which location to choose. In the end, the final decision was Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and these were the main reasons:

Continue reading →

Marketing and acquisition of coliving guests

Marketing and acquisition of coliving guests is usually the last thing new operators focus on when they’re getting started. Marketing tends to stay a low priority until operators realize that the rooms are empty. Often, they end up looking for magic (and fast!) solutions. Too late.

Continue reading →

Profit margins, prices and unit economics of a coliving space

The more rooms you have, the more customers you can serve, the more money you can make. That's why you need to have a certain number of rooms to make the business work. ‍

Continue reading →

Should you buy or rent your first coliving property?

In my opinion the decision to buy or rent attributes to about 80% of your success. Even if you do everything else perfectly, your business will suffer if you make a bad decision with renting or buying a property.‍

Continue reading →

8 types of coliving properties and concepts

Coliving is just a concept. Many types of properties can be easily converted into a coliving space. You can convert a hotel, hostel, villa, or even a motel into a coliving space relatively easily.

Continue reading →

9 tricks for vacation rentals to get more bookings in the low season

It’s one of the biggest headaches for property owners; getting bookings in mid and low seasons. I’ve been partly involved in the property business for a few years now, and these are just some of the tricks that I’ve learned along the way to boost bookings.

Continue reading →

What is an ideal number of rooms to open a coliving space?

Starting small is the right way to build a brand but it's difficult to make a profitable business out of it. You need a certain number of rooms to make your unit economics work. In my experience, the minimum number of rooms to start is ideally 20 or more.

Continue reading →

How can your independent hotel get more group bookings?

Almost all hotels want to attract groups but very few actually figure out how to do it. I’m going to share some tactics and knowledge I’ve learned over the years to get them in this article.

Continue reading →

Building a marketplace for prefab houses using “no code” tools

In the past, when you wanted to build a web app or tool, coding skills were a necessity. Today, however, there are plenty of options available for those of us with more limited coding knowledge to find success.

Continue reading →

How to organize a Coworking Day event

Being an organizer of a coworking day is a great opportunity to connect with the local community. I found it as a fantastic “hack” when you move to a new city and want to quickly create connections with like-minded people.

Continue reading →

Gran Canaria for digital nomads and expats: The ultimate guide for Las Palmas

My first touch with Gran Canaria was about 10 years ago when I purchased a cheap Ryanair flight and escaped a cold, European winter for 10 days. Since then I fell in love with this beautiful island.

Continue reading →

Calculating Lisbon's tourism density score: how many tourists are too many?

But how do we define some locations on a map as touristy and others not? Can we measure the level of “touristy-ness”? What would be the formula? ‍

Continue reading →

Survey: Where expats and digital nomads live in Lisbon

My goal was to create the best piece of information on the internet about Lisbon's neighbourhoods.

Continue reading →

The rise of free coworking

Individuals don’t want to pay for a coworking desk.

Continue reading →