A New Luxury Retreat Caters to Elderly Workers in Tech (Ages 30 and Up)

A retreat in Mexico has a particular clientele – it is aimed at workers in the digital economy — those who feel like software is speeding up while they are slowing down, no matter how old they really are. The residents are as young as early 30s, and the age just goes up from there. Modern Elder, started by a hotelier turned Silicon Valley entrepreneur, saw a market for those that are technically still young but seen as “too old” for the work culture of tech jobs.

Before founding the resort, Chip Conley was utterly surprised to find that his colleagues at Airbnb found him as the old man at 52. “We are all elders in the making,” Mr. Conley said. “If you’re 40 years old and surrounded by 25-year-olds, you’re an elder.” After his stock in the company vested, he started his new venture with a simple but elegant premise to embrace being “elder.”

Conley imagined that the demographic would be between the ages of 45 to 60. In the nine Modern Elder sessions he has hosted to date, the oldest participant was 74, the youngest was 30, and the average has been 52. People in the tech industry, and especially in start-up rich cities such as San Francisco, feel old earlier, and life expectancies are on the increase. So coping methods and accepting mindsets are important.

The retreat is housed in a refurbished Mexican hacienda about 40 miles north of Cabo San Lucas complete with large wooden doors and an extravagant, tiled pool. Guests don’t check in and out as at a traditional retreat; they submit “applications” for one-week programs and, if accepted, pay “tuition” of $5,000 to secure one of the 18 rooms and three locally sourced meals a day.

See Nellie Bowles, A New Luxury Retreat Caters to Elderly Workers in Tech (Ages 30 and Up), New York Times, March 4, 2019.

Special thanks to Lewis Saret (Attorney, Washington, D.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.