Latest / Brand Insiders / Health Is the New Wealth: How Equinox Hotels Is Redefining Luxury Through High-Performance Living

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Health Is the New Wealth: How Equinox Hotels Is Redefining Luxury Through High-Performance Living · Brand Insiders

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Hospitality Nets' video series called Brand Insiders, where we're focusing on innovative hotel brands and true trend centers in this ever-evolving industry.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm proud today to be joined by someone I deeply admire, Chris Norton, CEO of Equinox Hotels.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Chris, how are you?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, Adam.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for this introduction.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Much appreciated.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's fantastic to have you on here to discuss your background as well as Equinox Hotels and meeting modern customers where they are and what all the new trends that are going to impact health span, longevity, and future ways that people are going to be traveling.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Give us a quick background on your history with Equinox, before that in other hospitality ventures, and now with Equinox Hotels.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: So very quickly, so you know, I started in the business at the tender age of 16 in Zurich, Switzerland.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: The hotel school in Lausanne.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I still sit on the board of that school, not for 11 years.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, worked for a bunch of independent, always luxury and uber luxury hotels, and then joined Four Seasons in the late 80s and spent 28 incredible years with that uh great brand.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Lived with them literally all over the world, uh, including Asia, worked in the Middle East and Europe and the US, and uh started as a hotel manager in Montreal and ended up as the president of the company worldwide and chief operating officer out of Toronto, uh where I oversaw global hotel operations, design, construction, procurement, and really spent a lot of my time innovating new product and new hotels.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that was a big part of what I did.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and 10 years ago, met the guys with Equinox and related, and we they talked about getting into hospitality and maybe working with us, and then approached me and said, Why don't you come and join us and we do this all in-house?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: And uh thought about it for a long time because I'd been with Four Caesars for 28 years, which is a long time with one company, even though I'd been all around the world with them.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I decided it was an interesting story back then in my late 50s to kind of start all over again with a white piece of paper and uh really spending probably two years from 1718 until opening our first hotel in 2019, kind of rethinking and reinventing what luxury hospitality and lifestyle should look like.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: You're repositioning it for the next generation, and so it was a spectacular journey.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we opened our first hotel uh in Hudson Yards, uh, and I think it's truly a different concept and different uh view of how the world is evolving.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh then of course COVID hit.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: We all had we all remember that, and that we took a bit of a you know back uh you know, step back a bit.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: But um we have about 10 hotels that are signed up that are under various levels of development.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: We're opening our second hotel, which is a resort on the west coast coast of Saudi Arabia in a few months.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's a Norman Foster design sitting on a marina on one side, the beach on the other, very activated, uh beautiful, beautiful, and which follows our overall strategy to be global and occupy both the resort and the urban space.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we're on to more exciting things to come.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I've now been with the Equinox, I think it's nine years.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is October, uh, and it's been a blast.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh that's quite the summary, quite the story, and it's incredible to hear.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, within all this, the context for Equinox hotels can be summarized with this shorthand term health is wealth.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean for the future of hospitality as well as the total addressable market for wellness insofar as what guests now and in the future will want?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think uh, I mean, there's a there's a lot there to cover uh and there's things we all have read about and know.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: We know that the wellness industry, which is a very broad term, yeah, is in the trillions worldwide.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: We know that.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: We also know that the new generation of luxury consumers, and when that's and again, there's a whole bunch of different definitions about luxury, but if you understand that luxury has become more democratized over the years, uh so you redefine luxury and you you understand that the new generation is much more into experiences than the previous generation where we wanted to buy stuff.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: You understand that their definition of luxury is very different than it was even 10 or 20 years ago.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: So um I think you have the entire industry understanding that there's a movement towards wellness, well-being.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: In our case, you know, we defined it around what we call high performance living.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the whole idea that health is new wealth, of course, and it's a term that has been used a lot, uh, but also understand that you want a longer life and a better life.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then the scientific research that has done has been done on kind of understanding what gets you there.