The Detroit Foundation Hotel recently appointed Sulaiman Shabazz director of lifestyle. As part of his role, he will oversee the hotel’s lifestyle programming, cultural partnerships and experiential strategy, helping to further position Detroit Foundation Hotel as both a gateway to Detroit’s creative community and a platform for showcasing the city’s culture, innovation, and talent to visitors from around the world.
Shabazz has more than 20 years of extensive experience developing community-focused experiences and brand partnerships across hospitality, lifestyle and cultural spaces, including leadership roles with Soho House Austin and The LINE Hotel.
Upcoming programming led by Shabazz includes a 3D Printing Workshop in partnership with All Motion Studio, highlighting Detroit’s growing influence at the intersection of technology, manufacturing, and art, as well as the Detroit on Wax series with Detroit Musix, which celebrates the city’s musical legacy through immersive listening sessions and conversations with local historians and cultural experts.
What first got you into hospitality?
As a kid, I spent summers working in my family’s bookstore, servicing clients, anticipating needs, and ensuring frictionless experiences within the shop. From there, the fire was lit!
Can you share a summary of your career journey to now? What brought you from Chicago to Austin to Detroit?
My career in music & entertainment as a performing artist took me out to Los Angeles a decade prior to relocating to Austin, TX. to be closer to family. It was there that I officially stepped into the hospitality realm, starting as a humble Pool Coordinator, eventually working my way up to the position of Creative / Culture Director for the property. With the lessons learned in that position, I went on to build the experiential firm Cool For A Living, and then stepped into the role of Head of Member Events for the opening team of Soho House Austin. Those experiences gave me the collective vision to lead a property’s spirit via creative, community-based collaborations and ultimately led me to accept the position of Director of Lifestyle with Detroit Foundation Hotel.
Who were some of your mentors when you were getting started?
My parents played a vital role in setting me up for success as avid community leaders themselves, and as I moved into the hospitality space, hospitality visionaries like Sana Keefer, Isadora McKeon, David Lang and Adam Bussell were instrumental in de-mystifying the complexities of running top-ranked properties with keen vision and organic connections to guest experience.
What were some of the most important lessons you learned early in your career?
How you do anything is how you do everything, character is how you treat the people who can do nothing for you, and leaders never let you see them sweat.
What is the biggest professional challenge you’ve faced in your career?
I once produced 125 individual events in a 14-day span as a part of Soho House Austin’s offering during SXSW 2021. It took extreme organization, over-communication, a dedicated team that required an understanding of what to take on as my own and what to delegate, and most importantly, a concrete vision of what we wanted to accomplish as a brand to set ourselves apart, not only in the market, but also within our own organization.
What was one of your proudest professional accomplishments? Why is it meaningful to you?
I once produced a Pride-themed Pool Party while at the LINE Hotel Austin in partnership with San-Antonio vogue group House of Kenzo. I was previously unaware of the gravity of holding space for a community that’s rarely offered the opportunity to be their full selves in a public forum, but the impact was immense. Post-event, I’d walk into other spaces in Austin and receive sincere moments of appreciation from attendees who’d express their gratitude for holding space for the LGBTQIA+ community, and it made me feel connected to the equitable fights for freedom of expression that preceded me.
What brought you to this role at the Detroit Foundation Hotel?
Detroit! The city is in such an exciting time of rebirth, and with the opportunity to conduct the spirit of such a beautiful property like Detroit Foundation Hotel, I felt my experience aligned perfectly to steward the journey.
What will you be doing in this role?
Heavily reinforcing the “Detroit Foundation” in the name of our property by ensuring the best and brightest of what Detroit has to offer has a place within our operations, offerings, and impact. This includes thoughtful spotlights on Detroit’s creative communities, its' pioneering tech and mobility landscape, breathtaking design across all mediums, and a cohesiveness that ties together all of the above via top-tier hospitality, food and beverage offerings, in-room experience, and strong partnership with local hot spots.
How do you plan to incorporate Detroit’s history and culture into the hotel’s operations?
We sit within a literal landmark of the city, the old Detroit Fire Department’s headquarters, and that gives us an infinite amount of stories to tell that can connect Detroit’s past, present, and future. Through thoughtful collaborations with partners that take a similar approach to brand building, we’ll reach across the pillars of mobility, design, manufacturing and culture that have always made Detroit great to explore what the future holds for the only UNESCO-appointed City of Design in the country.
What are you most excited about in terms of programming and activations at the hotel?
I’m excited for the opportunity to export the best of what Detroit has to offer to satisfy the ravenous hunger that the world has for the city. In return, I’m ecstatic to welcome in global conversations, concepts and communities that look to add to the progress of what’s happening locally.
What does “lifestyle” mean to you in terms of hospitality?
Lifestyle in hospitality is a total understanding of the guest’s journey to an extent that we can predict friction points and streamline their experience.
How do you see hoteliers incorporating lifestyle into their properties in effective ways?
Creating safe spaces for niche communities of interest at the onset, building outward into general audiences to maximize the effectiveness of the only true “third spaces” that still exist. Revenue will always follow an organic investment into these elements.
What is the best part of your job?
Curating connective moments between strangers within beautiful spaces!
What do you hope to be doing five years from now?
Owning a successful global hospitality brand that's incorporated all of the lessons I’ve learned into it’s operations.