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deep dive

Crowdfunding for Hospitality Projects

We finally caved and signed up for Costco. I'd resisted for years.

The store itself is genius on so many levels, no question about that.

The hesitation was simpler: it's just Rod and me.

Who really needs forty rolls of paper towels and a vat of mayonnaise?

But we signed up. And then, on our second trip, something happened at the register that I haven't stopped thinking about.

The cashier asked if we wanted to upgrade to an Executive membership.

My instant reaction was the obvious one: of course not. We'd just gotten here. But then she did something simple. She pulled up the math.

She walked us through the math. Executive members earn 2% back on most qualified Costco purchases before tax, capped at $1,250 a year. A year of our usual shopping, she pointed out, would more than recoup the upgrade cost.

Then she added the kicker: you can cancel it and get a full refund if it doesn't work out.

We upgraded. Right there at the register. Surprising ourselves.

Later that day, I realized we'd just moved down the funnel exactly the way Costco wanted us to, and we'd done it willingly, even enthusiastically. There was no pressure. There was just math, and a safety net.

And then it hit me: this is the same magic hospitality hosts can create when they run a crowdfunding campaign for their property.

The crowdfunding play for hotel hosts

If you're building a boutique hotel, a resort, or a unique stay, and the project is still half-built, in permits, or even just in renderings, you can launch a campaign on Indiegogo (or a similar platform) and pre-sell future stays to people who want to be part of what you're creating.

The typical structure looks something like this: a backer commits $50 as a voucher, and in return receives $500 worth discount for a future stay at your property. (you voucher and discount amounts may vary)

Read that again.

$50 in. $500 out. A 10x return for the backer.

The immediate question for any host is: how on earth can I do it? And the immediate question for any backer is: where's the catch?

What backers need to see

To pre-sell future nights, you need high-quality renderings that look very close to what the finished property will actually be.

This part matters more than people realize. You cannot raise money for a cabin and then build a tent. In theory you can try, but you will get into trouble. Backers are buying a specific vision, and that vision needs to match what shows up on opening day.

You have two paths. You can hire a firm that specializes in architectural renderings, which is one route and still excellent if you want polish you can stand behind.

Or you can bring the project to life with AI tools, which has gotten dramatically easier in the last year.

The workflow looks something like this. Still images first. Then short videos generated from those images. Then ad cuts assembled out of several videos. From flat plans to a 30-second spot you can run on Meta.

A few tools worth knowing.

Nano Banana is one of the strongest options for the image generation step.

Kling AI is excellent when you want to turn a static rendering into a moving shot.

There are other good ones in this space, and the landscape is moving fast enough that whatever you choose today will probably have a stronger version six months from now.

The point is that the barrier to creating campaign-grade visuals has collapsed. What used to require a five-figure rendering contract and a separate video production budget can now be done by one operator with the right tools and a clear vision of what they are building.

Scaling the campaign

That base offer is the easy yes. Once it's set up, the campaign starts to scale.

You run Meta ads. You run a social media campaign. This is where your personal brand starts to do work for you. People are not just backing a hotel. They are backing you and the vision they have come to trust through your content. You MUST communicate your vision well and in a way inspire through your videos.

As all of this is happening, you are building an email list. Every person who lands on your campaign, every backer who pulls out their wallet, every curious follower who is not quite ready yet, these are people you can stay in touch with all the way from groundbreaking to opening day.

And you create higher tiers. The $50 voucher is the entry point. Some of your backers want to go deeper, and they will put down $100 or $200 for VIP access. The VIPs become part of an inner community. They get to discuss the build, weigh in on the questions you put to them, and help shape decisions you are working through. They are your future guests and co-conspirators. You can create a Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack groups or you can try bring people on your branded platform like Circle(but that is typically harder).

Why both sides actually win

For the host, this is rocket fuel. You raise capital before you've opened a single door. You validate demand. You build an early community of people who are invested, literally, in your success. They'll talk about you, refer friends, and show up excited rather than skeptical.

And here's a benefit most hosts don't fully see at first. In some cases, a successful campaign demonstrates demand and brings validity to your project, which can help you raise additional capital or get approved by a lender. The campaign becomes evidence.

Strangers put their money down before you broke ground, and that story moves the conversation forward with banks and investors in a way pro formas alone often cannot.

You're also pre-selling room nights you would have had to fill anyway, often at a discount that's no deeper than the OTA commissions and marketing costs you'd otherwise spend to acquire those same guests later. The "$500 in stays" sounds dramatic, but spread across nights, seasons, and the lifetime of a happy guest who keeps coming back and bringing friends, it pencils out.

For the backer, it's the Costco Executive upgrade. The math just works. If they were ever going to stay at your property anyway, and they're backing you because they want to, then $50 for $500 in discount is a no-brainer purchase.

That's the magic. There's no catch. If you genuinely want to support the host and stay at the place someday, this is one of those rare deals that's actually as good as it looks on the surface.

The one place this falls apart

I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't name the exception.

Crowdfunding only works for backers when the project gets built. If the person behind the campaign turns out to be a fraud, the money is gone.

And even when the founder is experienced and well-intentioned, hotel projects can run into real-world challenges (permits, construction delays, financing gaps) that push opening dates out by months or even years.

So if you're a backer, the due diligence isn't on the math. The math is great. The due diligence is on the founder. Look at their track record, their team, their transparency, and their plan for what happens if things slow down.

And if you're a host running the campaign, this is the side of the equation you have to own. Your job is to be the kind of operator backers can trust.

Communicate constantly. Share progress. Be honest about delays when they happen, because they will. The campaign is the start of a relationship with your first hundred guests.

A word to hosts: don't spend it on construction

Which brings me to something every host needs to hear before launching one of these campaigns. Generally speaking, it's not a good idea to spend those funds on the construction itself. Some hosts do, and it's risky. There is of good type of risk and bad type. This is a bad type.

Picture this. The project doesn't go according to plan. You've already poured the crowdfunding money into construction. The project stalls. Your backers start asking what's happening, and you can't deliver. Guess what happens next. You can end up in a lawsuit.

Between our own six projects so far, the work I see through the operators I work with, and the projects Rod sees, we get to watch a wide range of builds play out. Everything from a single cabin in the woods (and yes, even one cabin can be a micro-resort, by the way) to a full ground-up Hilton hotels construction.

Here's what we keep seeing, even with operators who have done this many times on larger projects: budget estimates that double as the project goes. Contingencies that get eaten faster than you can blink. Builders who have completed dozens of similar projects but still hit the wall with bureaucracy.

If your contingency lives inside your crowdfunding pool, you have no buffer when things go wrong. Keep the campaign funds for marketing, soft launch, early operations, guest experience upgrades, anything that helps you fill those rooms once the doors open. Let construction be funded by construction capital, with its own contingency, kept separate from the promises you've made to your backers.

A bit more on this topic from my last year's article.

That's all for today.

Till next week dear readers.

p.s. Shall we do predictions on how the crowdfunding space will turn out?

My prediction: more and more hosts will recognize that this is a kind of infinite money glitch (which in a way it is). More and more will try to do this. Some will succeed, some will see subpar results, some will fail and get into lawsuits. The bad stories will get picked up by news outlets more than the good ones. There will be a regulation proposed after several of those lawsuits start piling up. It will get approved, and the space will get tighter.

Anastasia Tara

🌎 Crowdfunding for your micro-resort