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we started defining what the brand would be, and in our case, understand that it was a brand extension of an existing brand, because Equinox has been around in the fitness space uh in a class of one, you know, for 30 years now.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we started layering on top of it and building it out versus starting a new brand.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if you if you think of Equinox, the club side, providing a local customer, because usually when you join a club, you're you're it's in your city, uh, and providing uh movement through the exercise piece and providing community.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you join you join clubs because you want to have strong community, basically, and combining that with a hotel experience that is usually by definition not for locals, except the food and beverage piece of it, but that caters to travelers, and then the food and beverage piece of it, which is nutrition.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we started establishing these four core pillars of movement, nutrition, regen, which is sleep and hotel rooms, uh, and community, which is membership and guests, and tying that together.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: So by doing that, we create the seamless interaction between all those pillars, and where usually hotels try to activate spaces and call it the lifestyle hotels through food and beverage, bars and restaurants, and make them heavy pieces of the experience.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we do a lot of that, not only through food and beverage, but through club members.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look at our hotel in Hudson Yards, you know, with one club close to 5,000 members, meaning 1,500 people come in and out of the club on a daily basis and create footfall for all of Hudson Yards.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, once they work out and you know, they're at the club an hour and a half, two hours, but they change and they then activate the bars and the restaurants.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so now you have an active local community that starts activating hotel spaces.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So now, as a traveler, when you go down to the club, the spa, the restaurant, the bar, you're suddenly part of an active, engaged community that is you know like-minded and shares similar values around this lifestyle.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting enough, by doing that, uh, something people did not believe we could pull off, you know, we clearly position ourselves in the luxury space when it comes to average room rates, for example.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we way outperform our competitive set.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: But if we compare ourselves to the traditional luxury players, for seasons, Peninsula, Mandarin, Rosewood, you know, we penetrate those by you know at 92%, 95% in rate, uh, because it is the new way of buying luxury.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So our guest list looks very similar, and it's just a different way of uh experience hospitality.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you mention regenerate sleep, and when we first met uh at the global sleep symposium earlier this year, we're recording in October, we met in May.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sleep is such a core part of what makes the Equinox Hotel experience special.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm wondering, could you unpack why sleep is so central to the to the design, the work you've put in, and um as well the importance of how you're expressing that through events like the Global Sleep Symposium?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think we we took a very scientific approach um layered and layering in a scientific approach on top of what hotels usually do when they design a guest room with an interior designer.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we've very brilliant interior architect and designer helping us with the look and the feel of the room, bringing in the brand DNA.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we brought early on, we brought in a whole panel of scientists, including sleep psychologists and specialists, in creating what would be the perfect environment for the best possible sleep.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that included dark, quiet, cool, which is a setting that we uh we programmed the room so the entire room goes to sleep, including the right temperature, eliminated all sources of light, including the bleaky lights on the TV and all of that.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, eliminated all bleeding enough sun when you come in on a red eye from LA and you want to sleep until noon.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and what we layered into the walls and doors to make sure that your room is totally silent, especially in a city like New York, which is busy and noisy.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but we also went into uh details of what goes inside the mattress to make sure that the quality of sleep, even though not visible when you look at the mattress, would have an impact on the on the quality of your night.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: We made sure that uh we eliminated things, you know, you think it's pretty easy to do, but we eliminated things like decorative pillows and bed spreads for hygiene reasons.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: We separated the duvets because there's a whole trend on what is called sleep divorce among younger couples who both work, and people have different sleep patterns, so we kind of we tipped our hat to that phenomena.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so we just were very thoughtful in the designing of the room, not just as a nice-looking stage set, but as a functional environment that would give you and provide you with the best possible sleep environment.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it also includes pre and post, so before you go to bed, the quality of the shower you can take, you know, how many different ways you can take the shower, and then and now moving it on to our sleep labs and moving it on to what is the next generation of rooms going to look like.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we're spending a lot of time constantly trying to reinvent ourselves because you know what is great today isn't good enough tomorrow, and so we we keep pushing ourselves, and you want to make sure that we're ahead of the conversation and not following trends.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think most of the industry is following trends uh and kind of they're seeing what's happening out there, and then they kind of try to also do something a little bit the same, and uh maybe it's easier for us to do because we're much smaller still, you know.