Globally renowned hospitality personalities Bobby Carey and Tom Hogan have launched Studio Ryecroft, a new consulting firm taking brands from concept to culture.
The duo met working together at Proof & Company in Singapore, where Bobby served as Creative Director on the consulting side and Tom most recently as Regional General Manager in the distribution business. Now launching their own venture together, the two drew on their combined decades of global hospitality expertise to create a founder-led consultancy conceptualising destinations where design, service, and storytelling come together in harmony.
A globally recognised hospitality leader with over 25 years of experience, Bobby has created and delivered some of the world’s most celebrated luxury bar and restaurant concepts. With the industry running deep in his family – his grandfather opened the first cocktail bar in his hometown of Waterford, Ireland in the 1960s – Bobby discovered the beauty of creating special experiences at a young age, observing his family in their element hosting friends and loved ones at home. Studio Ryecroft is a nod to this family legacy – the company’s name is the name of Bobby’s grandparent’s house.
“With Studio Ryecroft, we’re really focused on longevity and staying power,” says Bobby. “Our mission is to bring concepts into culture – we’re not just doing a flashy opening and moving on, we want to create something that truly becomes a beacon of a city or country.”
Tom’s career spans 20 years, from acclaimed bartending in Chicago to creating and directing some of the most distinguished hospitality projects across Asia-Pacific. Moving seamlessly from consultancy to distribution, Tom has guided brands through market entry, growth, and activation across the region, blending creative vision with commercial precision. Known for pushing boundaries while delivering results, Tom creates experiences that inspire the industry and resonate with guests worldwide – making a full circle move back into consultancy with Studio Ryecroft.
“Drawing on our expertise in bars, we’re excited to grow beyond that sole focus,” says Tom. “We’re doing a lot of work in the non-alcoholic space, but also diversifying into branded activations, culinary ventures, and also guest-facing experiences.”
Studio Ryecroft has secured its first major project with the conceptualisation of the forthcoming bar at the House of Tan Yeok Nee, the sole survivor of Singapore’s “Four Grand Mansions” built by Teochew tycoons in the 1800s. Recently opened as a lifestyle hub after a four-year restoration, with the bar under Studio Ryecroft’s creative direction set to open in April 2026.
BTN put the following questions to them:
1. What gap in the market did you see that convinced you it was time to launch Studio Ryecroft?
I kept seeing the same story play out in great hotels and great bars. A venue opens with a big idea and a beautiful room, everyone’s proud, the first few months are strong, and then the standard starts to soften. Not because anyone stopped caring, but because the work that protects consistency is repetitive, invisible, and rarely owned properly.
There are plenty of people who can create a concept. Fewer who can turn that concept into habits that survive staff turnover, changing seasons, and the reality of a slammed Saturday night followed by a sleepy Tuesday. That’s the gap. The bridge between “we launched something cool” and “this place still feels sharp in year three”.
So, Studio Ryecroft is built around one simple belief. If the guest can feel it, it must be designed. Not just the drinks and the interior, but the welcome, the tempo, the lighting, the music, the prep, the way the room holds energy, and the way leaders coach standards without turning the team into robots. We care about the moments guests remember, and we care about the systems that make those moments repeatable.
2. You talk about taking concepts into culture. What does that look like in practice for a hotel or a bar project?
Concept to culture means we bring bars into the city. We take concepts into culture so venues belong to people. That’s not a tagline for a deck. It’s a real test. Locals choose you without a special occasion. Travellers walk in and feel like they’ve got a seat at the table, not like they’re being assessed. The bar becomes part of the daily vernacular of the hotel and the neighbourhood. It feels like a living room, not a showroom.
If you want two places that do this perfectly, look at Virtu in Tokyo and Continental Deli in Sydney. The common thread is the greeting. You walk in and you’re welcomed like you were there yesterday, even if it’s been twelve months. That single moment sets the tone for everything that follows. It gives the team permission to be human, and it gives the guest permission to relax.
In practice, concept to culture is translating the idea into behaviour. How quickly people are seen. How you treat the solo guest at the end of the bar. How the first round lands. How the team explains the concept in their own voice, not in a line written by internal marketing. Culture is the repetition of small choices done well, every shift.
3. Which of the trends you are observing feels the most underestimated by hotel brands right now?
Consistency is becoming the new luxury. A lot of brands still obsess over the opening moment. The render, the launch party, the press list. Guests are moving the other way. They’re judging you on whether the experience holds on an ordinary night. They feel friction instantly. Slow first contact. Confused pacing. Drinks arriving one by one. Staff who are polite but not confident.
And there’s another piece that doesn’t get said enough. Too many hotel bars still feel stiff. Like the team have parameters they can’t stretch because they’re afraid of ruining the prestige. But that’s often where the magic is. Magic is a bartender who can be themselves, read the room, and host properly. Magic is a team who can explain what the venue is, simply, in their own words, without clinging to a script.
The underestimated part is that standards are designable. Service behaviour isn’t “soft stuff”. It’s an operating system. The hotels that treat leadership behaviours, coaching cadence, and repeatable delivery as their competitive advantage will win quietly in 2026.
