📩 In Today’s Email

• TL; DR - Travel isn’t a break from your life anymore. Gen Z is forcing the world to build hotels where you can work, train, recover, and live on your terms.

• The Deep Dive - A story from a Medellín lobby, the generational split in how we move, and why the future of travel looks more like a global basecamp than a getaway.

• The Read: The Ministry of Time - A novel about identity across borders, reinvention, and the cost of stepping outside the world you were born into.

• The Stream: The Beast in Me - A psychological series about the monsters we carry from city to city, and why travel exposes identity more than it escapes it.

🤿 The Deep Dive

I was filming content in Laureles the other day (this neighborhood in Medellín that Time Out Magazine voted the coolest in the world) when I noticed construction happening on a new property.

The Wake BioHotel. A wellness hotel. Not a hotel with a wellness component.

A wellness hotel.

And all over the internet, there are stories about how Gen Z is changing travel. From less drinking and party hostels to coffee raves and cold plunge socials. From blurry nights to 6 AM workouts. From YOLO trips to longevity retreats.

Something is shifting.

And it's not just happening in Medellín.

The Wellness Hotel Takeover

Wake isn't alone. It's part of a global movement that's redefining what a hotel even means.

The Wake BioHotel in El Poblado describes itself as a sanctuary for longevity and well-being, designed for people looking to optimize their health with spaces that combine cutting-edge science and holistic practices, including restorative sleep, biohacking therapies, and nourishing cuisine.

This isn't a spa tucked into the basement. This is 109 rooms where every detail, from the lighting to the mattresses to the meal timing, is engineered for your body's optimization.

Hotels worldwide are adding cold plunge facilities, with properties across Scandinavia, Japan, Canada, and California installing dedicated contrast therapy spaces alongside saunas and recovery amenities.

Six Senses Ibiza goes as far as calling its spa and wellness offering a longevity clinic, where guests can book one, three, or seven-day programs that include hyperbaric oxygen chambers, infrared heat treatments, and guided fasting protocols.

In 2024, lifestyle hospitality company SBE announced the Estate Hotels and Residences, which will focus on functional and preventive medicine through multimodal diagnostics and vetted therapeutics, with plans to open 15 global hotels and ten urban preventive-medicine centers.

The hotel industry is upgrading gym facilities to complete longevity clinics.

Gen Z Didn't Kill Nightlife. They Redesigned It

Meanwhile, something fascinating is happening to how young people socialize.

According to Eventbrite data, there's been a 92% increase in sober-curious gatherings, with 61% of Gen Z reporting they want to drink less to prioritize better sleep, mental health, and physical fitness, a significant jump from 41% of all U.S. adults.

This isn't a rejection of fun. It's a redefinition of what fun means.

“Coffee raves” are alcohol-optional dance parties held in unexpected venues like ice cream parlors, coffee shops, shopping centers, and museums, featuring specialty coffee, live DJ sets, and event times that end by 10 PM.

Daybreaker, the global morning dance movement, has hosted over 1,000 coffee raves since 2013 and now has one million members across 33 cities worldwide, with events featuring live horn sections, djembe drummers, break dancers, and seasonal coffee and matcha brands.

Think about that for a second.

A million people. In 33 cities. Dancing at 6 AM. Sober. Fueled by espresso instead of vodka.

Gen Z isn't boring. They're optimizing.

They're choosing experiences that compound instead of deplete. They're treating their bodies like assets, not liabilities. They're building energy instead of burning it.

And the hotels filling up with these travelers? They're not competing on thread count anymore.

They're competing on circadian lighting and cold plunge access.

Old Travel Was About Leaving Your Life. New Travel Is About Redesigning It.

When our parents traveled, the world paused.

They worked. They vacationed. They returned to real life.

When we travel, the world follows us.

Our work. Our tools. Our systems. Our rituals. Our social network.

Go into one of these hotel lobbies and this is what you will see everywhere:

Twenty-somethings with MacBooks. A couple filming B-roll for TikTok. A girl editing Reels in CapCut with a green juice beside her laptop. Two guys taking a call in Spanish about a crypto project. DJI drones charging.

And it hit me: I wasn't looking at the future of travel.

I was looking at the present, finally visible.

The Generational Split Is Widening and Illuminating

Boomers planned vacations around retirement fantasies and cruise itineraries.

Gen X vacations around school calendars.

Millennials travel to escape burnout.

But Gen Z doesn't escape. They curate.

They choose destinations the same way founders choose offices:

• Does it support my energy?

• Does it improve my workflow?

• Does it feel good to live in?

• What will it do for my identity?

• Can I produce here?

They're not children of Airbnb.

They're children of WiFi.

They grew up with remote school, remote work, remote everything. The idea of a fixed life in a fixed location feels absurd.

Movement is the new default.

Location is the new design variable.

Hotels Are Mutating to Compete with Airbnb

Everyone predicted hotels would fade under the weight of Airbnb.

But Airbnb got greedy. Prices soared. Fees multiplied. Hosts industrialized hospitality into 400 identical apartments with the personality of a cardboard box.

Airbnb optimized itself out of magic.

And into that vacuum, hotels are once again stepping forward, not with nostalgia, but with evolution.

Room service designed for people who actually work.

Architecture that respects circadian rhythm.

Better mattresses than your apartment.