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're kind of a peak hotel company, and you know, at my level, I get into a lot of detail.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't delegate it to in a young designer, I'm I'm part of it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so I think you know, we kind of prototype a lot of the stuff out there in the world, and I think hence we have gotten the recognition we did on you know, the world kind of saying we're we kind of old sleep as a brand.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: We become an expert at doing that.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we'll continue pushing that envelope.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: The hotel industry is notoriously conservative, but for we have to acknowledge that it's is for good reason.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: It is very hard to retrofit a room, particularly if you have to gut it and insert new endpoints or do any sort of recabling.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the whole things that deserves mention with this sleeve lab is the technology that's in there and the work that you've done to install items like intuitive lighting that all goes through central panel, the motion lights that ring the bed frame so that way when you wake up at three in the morning, you flip your legs over, you don't need to turn on an overhead light.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the timing of how you can have preset wake times where the whole room comes alive in a very gradual, controlled manner.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just listing a few.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wondering if you could unpack some of the work that you and your team have done to make the technology so seamless.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think technology uh is important, but it's also important not to overdo it.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: I just stayed in a hotel in Europe and I will not mention uh which one of them, but they spent a lot of money redoing their rooms, a lot.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And they wasted a lot of money because it was so complicated.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it took me a half an hour to turn off the lights in my room because you have been there.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so I think sometimes you know they just think more is better, but it's really being thoughtful about it and understand and traveling a lot yourself and really understanding that as a traveler, uh, this is what you want.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: I find a lot of people that design guest rooms they actually don't travel and stay in guest rooms a lot, you know.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: So they come from an architectural or interior design background, and you know, but if you know I used to travel a million miles a year and sleep in 200 nights out of the 365 in hotels, you really understand you know what it what as a customer that should feel like.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're trying to be very thoughtful, and some of them don't cost that much money, like what you just mentioned on the bed, the getting up and having the light turn on is like a cool little trick.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that expensive, really.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um putting stuff inside the wall is expensive.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: You don't even see that.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: But when you wake up in the morning and you have had weren't woken up four times by some room service noise, or the guest next door opening a door, all this stuff, that's important.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so we try to be very thoughtful when we do these things.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the thoughtfulness I think is ties back to a phrase that I use, which is value engineering and understanding that what you call a trick, like the motion lights around the base of the bed, is actually more important than these fancy uh throw pillows and uh and bed comforters that are make the room look really good, like as a stage as you said, but are not necessarily really improving the guest experience under this new paradigm shift that is health as wealth, where people are valuing things like having the intuitive room controls and knowing that they can go to a hotel and not have to spend half an hour how to figure how to how to turn off all the lights and uh then they're stressed out as a result, so they don't fall asleep as quickly, and then from there they don't get as much sleep, and then from there the next day is compromised.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: No, even the even, I mean, the quiet is a huge thing, but you know, you talk about the pre-bed experience.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like in the morning, one of the things you should do is you have a hot a shower followed by a cold shower.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good thing.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Your blood flowing and your circulation going before you go to bed.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, you shouldn't take a cold shower, you should take a long hot shower.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, tiny touches we did as you wear, you know, we have two shower gels, one for AM, one for PM.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: They have different effects on how your skin takes them in and how they affect your sleep or how you afflict your being more invigorated for the day.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: But in our new rooms, which we the labs we're just designing right now, you know, we have recognized that we want to evolve the shower experience.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the old showers, every room has a shower head from like a rain shower, a side shower, a hand shower.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Usually hotels do that in suites.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: We do it in all the guest rooms because it's a very personal thing.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the showers are oversized, they have benches in them.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: The new showers, uh, we put steam uh into all of them.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: So each one of those shower cubicles can become your personal steam room.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: But that's an amazing experience versus going down to the gym, changing, and doing all of that.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now you could sit in my over that, you know, the showers is you know, in our rooms kind of in the middle of the room.