Global Head of Hospitality for AIRBNB

Hotel guru. Armchair psychologist. Traveling philosopher. Author. Speaker. Teacher. Student. Chip Conley has lived out more than one calling in his lifetime.

No one has led the development, creation, and management of more boutique hotels than CHIP CONLEY, founder and former CEO of Joie de Vivre (JDV).

photo By Mindfulwiki - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46148413

At age 26, Chip’s mission was to “create joy” by building a company that USA Today called “the most delightfully schizophrenic collection of hotels in America.” During his nearly 24 years as CEO, JDV grew to become the second largest boutique hotel company in America. (Chip is no longer an owner or leader of Joie de Vivre’s management business – now part of Commune Hotels – but remains a partner in several hotel properties.)

In 2013, CHIP CONLEY joined Airbnb as Head of Global Hospitality, where he’s sharing his proven methods with hosts in nearly 200 countries. And Chip launched the travel blog Fest300, which provides an in-depth look 300 of the world’s best festivals.

Chip shares his unique prescription for success in PEAK : How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, based on noted psychologist Abraham Maslow’s iconic Hierarchy of Needs. The New York Times bestseller, Emotional Equations: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness + Success, is Chip’s latest book where he takes us from emotional intelligence to emotional fluency – placing meaning at the top of the balance sheet.

His previous books include The Rebel Rules: Daring to be Yourself in Business, and Marketing That Matters: 10 Practices to Profit Your Business and Change the World. CHIP CONLEY presents his theories on transformation and meaning – in business and life – to audiences around the world and he’s been a featured speaker at TED.

Honored with the 2012 Pioneer Award – hospitality’s highest accolade – The San Francisco Business Times named Chip the “Most Innovative CEO” – and JDV the “2nd Best Place to Work in the entire Bay Area.” Chip received his BA and MBA from Stanford University and holds an Honorary Doctorate in Psychology from Saybrook University, where he is the 2012/2013 Scholar-Practitioner in residence. He served on the Glide Memorial Board for nearly a decade and is now on the Boards of the Burning Man Project, the Esalen Institute, and Youth Speaks.


TOPICS

How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow

    Part memoir, part theory, and part application, Chip shares Joie de Vivre's remarkable transformation while providing real world examples from other companies and showing how attendees can bring about similar changes in their work and personal lives. He explains how to understand the motivations of employees, customers, bosses, and investors, and use that understanding to foster better relationships and build an enduring and profitable corporate culture.

    Toward a Psychology of Business : Simple Truths for Creating a Culture of Happiness and Success

    CHIP CONLEY believes the most neglected fact in business is that we're all human and that business schools don't do enough to help us understand that creating peak experiences for stakeholders can create peak performance for a company. The PEAK model can be used to understand how a company can relate to relationships beyond those with employees and customers: investors, vendors, the community, and, even with yourself. As a practitioner who has used his own company (with over 3,000 employees) as a laboratory for understanding the human condition, Chip's philosophical but prescriptive approach to leadership will be very illuminating.

    DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION : Learning How to See and Surf a Disruption

    CHIP CONLEY has disrupted the hospitality industry twice, once as the founder and long-time CEO of Joie de Vivre Hotels (America's second largest boutique hotel company) and more recently in 2013 when he joined the three founders of Airbnb to help grow and lead the company to become the most valuable hospitality company in the world. Chip has identified his three rules of disruptive innovation in any industry and how start-ups as well as established companies can see the foreshadowing of a new wave on the horizon and surf that wave to competitive advantage.