1 · POSITION
Oliver Ripley belongs in the Luxury Hospitality Library as the co-founder and principal entrepreneurial author of Our Habitas, the experiential hospitality brand that emerged from a community-first idea and helped push modern luxury away from possession and formality toward human connection, music, wellness, nature and shared experience.
2 · THE CORRECT LHL ROLE
Group II — Owner-Creators. Primary brand anchor: LHL-195 · Habitas / Our Habitas, if the existing LHL-195 Our Habitas record is retained under that identity. Primary House anchor: Our Habitas Tulum, Mexico. Secondary anchors: Our Habitas AlUla, Bacalar and selected later properties. Co-founders Kfir Levy and Eduardo Castillo must be credited in the origin story.
3 · CORRECTION TO GEOGRAPHY
The current PEOPLE TO WRITE file labels P-205 'Mexico'. That is best understood as the origin geography of the hospitality brand, not necessarily Ripley's nationality. Our Habitas officially calls Mexico its origin story and identifies Tulum as the original home opened in 2016.
4 · COMMUNITY BEFORE HOTEL
Ripley has repeatedly said that Habitas did not begin with a plan to build a global hotel company.
5 · THE FOUNDING CIRCLE
Ripley founded the project with Kfir Levy and Eduardo Castillo. The three should be named together whenever the origin of Habitas is described.
6 · BURNING MAN ROOTS
Contemporary reporting traces the social/community roots of Habitas to gatherings and camps around Burning Man before the first permanent hotel.
7 · EVENTS AND GATHERINGS
The founders learned to create temporary environments around music, art, food and human connection before translating those behaviours into permanent hospitality.
8 · 2016 - TULUM
Our Habitas Tulum opened in 2016 and became the first permanent expression of the concept.
9 · AN EXPERIMENT
Ripley later described Tulum as an experiment: a home created for the founders and their community rather than a conventional hotel product designed from a standard feasibility template.
10 · OUTPERFORMANCE
He recalled that the experiment quickly performed strongly and attracted international travel-media attention.
11 · FROM HOME TO BRAND
The success of Tulum convinced the founders that the community model could become a repeatable hospitality platform.
12 · LUXURY FOR THE SOUL
Our Habitas later formalised its positioning around 'Luxury for the Soul'.
13 · EXPERIENCES OVER POSSESSIONS
The underlying thesis is that a new luxury consumer increasingly values meaning, connection and experience more than traditional material display.
14 · SEVEN PILLARS
Ennismore's 2024 announcement describes the brand through seven pillars: music, wellness, art, adventure, food, learning and giving back.
15 · THE SOCIAL HOTEL
Public and communal spaces are central because the product depends on guests encountering one another rather than remaining entirely isolated in rooms.
16 · PROGRAMMING AS PRODUCT
Music, rituals, wellness sessions, communal meals, talks and adventures function as core inventory alongside beds.
17 · THE ROOM IS NOT ENOUGH
This is one of Ripley's main contributions to contemporary lifestyle hospitality: room design alone cannot deliver the brand promise.
18 · TULUM AS LABORATORY
Tulum's combination of beach, jungle, wellness culture, nightlife and international creative travellers gave the founders an unusually fertile environment for testing the concept.
19 · MEXICO AS ORIGIN STORY
The current Our Habitas site explicitly calls Mexico the brand's origin story and says the country's culture, natural beauty and hospitality became part of its DNA.
20 · BACALAR
Our Habitas Bacalar extended the Mexican model into a quieter lagoon setting centred on restoration, nature and wellness.
21 · DIFFERENT HOME, SAME COMMUNITY LOGIC
Bacalar demonstrates that the brand does not need to reproduce Tulum's exact nightlife energy; the recurring element is connection shaped by local setting.
22 · MODULAR CONSTRUCTION
As Habitas expanded, the company developed modular and prefabricated approaches intended to reduce traditional hotel-development time and site impact.
23 · BUILDING DIFFERENTLY
Ripley has described the conventional hotel-development process as rigid, slow and fragmented, pushing Habitas to develop more integrated solutions.
