What You Should Really Ask the Taxi Driver and Other Travel Tips
How Miami hospitality impresario Roman Jones channels his rock star childhood to avoid stress and keep nimble on the road.
Roman Jones
Photographer: Romain Maurice
At Bloomberg Pursuits, we love to travel. And when we can again, we want to make sure we’re doing it right. So we’re talking to globe-trotters in all of our luxury fields—food, wine, fashion, cars, real estate—to learn about their high-end hacks, time-saving tips, and off-the-wall experiences. These are the Distinguished Travel Hackers.
Roman Jones has been a mainstay of Miami’s nightlife since the late 1990s, when he hosted the likes of Jay-Z and Sylvester Stallone at Living Room on Washington Avenue. He went on to create other headline-grabbing venues, from the megaclubs Mansion and Opium Garden to the tiny, ultra-exclusive Privé, as well as restaurants such as Kiki on the River in downtown Miami. His latest venture, The Gramercy, is a brasserie that takes inspiration from classic hotels.
In a typical year, Jones, a new resident of Coral Gables, Fla., logs around 75,000 miles. He’s airline agnostic domestically, but when he flies internationally to Europe, there’s a clear choice: Virgin Atlantic. Virgin “was the first one to have a bar onboard, and for somebody who’s in the bar business, restaurants and so forth and so on, I appreciate that touch,” he says. “I have a little bit of a fear of flying, so I try to have a few drinks before taking off.”