DENVER — Based on the way Jennifer Clark Fugolo, vice president, industry and stakeholder engagement at the AHLA Foundation, greeted Sarah Phelps, one would think she was in the presence of a rock star. In effect, Phelps is a rock star in arena of high-end experiential travel. Older members of the audience may remember when astronauts and other associated with NASA were as lionized as rock stars in the 1960s. In the case of Phelps, her position as managing director of astronaut and customer experience at Blue Origin effectively makes her both.
Phelps launched her career in the Club Med multiverse, and then moved on to her next command at Big Sky, Mont., where she rose to the ranks of director of member services at The Yellowstone Club, a private residential club, ski resort and golf resort. She was responsible for bringing the wants, desires and dreams of that high net-worth clientele to life. Then a bartender who worked with her revealed he was also technical recruiter and for Blue Origin. Having observed her work, he offered her an opportunity to take her career into the stratosphere.
Blazing Trails
Much of the public may know of Phelps' behind-the-scenes work thanks to the all-female space mission that garnered worldwide news coverage in April. Journalist Gayle King, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, film producer Kerianne Flynn, pop star Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez (a.k.a. Mrs. Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin and flew the ‘New Shepard’ craft) took those first small steps, though Phelps knows a more complex journey to the deserts of West Texas made that event and Blue Origin happen.
The high-profile trip to the outskirts of space earned both positive and negative reviews from the media and general public. However, what is most impressive about Phelps’ discourse at The Hospitality Show about getting to the outer limits of customized experiential travel is how she applied skills and insights from her past jobs to create this beyond “once-in-a-lifetime” experience and its potential to influence future ‘Next-Gen’ destinations, resorts and activities that pick up where “authenticity” and “immersive” leave off. Though she has plenty of visual aids at her disposal, her story paints a vibrant picture about how far courage and creativity can take a hospitality career.
“I was given this opportunity to have a blank wall and fill it with lots of post it notes and construction paper,” she recalled on how she secured her place as “Managing Director of Astronaut and Customer Experience” at Blue Origin, the first aerospace company of its kind, and took on building the space tourism industry completely from scratch with the help of financiers, experienced scientists, astronauts and other professionals to work out the details.
“I needed to build an experience for people who are not career rocket scientists and aerospace engineers but people who had dreamt about space, and who knew about space from what they had read in books and what they had seen in science fiction television, movies, and cartoons. We needed to think about the experience differently than somebody in that career, and changing what it means to be an astronaut.”
The perfect location for this endeavor was in Van Horn, Texas, a 10-hour drive from Phoenix and Dallas, two hours from El Paso, and outfitted only with a Valero truck stop selling some of the best burritos Phelps had ever eaten. While the “build it, and they will come” scenario may seem daunting on the surface, she simply had to reference her foundational jobs at The Yellowstone Club and Club Med.
“I had this vision, and people looked at me like I was absolutely insane,” Phelps continued. “The way I explained things to (investors and other supporters) was to have them, ‘Imagine that we have a small high-end dude ranch or wellness center in the desert, but instead of a golf course or ia really nice spa, we have a rocket launch.’ It's all the same steps. It's taking care of people. it's building those relationships with people leading up to the launch of Blue Origin.”
Partners and Partnerships
She also recounted bringing in trusted partners who knew how to, “do crazy, weird things in the middle of nowhere.” However, her confidence stemmed from how her past career experience had made the current moment possible. “I built this weird niche for myself in the world,” she said. “When I was at Club Med, we were in the Bahamas on an island in the middle of nowhere where it can be hard to get the things guests need. I moved to The Yellowstone Club, an hour and 15 minutes from Bozeman, Mont., and you can't just run to the store to get that thing you need for your adventure. You always have to plan in advance, and we took that to a whole new level in West Texas.
Fugolo, her curiosity further piqued, wanted more details about the process of transforming this place in the, “middle-of-nowhere” Texas to a customized experience where Blue Origin has so far flown 80 customer-astronauts to date.