4. Stopovers are becoming micro destinations. What are the design and service elements that turn an airport venue into a place worth visiting in its own right?
An airport venue has one job: take you out of the airport while you’re still in the airport.
People are overstimulated, time-poor, and often stressed. The best airport venues create an immediate exhale without slowing down the guest. You should feel the shift in your shoulders the moment you step into the room. That comes from a mix of design discipline and service discipline.
Design-wise, it starts with clarity and comfort. You should understand the space in seconds. Where to go, how it works, whether you can do quick or linger. Acoustics matter more than people admit. Lighting matters because everyone’s tired and nobody wants to look washed out. Seating needs to suit different missions, solo travellers, couples, families, small groups.
Charging and bag space should be effortless. You’re building a refuge, not another queue.
Service-wise, speed has to come from prep and system, not from rushing people. The menu should be built for quick delivery without feeling like compromise. The team should be trained to read urgency and still make the guest feel human. The goal is calm efficiency, not cold efficiency.
5. Hotel bars are being reimagined as cultural stages. What is driving this shift and which cities are leading the way?
Hotel bars can’t survive as “a nice place for hotel guests” anymore. The best ones earn locals, and when locals show up, the bar becomes the hotel’s public voice. It becomes where the city and the hotel actually meet.
What’s driving the shift is that people are going out for culture, not just consumption. They want a room with energy. They want music that feels curated. They want a sense of belonging. They want the feeling that something is happening, even if it’s subtle. A cultural stage doesn’t need a spotlight and a schedule. It needs a point of view that the room can feel.
Cities leading this are the ones where hotel bars behave like real venues. They compete on standards, atmosphere, and identity, not on prestige. Asia does this extremely well. There’s a natural generosity in the way many Asian hotel bars host, and that hosting is what turns a hotel space into a place the city claims.
On a quiet Tuesday, that can be as simple as a DJ who knows when to pull back, a bartender who’s allowed to talk like a human, and a room lit well enough that people want to stay for another round
6. The padel weekend trend is rising fast across Asia. How do you see sport driven travel shaping hospitality design and programming more broadly?
Padel is not just sport, it’s a social format. It creates groups, routines, friendly competition, and an instant reason to travel. In places like Bangkok and Bali, you’re seeing people build a whole weekend around it. Play, recover, eat, drink, repeat. That pushes hotels to get better at the full rhythm of the day, not just the 8pm dinner moment. Morning hospitality becomes more important. Not performative wellness, but practical recovery. Coffee done properly. Breakfast that feels intentional. Hydration built into the experience without making it feel clinical.
You also need spaces that support groups. Booking mechanics that work for fours and eights. Long tables that make post-match lunches feel like a ritual. And then the crossover moment: the shift from sport to social. If I’m stealing one thing from nightlife, it’s this. Don’t just run a bar, build a social club. Somewhere people come for the activity, then stay because the atmosphere is right, the music is right, and the space makes it easy to sit down, laugh, tell stories, and make a night of it.
7. When you approach a new project, what comes first, the story, the service model or the physical space?
The constraint comes first. Always. If the space is built, it tells you what’s possible: flow, storage, prep capacity, sightlines, noise, how staff move when it’s full. If it’s a new build, you start with the guest promise and the service model early, because layout mistakes are expensive and they haunt you for years. You can’t train your way out of a bad bar pass or a broken circulation path.
Story matters, but it can’t lead if it ignores operational truth. I’d rather deliver a simpler idea brilliantly than a clever one that collapses the moment the room fills. The story should sit on top of a service model that works, not the other way around.
8. How do you balance international standards with local cultural expression so the experience feels authentic rather than formulaic?
I separate standards from expression. Standards are the non-negotiables: warmth, cleanliness, product quality, pacing, consistency between shifts, leadership presence. Those should travel. They’re what make guests feel safe and looked after, no matter where they are in the world.
Expression is local. It’s what you source, the rituals you build, the way the room speaks, the music, the social codes, the small details that make the venue feel like it belongs to that place. Authenticity is not a motif. It’s specificity.
And this is where stiffness kills bars. If the team feels boxed in by parameters because they’re afraid of breaking prestige, you lose the magic. Real prestige is confidence. It’s a team that can explain the concept in their own words, and make the guest feel like they belong, without needing a script to hide behind.
9. You have deep roots in the bar world. How is that craft mentality influencing your work as you expand into culinary and branded activation projects?
Bar craft is systems thinking under pressure. Behind the bar, you learn that repetition is the job. Prep discipline, station logic, timing, and calm delivery when it’s busy. That mentality scales everywhere. In culinary, if the dish can’t be executed cleanly at pace, it’s not ready. In branded activations, if the idea can’t be explained in one sentence by the floor team, it won’t land. If the ritual looks good but breaks service, it won’t survive.
I also had strong taskmasters early on. The lesson was drilled in: every drink matters, no matter who it’s for. You don’t know someone’s story. It might be their one night out this year. So you treat every guest like they matter, because they do. That’s the core of standards for me. It’s not perfectionism for its own sake. It’s respect.
