Hello everyone -
June’s podcast interview features David Zisser, founder of Omnam Group and a real estate & hospitality entrepreneur who has achieved impressive scale in Europe through his opportunistic hotel repositioning strategy.
I first heard of Omnam when they acquired the Hotel Bauer in Venice alongside Mohari Hospitality in 2024. (Mohari Hospitality is the family office investing in hospitality businesses such as Tao Group and the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, which had a splashy celeb-filled debut last summer.) Beyond the Hotel Bauer, I’m excited to see the completion of the Park Hyatt Taormina, Four Seasons Puglia, Baccarat Florence, and the creation of their new hotel brand in partnership with Pharrell Williams in Paris.
As an entrepreneur, and not part of an institutional group, David is one of the most prolific hotel developers in Europe. Over the years on The Stanza, I’ve mentioned that one of the best parts of being in real estate is that you could be a single entrepreneur competing in the institutional arena. David is a good example of that, with Bain Capital as one of his LP’s. Therefore, I was interested in knowing more about how he built his portfolio and the lessons he learned along the way. I left this conversation with several insights on the developer’s perspective on the hotel business, which I hope you’ll find equally fascinating.
As always, you’re welcome to write to me with your thoughts.
Best
Nadine
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Part I: The Architecture of the Guest Experience
La Bottega Collective designs and produces the physical and sensory touchpoints of the luxury hotel stay, from bathroom formulations and textiles to amenities, gifting, and retail, working with 15,000 properties across 117 countries, from the world’s most recognized hotel groups such as Aman and Four Seasons, to the finest independent properties such as Passalacqua and Il San Pietro di Positano. Tommaso Pacini, CEO of La Bottega Collective, argues that the guest experience is not a collection of amenities but a coherent sensory language, and that the hotels who understand this are the ones building something guests cannot find, replicate, or buy anywhere else.
In Part I of this episode, Tommaso walks through how La Bottega Collective reads a property before designing a single touchpoint, why the choice between licensed and fully custom product programs is ultimately a question of time and conviction rather than budget, and how the most effective guest experience artifacts extend the emotional memory of a stay well beyond checkout.
Thank you La Bottega Collective for making this episode possible.
Learn more and get in touch with La Bottega Collective here.
Follow La Bottega Collective on Instagram here.
Part II: The Developer’s Playbook: Building a €3B European Lifestyle & Luxury Hotel Portfolio with David Zisser
David Zisser is the founder of Omnam, a €3 billion European hotel development and investment platform with a portfolio concentrated in lifestyle and luxury assets across Italy and key European markets. His recent projects include the Edition Lake Como, W Florence, which he credits with catalyzing what W Hotels internally called its 2.0 positioning, and the Hotel Bauer Venice, acquired out of a bankruptcy process in partnership with Mohari Hospitality and flagged with Rosewood. He is currently developing a proprietary hotel brand, with a Paris property featuring Pharrell Williams as creative director serving as its first expression.
Omnam operates across the full development stack, from site identification and capital structuring through to brand selection, design intent, and operational oversight. Omnam’s LPs include institutional investor Bain Capital, and Mohari Hospitality, with whom Zisser has built a partnership center on a shared conviction about where luxury hospitality is heading. Omnam has worked with several major third party operators, and that breadth of exposure now informs both its underwriting discipline and its decision to build its own brand from a position of genuine industry knowledge rather than ego.
In this episode, I sat down with David to explore what it really takes to build a multi-billion euro development platform in luxury hospitality, from navigating fundraising from institutional capital and large family offices to acquiring one of Venice’s most storied hotels out of bankruptcy.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
David’s deal framework, and why any project where success is contingent on factors outside Omnam’s control is a pass
How the Hotel Bauer acquisition came together out of a bankruptcy process, with competing global bidders, layered political dynamics, and a timeline that tested everyone involved
Ultra-luxury brand dilution, and which operators are most exposed as generational wealth transfer accelerates
David’s view on ADR stabilization, total in-hotel spend capture, and why the P&L conversation that matters most is not the one most investors are having
Why David believes hotel operators should exit F&B operations, and what a properly aligned fee structure looks like from an owner’s perspective
The tension at the center of building a scalable brand from a singular, heritage-driven flagship asset
What David learned from managing institutional capital
Learn more about Omnam’s portfolio here.
Follow Omnam on Instagram here.