Lobby cafés that operate like global campuses.

The hotel became a studio. A sanctuary. A creative engine.

And the people filling them?

Gen Z remote workers.

Digital nomads.

Solo founders.

Creators with cameras.

Editors with jet lag.

Athletes in discipline mode.

Writers with deadlines.

Designers chasing light.

People like you.

The Slomad Hotel

If old hotels were about rest…

And business hotels were about efficiency…

The next generation of hotels will be about:

• Lift heavy at 7 AM.

• Write for two hours.

• Film content without shame.

• Eat a clean lunch.

• Take meetings in a quiet room.

• Walk to a café.

• Return to a sauna.

• Sleep deeply.

• Repeat.

A place that protects your energy instead of draining it.

Call it what it is: The Slomad Hotel.

The market is here. The infrastructure is being built. The generation is already moving.

What's next? The Slomad Hotel isn't a concept. It's a category waiting to be named. And the first brand that builds it, actually builds it, wins a generation.

🌎 Visa Watch

🇹🇭 Thailand

Extended stays now possible under the new multi-year digital nomad visa, allowing repeated 180-day entries with far smoother processing.

🇮🇹 Italy

Italy’s digital nomad visa is officially live, offering one-year stays for non-EU remote workers with renewal options.

🇳🇿 New Zealand

New Zealand relaxed visitor rules so digital nomads and remote creators can legally stay and work for up to nine months.

🇵🇹 Portugal

Portugal’s D8 visa continues to streamline approvals, offering EU residency pathways for high-earning remote professionals.

🤓 The Read - Ministry of Time by Kiliane Bradley

Now this is a newsletter about reinvention through travel, so what's this type of novel doing in here? Well, what's wrong with time travel.

Time travel stories are usually about escape, slipping out of your own life, your era, your responsibilities. Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley takes the opposite route. It asks what happens when crossing a boundary doesn't free you. It complicates you.

The novel follows a British government experiment where historical figures are plucked from moments just before their deaths and brought into the present day. They're called "expats": time refugees assigned modern jobs, modern relationships, modern routines.

They learn the rules of a world that isn't theirs, then try to decide who they want to be within it.

The unnamed narrator, a British-Cambodian woman, is assigned to help Commander Graham Gore, a 19th-century naval officer rescued from Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition (think Shackleton) assimilate into 21st-century London. Gore learns about Spotify, airplanes, washing machines, and the collapse of the British Empire.

It's a book about identity under pressure. About reinvention when the old version of you won't die quietly. About the psychological cost of stepping outside everything you've known, even if the new world is objectively better.

The reason it pairs with this week's theme is simple: movement doesn't automatically transform you. Crossing a border, temporal or geographic, doesn't guarantee new habits or new purpose. Reinvention isn't a matter of geography. It's a matter of will.

The problems you had in 1850, unfortunately are the same you’d have today.

Readers who live abroad will recognize the emotional gravity: the odd loneliness of reinvention, the thrill of possibility, the weight of expectations from the life you left, and the strange joy of building a version of yourself that didn't exist before.

If you care about identity, movement, and the ever-shifting line between who you are and where you live, this book hits directly. It's for anyone designing a life across borders and learning that reinvention always carries both a cost and a reward.

🦜 Rio’s Corner

🍿 The Stream - The Beast in Me - Netflix

I started The Beast in Me expecting a thriller. What I got was Claire Danes crying for eight hours while a rich guy smirks through murder accusations.

Look, Danes is exceptional, as always. She brings depth to Aggie, a Pulitzer-winning author stuck in grief and writer's block who becomes fixated on her new neighbor Nile (Matthew Rhys) a real estate heir who maybe, possibly, definitely murdered his first wife. She decides to write a book about him. He agrees.

They dance around the truth for eight episodes when this could've been a tight 90-minute thriller.

Here's what the critics loved that I didn't: Nile has a powerful billionaire father pulling strings in the background. It strips away any real danger. When your villain has daddy's lawyers and infinite money bailing him out, he stops being menacing and starts being annoying. A tantrum-throwing rich boy with resources isn't terrifying. He's exhausting.

And yes, it gets soap opera-ish. The pacing drags. There's a whole political subplot about real estate development that feels imported from a different show. The art direction is sparse (clean, cold, functional) but never visually gripping enough to justify how slowly everything unfolds.

But Danes? Magnetic. Even when the script asks her to cry for the dozenth time, she finds new registers of grief, rage, and self-destruction.

The show works best when it forgets the murder mystery and focuses on what it's actually about: the addictive pull of trying to understand broken people when you're just as shattered yourself. Aggie doesn't investigate Nile to solve a crime. She investigates him to avoid her own reflection.

That connects to travel. When you move somewhere new, you're chasing a version of yourself you hope exists. But sometimes you're just running from the version you can't stand to face. New city, same demons.

The Beast in Me gets that tension right, even if it takes too long to say it.

🛤️ Outtro

Reinvention begins not with where you land, but with what you make.

Every place is a blank page. What you write there? That’s your legacy.

If this newsletter sparked something, pass it on to a friend, a fellow explorer, or anyone rewriting their life.

This community grows through real connection. One story, one share at a time.

If you enjoyed this, share it.

Ask Birdbrain GPT (Powered by Yours Truly, Rio)

See you next week. Don’t Escape. Design.