Phelps began with a 100 year-old ranch to convert into the hub of the astronaut experience, deciding the best course of action was to keep elements of the structure true to its West Texas roots even as parts of it were reconstructed for two days of space training and other functions. Color theory was applied to the overall aesthetic of the main buildings and Airstream trailers making up the “astronaut village”—a historic nod to where the original Apollo and Mercury astronauts quarantined. An old cistern was converted into an outdoor fire pit. The old stable became the property’s bar, where guests can order up a “Blue Origin and tonic.”
She adds that the art on the walls and accent pieces on the tables were selected with intention to situate astronaut guests and their companions in aerospace history as well as the short journey into space. However, she acknowledged that even with a high-net worth customer base, some restraint is needed to ensure they are getting the exact experience they are paying for rather than a simulation.
“Too much kitsch, and you feel like you're in a toddler's bedroom,” Phelps explained. “You need to have that balance. But what really inspired me was that the people flying with us are true pioneers. Therefore, I needed to lean into the raw authenticity of West Texas. I needed to lean into what Blue Origin about, and it is not about a five-star or five-diamond hotel in the desert. Instead, we needed for the experience itself to be five-star with impeccable service and comfort..but the guest) will be in jeans, relaxing at a fire pit, and totally relaxed because they have to be focused on the safety aspects of training to be fully prepared for the trip to space.
Among the astronaut experience team, there are nine people working for Blue Origin full time, and two of them are astronaut concierge, holding the “second coolest job title” after hers. She explains they handle the concierge work of this experience for each guest, from logistics (using commercial vs. private means, or a mix of the two), assisting family members, spouses, or family members joining them to cheer them on, and do whatever else is required to make everybody comfortable.
“It was really important for me to put as much, if not more, emphasis into the family/companion experience than the astronaut experience,” she continues. “The astronauts are all in as they have been dreaming about doing this most of their lives ... but their families? Maybe not so much. Maybe some of them didn't tell their spouse that they had bought a ticket to space until maybe a month prior. We have an entire protocol for our guests and our plus ones to learn about the entire system, the safety redundancies in our system, and what they're going to be doing so that they can be put at ease. This is important because [guests’] first contact is the astronaut concierge. They don't get to talk to a lot of the engineers in the lead up and even throughout their journey, for example. We have to instill trust and confidence, and we do that quickly. If they see that we have paid so much attention to detail, to their hospitality experience, and training, they won’t worry about the big things. They know that we've taken care of their friends and families.”
“We go through a lot of empathy training with our staff,” she continued citing an example where the driver assisting Gayle King put her mind at ease, telling her why her participation on the flight was important, helping her realize her goal of overcoming her fear. “We do a lot of crisis and contingency planning training with our staff about how to talk to people who are going through this really high stress, high emotion, multi-sensory moment.”
Guests First
The ultimate takeaway Phelps and Fugolo wanted for the audience was recognizing that no matter the location or adventure, the humans making the dreams happen—from concierge personnel to drivers, trainers and others with direct contact with the guests—put the guests at the forefront. Although engineers and others ensure the vehicle is safe in the case of Blue origin, its the people the astronauts regularly see that make the trip of a lifetime worth every penny.
To end the session with a bang, Phelps presents a picture from Blue origin’s first human flight, showing founder, Jeff Bezos, his brother, Oliver Daemen, 18, the first client (his father was a paying customer who gifted him the seat) and youngest person to fly to space at 18, and Wally Funk, one of the “Mercury 13,” a group of women who passed NASA's astronaut screening in the 1960s and the oldest person to fly in space at 82. She then draws the audience’s attention to a blonde woman carrying two bottles of champagne. “To me, this encapsulates what it truly means to change space travel into space tourism,” she said with pride.
“I will always go back to the fact that I am so proud of what we were able to do, to send six women to space ... something that had never been done before,” Phelps concludes. “Blue Origin has made sure that there is a woman on every single flight that we have sent to space thus far. When I look at that picture of these astronaut women, I think of all of the hospitality people that were were able to employ because we made this flight possible. From designers and hair and makeup artists, to food and beverage people to butlers, housekeepers, and concierge and hospitality professionals. We probably had over 150 people working this launch, just from the hospitality side, which doesn't even touch all involved as there were also audio visual people, video crews, photographers, and others.”