The Cities You Didn’t See Coming

For decades, the American hotel map was reassuringly predictable. New York had the grand hotels and downtown design experiments. Miami had the pools. Los Angeles had Hollywood. Chicago had architecture. Then came Austin, Portland and Nashville. But Des Moines? Omaha? Milwaukee? Aparium Hotel Group thinks we may have been looking in the wrong places. Founded in Chicago in 2012 by hotelier Mario Tricoci, Aparium has built a collection of independent hotels across an America that international travellers — and sometimes Americans themselves — tend to overlook. Detroit, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Omaha and Des Moines feature alongside places such as Denver and Tampa. Tricoci grew up around hospitality. His father founded the Mario Tricoci salon and spa business, and after law school he entered the hotel world, eventually developing the Elysian in Chicago before launching Aparium. His idea was relatively simple: create hotels with the sophistication of a major-city property, but in places where that kind of independent hospitality was still missing. It is a portfolio that makes an interesting point: sometimes a great hotel doesn’t follow a destination. It helps create one.

The lifestyle hotel was supposed to be the antidote to the hotel chain. Then everybody copied it. Exposed brick. Local art. A record player somewhere. Edison bulbs. Craft beer. A lobby full of people apparently working on screenplays. Eventually, individuality itself became a formula. Aparium takes a different route. There is no obvious visual template imposed across the portfolio. Instead, individual properties are allowed to develop their own character through local designers, artists, chefs and makers. Tricoci describes the approach as “trans-local”: sophisticated enough to attract someone from New York or London, but sufficiently embedded in its surroundings to make sense to somebody who lives around the corner. That last part matters.

The most fascinating part of the Aparium story may actually be geography. There is enormous freedom in choosing cities where every prime building hasn’t already been turned into a luxury hotel, every neighbourhood hasn’t been focus-grouped and every interesting warehouse hasn’t become a members’ club. Detroit is perhaps the clearest example. The Foundation Hotel opened as the city centre was emerging from decades of decline and redevelopment. Rather than waiting until Detroit had been safely rediscovered, Aparium became part of that rediscovery. The same thinking works elsewhere. Milwaukee isn’t trying to become New York. Omaha doesn’t need to become Austin. Des Moines certainly doesn’t need a hotel pretending it is in Miami. Their relative absence from the conventional luxury circuit is precisely what makes them interesting.

None of this means lowering expectations. Aparium’s argument is almost the opposite: why shouldn’t a hotel in a secondary American city have the architecture, food, interiors and cultural ambition we expect in the world’s major capitals? The company increasingly operates like an independent-hotel curator at scale. It finds buildings with potential, brings together designers, architects, restaurateurs and local collaborators, and then tries not to smooth away everything that made the project interesting in the first place. That becomes harder as a hotel group grows. Independent hotels are easy to romanticise when there is one of them. Maintaining that independence across a collection is something else entirely. Perhaps that is why Aparium is worth watching. Its hotels don’t really share a look. They share an attitude.