The Blue Flame: A Study in Translocal Hospitality
There’s a specific energy you feel when a place truly belongs to its surroundings. At Aparium, we call this translocal hospitality. It’s the discipline of listening to a neighborhood before we ever begin to design, ensuring we’re building for the people who live there first.
Recently, Forbes sat down with our founder, Mario Tricoci, to explore this mindset and the “blue flame” of cultural momentum found in cities like Detroit, Kansas City, and Tampa.
Designing for Momentum
A hotel should function as a mirror to its community. Mario discusses the importance of finding a neighborhood’s “blue flame”—that immediate spark of energy that tells you a place is alive and evolving. It’s about moving past the “postcard” version of a city to create a translocal experience with real cultural weight; a space where locals feel at home and travelers feel like they’ve found something genuine.
The Power of the One-of-One
Rather than following a standardized hospitality playbook, we rely on our teams to interpret and deliver the actual character of their city. By checking our egos at the door and co-creating with the makers, artists, and chefs already shaping the city, we’re able to build translocal hospitality that is truly “one-of-one.” As Mario notes, when you prioritize human connection over rote scripts, you create a level of hospitality that simply cannot be cloned.