24 · HOSPITALITY AS STARTUP
This entrepreneurial language positioned Habitas closer to a startup challenging industry process than to a traditional family hotel company.
25 · INVESTOR NETWORK
The brand attracted high-profile investors including PIF, Starwood Capital and Barry Sternlicht, Travis Kalanick and others identified by Ennismore.
26 · CAPITAL FOR SCALE
The investor roster shows how an experiential boutique concept became a global development platform.
27 · ALULA
Our Habitas AlUla became one of the brand's most important later Houses, translating the community-and-nature thesis into Saudi Arabia's monumental desert landscape.
28 · SAUDI ARABIA
The Saudi expansion also connected Habitas to one of the world's largest new luxury-tourism development programmes.
29 · FOUR CONTINENTS
By the 2024 Ennismore transaction, Our Habitas operated ten resorts across four continents.
30 · GLOBAL PORTFOLIO
The portfolio included Tulum, AlUla, Atacama and the Kalahari, among other destinations.
31 · PURPOSE
The brand's stated mission is to create human connection and empower local communities through hospitality.
32 · OUR HABITAS RISE
RISE functions as the brand's impact initiative focused on local communities, culture and conservation.
33 · SUSTAINABILITY
Our Habitas positions sustainability as a factor in materials, building, operations and community relationships.
34 · REGENERATION
The brand has also used regenerative language, particularly in Tulum, arguing that reducing harm is no longer enough.
35 · THE TENSION
As with all rapidly expanding purpose-led brands, the historical question is whether community intimacy and environmental claims can remain credible as scale increases.
36 · FOUNDER-BUILT BRAND
Ennismore explicitly describes Our Habitas as a founder-built brand, validating Ripley's placement among LHL Owner-Creators.
37 · 2024 - ENNISMORE PARTNERSHIP
In June 2024, Ennismore and Our Habitas announced a strategic partnership.
38 · MANAGEMENT AND GROWTH TRANSFER
Under the agreement, Ennismore took over management and growth of Our Habitas.
39 · ACCOR PLATFORM
Through Ennismore, the brand gained access to Accor's global platforms and operating reach.
40 · RIPLEY REMAINS CREATIVE
Crucially for the People record, Ennismore said Ripley would remain involved overseeing the creative vision and contributing to global growth.
41 · FOUNDER AFTER INSTITUTIONALISATION
This creates a classic LHL founder transition: operational control moves into a larger hospitality platform while founder authorship remains part of brand identity.
42 · NOT A SALE OF THE STORY
Even after the 2024 partnership, Ennismore's own language continued to centre the brand's founder-built character.
43 · CO-FOUNDER CREDIT
However, Ripley's continuing public role should not erase Kfir Levy and Eduardo Castillo from the founding history.
44 · KFIR LEVY
Our Habitas' own editorial material identifies Levy as co-founder and emphasises his role in design and manufacturing.
45 · EDUARDO CASTILLO
The same material identifies Castillo as a musician and creative partner central to the early community and cultural identity.
46 · RIPLEY'S ROLE
Ripley became the most visible entrepreneurial and CEO figure, articulating the brand's mission, growth thesis and hospitality disruption narrative.
47 · COMPARISON WITH IAN SCHRAGER
Schrager transformed nightlife and social energy into boutique and lifestyle hotels. Ripley belongs to a later generation that combines social energy with wellness, purpose, nature and community language.
48 · COMPARISON WITH NICK JONES
Soho House builds recurring membership and club community around urban creative culture. Habitas uses temporary destination communities and immersive programming without relying on the same membership-club structure.
49 · COMPARISON WITH BILL BENSLEY / SHINTA MANI
Shinta Mani Wild uses theatrical design and conservation in a highly authored destination. Habitas is less visually singular and more focused on social programming and community formation.
50 · COMPARISON WITH BJARKE INGELS' HOSPITALITY LOGIC
BIG often makes the architectural concept easy to retell. Ripley makes the social experience easy to retell: the memorable asset is often what happened between people rather than the building itself.
