NYC Hospitality Innovator Sponsored By Heineken: The Wythe Hotel's Peter Lawrence, Encouraging Us To Wake Up In Williamsburg

Did you have trouble building a staff? "No we got really lucky. I am very comfortable having a staff that has zero hospitality experience. I would much rather teach people my version than break their habits that someone else has drilled into them." What is your version of good hospitality? “It’s really old fashioned and it’s humble and it’s real and authentic and moral – It shouldn’t matter who our staff is helping - whether it’s my wife’s 80-year old grandmother who is here to stay, or this super cool punk rock band – the tone needs to change dramatically, and people need to be able to do that, but it should always be this same “We’re excited that you’re here” welcome that they get and a “we care about whatever it is that you need solved right now” attitude. You need coffee, you need tequila, blankets?, what do you need?, we’ll figure it out."