Dylan Barahona is the new general manager at Riverside Colorado, a glamping retreat nestled in Poudre Canyon about 30 minutes outside Fort Collins. Riverside is owned by the same team behind the Mishawaka Amphitheater, the historic 1,000-person outdoor venue that beat Red Rocks for the top spot in Denver Westword's ranking of Colorado outdoor music venues.

Dylan brings over a decade of hospitality experience spanning luxury hotels in Florida, VIP music festival programming including Electric Forest, and outdoor hospitality. He joined Riverside just six weeks before this recording and is already rethinking how the property drives revenue, builds community, and earns repeat guests.

In this conversation, Dylan talks about why he is pushing guests to extend single-night stays into two and three-night trips, how he is curating "pre-parties" before Mishawaka shows to create a festival-within-a-festival feel, and what a potential donkey hike experience called Donkey Delights says about his approach to programming. He also shares his take on where AI genuinely helps in hospitality operations and where it falls short, including why no algorithm is going to walk up to a guest struggling with a fire pit and make a real human connection.

Dylan also reflects on a stay at Rancho Santana in Nicaragua that shaped how he thinks about the difference between programming and memory-making.

Find Riverside Colorado at riversidecolorado.com and follow Dylan on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/dylan-barahona. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to Foundry Talks on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.