10. After decades working across the world, what destination has surprised you most recently in terms of hospitality innovation?
Seoul, because the baseline is high and the guests are sharp. The good venues feel modern without feeling cold. There’s confidence in the detail and discipline in the execution. You feel it in the way the room is paced, the way the lighting frames faces, the way hospitality is delivered without fuss.
Bangkok also keeps impressing because it absorbs formats quickly and makes them feel social. It’s a city where ideas get tested in the wild, refined fast, and either survive or disappear. When standards are high in that kind of market, you know it’s real.
11. Are you seeing any early signs of how Gen Z travellers will reshape the industry over the next few years?
They care less about labels and more about feeling. They’ll pay for a place with a point of view and a real standard, but they’re impatient with friction. Clunky booking, awkward arrival, unclear service, spaces that feel generic. They also compress categories. A hotel isn’t just a hotel. It’s a base for sport, music, food, community. They want spaces that feel alive, not spaces that feel like amenities.
If your public spaces feel like real venues, they’ll show up. If they feel like they were designed to be photographed rather than lived in, they’ll stay one night and never think about you again.
12. What does longevity mean to you in an industry that often prioritises the next opening?
Longevity is when the place still feels intentional years later. It becomes a habit for locals, not a novelty. The menu evolves without losing its spine. New staff can learn the standard quickly because the system exists. Leaders coach the culture rather than hoping it stays by magic. Longevity is also humility. You keep refining. You keep listening. You keep protecting the guest experience as the team changes.
I’m not interested in flash in the pan. I’m interested in bars that become part of a city’s life. Longevity is when a new hire can deliver a great first round in week two, because the system is built for them.
13. How do you measure success beyond revenue and footfall?
I look at the signals that predict whether the venue will stay good. A big one is whether drinks land together at the table. It sounds small, but it changes everything. If the first round arrives one by one, you’ve already broken the flow. Guests can’t cheers properly. The moment is gone, and you can feel it. That’s not a cocktail problem, it’s a system problem.
I also look at how quickly guests are seen, whether pacing feels confident, and whether the team can explain the venue in their own words. Repeat visitation matters. When locals come back without needing an event to lure them, that’s real success. When a venue becomes someone’s default, you’ve built something that lasts.
14. What qualities do the best hospitality leaders share after working with them around the world?
Clarity, presence, and consistency. They set the standard, explain why it matters, and repeat it calmly. They don’t hide in the office when service gets hard. They coach in real time with warmth and backbone. They protect the guest experience and they protect the team, because burnout is not a badge of honour.
The best leaders also understand that standards are not about being strict. They’re about being generous. They make the room feel safe, they make the team feel supported, and they make guests feel like they belong.
15. Your first major project is set within one of Singapore’s most historic mansions. What was your creative starting point for reimagining a bar inside such a significant landmark?
Respect, then restraint. A landmark doesn’t need anyone to manufacture history for it. It already has weight. The gift with a place like that is depth. There’s so much detail across the house’s history that you never run out of inspiration for menus, rituals, and programming. You can keep finding new layers without forcing it, which is a rare luxury in modern hospitality.
The goal is to make it feel like the house is alive again as a social space, not treated like a museum. To create a bar that belongs to Singapore, and belongs to the people who will return to it, year after year.
16. How do you want guests to feel when they walk into the finished space for the first time?
Seen quickly, welcomed warmly, and quietly intrigued. I want the first feeling to be comfort, like you can settle in. I want the room to feel confident, not precious. Then, as the night goes on, the details reveal themselves. The rhythm of service. The atmosphere. The way lighting hits a drink on the table. The way music carries the energy without shouting.
It should feel like a place you can bring someone you love, and a place you can walk into alone and still feel like you belong.
17. What category or experience are you most excited to rethink next?
The in-between moments that shape a stay and usually get under-designed. Arrivals, lobbies, poolside service, in-room rituals that people actually use. These connective tissues decide whether a hotel feels sharp or sloppy. When they’re done properly, the whole property feels coherent. Guests feel the standard even when they’re not in the headline restaurant.
Those spaces are also where you can create real generosity. Small rituals that make people feel looked after without needing a big production. That’s where hotels can win back loyalty.
18. If you could redesign any global hospitality space today, which one would it be and why?
Hotel arrivals. Too many arrivals still feel transactional. Queue, counter, forms, key, off you go. It wastes the most emotionally charged moment of the stay. That first five minutes is where trust is built, and it’s where so many hotels accidentally feel cold.
I’d redesign it around hosting. A human welcome, check-in that can happen comfortably, a first small ritual that reflects the place, and staff who can orient you to what matters tonight. Make the guest feel like they’ve arrived somewhere, not just checked in.
Batching note integrated across the piece
Everything should be batched where it improves speed and consistency. The exceptions are when the guest deserves theatre: a tableside ritual, or a rare aged spirit you want to showcase properly. Those moments earn the slower pace because they’re the point of the drink.