Tommy Farr broke into the hospitality industry in the traditional way — he interned throughout college, ultimately landing a job at the St. Regis Hotel in Atlanta after graduation.
But to further his career, he’s taking a more unconventional approach.
“I wanted to get back to hospitality and found a new path with web3,” he said. “And I wanted to combine both of them.”
Farr is the founder and CEO of Metaverse Hospitality, which is taking a multipronged approach to bringing hotels — along with things like restaurants and other businesses — into the metaverse.
“They say, ‘I see the future in that, but we’re not ready for it,’” Farr said. “So, it’s a lot of education and figuring out how to get the mass hospitality into it as a whole.”
The metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds that have become popular in video games like Minecraft and, more recently, at large corporations looking to connect with employees while remaining remote.
Farr is hopeful that, in addition to other companies, he can also build his own hotels in the metaverse. He states he has nine plots across six metaverses, with three already completed.
“The rest we want to build with our community,” he said. “Everything from the name, the outlets, the amenities.”
The hotels exist not to provide an actual place for people to stay — it is a virtual hotel, after all — but can provide virtually everything a typical hotel can, from hosting conferences and weddings to rooftop happy hours for employees.
The seventh-generation Floridian has bootstrapped the venture himself. He has six part-time employees and is based in Tampa after waffling between here and Miami.
“It came down to joining the tech scene in Miami and being part of web3 with all the leaders established and everyone who’s been in tech,” Farr said. “Or, come to Tampa and establish it myself. And that was the goal, to get here and bring the web3 scene to Tampa.”
It’s begun in part. SandStorm, which serves as a metaverse concierge of sorts to businesses, is based in Tampa after its founder left Silicon Valley. But it could be a slower climb for Tampa Bay, which has to compete with South Florida, which draws web3 executives in droves.
There’s also the uphill battle of the fickle market. But Farr remains hopeful the metaverse will not only get mass adoption, but the catalyst for adoption can come directly from the Sunshine State.
“There’s going to be times where there are up and downs in the market; we’re in a down period right now,” he said. “But once we get to the mass adoption phase is when we’re going to have great openings.”
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