51 · WHY GROUP II
Owner-Creators is correct because Ripley's value is not conventional hotel management. He helped author a new hospitality proposition and then built an organisation around it.
52 · WHAT HE CHANGED
OLIVER RIPLEY HELPED TURN COMMUNITY ITSELF INTO A LUXURY-HOSPITALITY PRODUCT — MAKING MUSIC, WELLNESS, SHARED RITUALS, PURPOSE AND HUMAN CONNECTION AS IMPORTANT TO THE BRAND AS THE ROOM.
53 · HOSPITALITY LESSON
A hotel can create loyalty through the people guests meet and the experiences they share, not only through service consistency or physical luxury.
54 · STRATEGIC LESSON
Founder-led experiential brands can scale only if they identify which parts of the original magic are systems and which depend on the founder's personal network and energy.
55 · RECOMMENDED LHL ANCHORS
Primary brand anchor: LHL-195 · Habitas / Our Habitas, subject to confirming the current register title. Primary House: Our Habitas Tulum. Secondary Houses: Our Habitas AlUla and Our Habitas Bacalar. Add Ennismore as the post-2024 management/growth platform.
56 · TIMELINE
Pre-2016 · Ripley, Kfir Levy and Eduardo Castillo develop community-led gatherings and experiential concepts. 2016 · Our Habitas Tulum opens as the first permanent home. 2018–2023 · brand expands its experiential hospitality model internationally. 2020s · Bacalar, AlUla, Atacama, Kalahari and other destinations broaden the portfolio. June 2024 · Ennismore enters a strategic partnership with Our Habitas and assumes management and growth; Ripley remains involved in creative vision. 2026 · Our Habitas continues within the Ennismore ecosystem with additional projects in development.
57 · STORY BANK — THE HOTEL WAS AN EXPERIMENT
Ripley says Tulum was created first as a home for the founders and their friends. Only after it outperformed expectations did the experiment become a hotel brand.
58 · STORY BANK — THE PRODUCT IS THE PEOPLE
Traditional hotels can survive a quiet lobby. Habitas cannot: music, meals, wellness and communal programming are designed to make strangers interact. Social chemistry is part of the inventory.
59 · STORY BANK — THE FOUNDER STAYS, OPERATIONS SCALE
The 2024 Ennismore partnership separated two functions that founders often carry together: Ripley retained creative influence while a much larger hospitality platform took over management and growth.
60 · LEGACY
Ripley's hospitality legacy is still being written, but Habitas already represents an important 2010s shift: luxury defined less by possession and more by experience, belonging, purpose and temporary community.
61 · EDITORIAL NOTE
P-205 should not be described as a sole founder. Official and founder interviews name Kfir Levy and Eduardo Castillo as co-founders. 'Mexico' in the backlog should be treated as the brand's origin geography; the current official site explicitly calls Mexico the Our Habitas origin story. Since June 2024, management and growth belong to Ennismore, while Ripley remains involved in creative vision. ## Sources & Further Reading 1. [Ennismore · Our Habitas Joins the Collective](https://ennismore.com/stories/ennismore-welcomes-our-habitas-to-its-global-collective-of-lifestyle-brands/)
62 · [OUR HABITAS · OFFICIAL HOME](HTTPS://WWW.OURHABITAS.COM/)
4. [Our Habitas · Designing for Change / Co-Founder Kfir Levy](https://www.ourhabitas.com/designing-for-change/) 5. [Our Habitas · Regeneration Starts with Us](https://www.ourhabitas.com/regeneration-starts-with-us/) 6. [Forbes · Smiles and Stories: Oliver Ripley on Habitas](https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelinavillaclarke/2022/01/25/smiles-and-stories-habitas-reveals-just-what-makes-its-hotels-so-unique/) 7. [Forbes · How the Habitas Brand Is Changing the Way We Travel](https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelinavillaclarke/2018/07/18/how-the-habitas-brand-is-changing-the-way-we-travel/) 8. [Forbes · Habitas Bacalar / Interview with Oliver Ripley](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ranagood/2020/11/09/habitas-to-launch-new-property-in-bacalar-mexico/)