By Dustin Stone, HTN staff writer - 2.24.2026
Gravity Haus isn’t just opening another hotel as it crosses into Canada. It’s extending a model that depends as much on software and identity infrastructure as it does on guestrooms and amenities. Earlier this month, the Denver-based lifestyle hospitality brand began operating its first international property in Revelstoke, British Columbia, taking over and rebranding The VRGE hotel. The property becomes Gravity Haus’s 10th location and a key foothold in a destination that aligns closely with its core audience of outdoor enthusiasts and mobile professionals.
On the surface, the move looks like a conventional expansion into a new market. But Gravity Haus isn’t structured like a conventional hotel company. From the start, it has sold membership as the central product, with hotels serving as physical nodes in a broader network. Members don’t just book rooms. They join a community, and that membership follows them from property to property. This model requires a different kind of technology backbone than traditional hospitality operations, where systems are typically optimized around individual stays rather than persistent relationships.
Founder Jim Deters built Gravity Haus with that distinction in mind. Before launching the company in 2019, Deters co-founded Galvanize, a coworking and technology education company that focused on building professional communities anchored in physical spaces but powered by digital engagement. Gravity Haus reflects that same thinking. Its first property opened in Breckenridge in December 2019, combining hotel accommodations with coworking space, fitness and recovery facilities and social programming.
The company’s membership-focused structure changes how technology gets deployed. Instead of treating reservations as isolated transactions, Gravity Haus maintains continuous member profiles that store preferences, engagement history and eligibility for services and benefits. This makes integration between systems essential. The company has publicly identified Mews as a core part of its technology stack, using the cloud-based property management platform alongside integrations with tools such as Revinate and Zapier. Revinate provides CRM capabilities, helping manage guest communications and marketing automation, while Zapier connects systems and automates workflows, allowing information to move automatically between applications.
That kind of integration is necessary for delivering on the brand’s membership promise. If a member arrives at a property and the system doesn’t recognize their entitlements, preferences, or status, the entire premise starts to unravel. Gravity Haus’s reliance on cloud-native infrastructure reflects a broader shift across the independent and boutique hotel sector, where operators are replacing legacy systems with platforms that allow real-time data sharing and mobile-enabled operations.
This shift also makes expansion faster and less capital-intensive. Rather than building properties from the ground up, Gravity Haus often takes over existing hotels and integrates them into its network. The Revelstoke property follows that playbook. By assuming management of an existing hotel and layering its operating model and technology platform on top, Gravity Haus can expand its footprint quickly while focusing investment on guest experience and programming rather than construction.
Financial partnerships have supported this approach. In 2023, Gravity Haus announced a strategic relationship with experiential real estate investor EPR Properties, including approximately $64.5 million in debt refinancing and a framework designed to accelerate expansion through acquisitions and management opportunities. This structure favors operational consistency and scalability, which are two areas where cloud-based systems and integrated data platforms are essential.
Gravity Haus is not alone in pursuing this model. A growing cohort of lifestyle brands, including citizenM, Ace Hotel, Proper Hotels, and Ennismore, have invested heavily in cloud platforms, mobile engagement tools, and centralized data infrastructure. These brands have demonstrated that technology can enable smaller operators to deliver experiences that rival or exceed those of global chains, without carrying the burden of decades-old legacy systems.
At the same time, larger hotel companies have recognized the importance of similar capabilities. Global operators such as Marriott, Hilton and Accor are investing heavily in cloud migration and digital identity platforms, aiming to deliver more personalized guest experiences and strengthen direct relationships with customers. The competitive landscape is increasingly defined not just by location or brand recognition, but by how effectively companies manage and apply guest data.
Even among smaller operators, the shift is visible. Regional management groups have begun deploying cloud property management systems that allow staff to operate remotely, access real-time data, and interact with guests through mobile workflows rather than fixed terminals. These capabilities make it easier to deliver the kind of seamless experience that membership-driven brands promise.
For Gravity Haus, the international expansion into Revelstoke is a test of whether its platform can scale across borders while maintaining the continuity that members expect. The company has framed the property as a Canadian flagship and part of a growing global network designed for a community of travelers who move frequently between destinations.
What ultimately distinguishes Gravity Haus is the way it connects those physical spaces through a shared digital layer. Membership, identity and integrated systems allow the brand to function as a network rather than a collection of individual properties. As more hospitality companies adopt similar infrastructure, the competitive advantage will increasingly belong to those that can maintain consistent, personalized relationships with guests across locations and over time.