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, glass.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you're like you're sitting in the room and you're looking out the window, but it's every steam.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: But there's also a mechanism where we accumulate a tank inside the ceiling full of freezing water, like as cold as before it gets ice.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a button, and we've worked with some of the hardware companies on this.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's one button that empties the whole thing like a rain shower, a freezing rain shower out of here.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: So after the steam, you so we're building in these physical experiences that have an effect on your health, so blood circulation, experience, and I just mean you're smiling, just thinking about it.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we're just just taking a regular old shower, and so you know, we're constantly thinking how can we make how can we make this better?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Then you talk about cost, and then you know, I always think about the old story when Caesar Ritz decided in Paris to build the first Ritz.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: He just, I think it was Paris or London, but he decided that each room would have its own bathroom, and people thought he was insane that would never work.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so sometimes what seems so crazy, you know, eventually we'll end up being uh being very common and commonplace.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: So again, we want to be ahead of the curve and we want to do these things that are thoughtful and meaningful, uh, and that people can really appreciate.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it's it's great that you give it that long length of context because the example I would look at is New York's Hotel Pennsylvania, which doesn't exist anymore.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was, I guess you could say, four blocks from the equinox over at Penn Station.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: But it was opened in 1921, and it was the first hotel in New York that had air conditioning.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, right?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Split units out the side.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: But you think air conditioning is only 100 years old as a product.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And now, what is a hotel room without air conditioning?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And how many negative reviews are there on Turpadvisor because the air conditioning doesn't work, combined with maintenance work orders that are rushed jobs to uh and and then moving guests around because their AC doesn't work.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, so interesting point because the great Singaporean leader Li Kwan Yu said that air conditioning trans was the single biggest transformative force in Singapore's history to become more efficient.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of smothering away and like in heat, people could be more efficient working.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: In our case, when it comes to AC, and we thought about our AC also, you know, hotels often these like little mistakes they made.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: The the the air uh where the air blows out of the AC unit is right above the bed.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: And how often if you've been in a hotel room where you don't know, you need the cold air, but you don't want it blowing on your head, and so the location of that is not thought through.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: In our case, we even added a special patent where the air AC unit, the engine inside the AC, actually never ever shuts down.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: This the fan speed goes very slow, but if you put the AC on automatic, you will never ever have this moment.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I again was in the hotel room two weeks ago in in Europe, where every 11 or 12 minutes this thing had this clunky noise where it shut down, yeah, and 10 minutes later it like clunk it clunked back up, and every time you did, I wake up, of course.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so that's what I talk about thoughtful.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh there's a term here in sleep science that we should insert here, which is unconscious wake-ups, where all those little noise uh throughout the night, you may not even know that you're waking up, but you still are being interrupted by those little noises.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it does affect how deep your deep sleep is and how uh your ability to stay within light sleep as opposed to actually lifting out of that for one or two minutes and then going back into sleep.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you may not even notice those, but um, something like an aura ring or a whoop band would pick those up and be able to tell you those that hey, this AC unit that's uh just being programmed to stay within the set points is going in and out, and uh it's actually waking you up a little bit.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, but I I love what you said about the uh evolution of the of the bathroom into almost uh your own personal spa.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh dare I say it, but um the sleep lab and it's that those type of amenities will be commonplace and luxury within 10 years.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um adding in things like uh personal halotherapy uh closets, you know, designed.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: For one or two guests, uh, as well as red light therapy chambers.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then uh it is very difficult to retrofit these things, particularly with steam where you have to go down to the studs and uh re plastic on the inside and uh do all that because water is uh water is the worst thing for any building.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: But um if there's a will, there's a way.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that way is goes back to health as wealth, where people will want to have a steam.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: They'll want to have these these uh amenities that will help them wake up in the morning and get get a good night's sleep.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: But they just don't want to have to put on uh gym gear to walk down or go down the elevator 20 flights of stairs.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: They want to have it for a high, high-pace, uh fast-paced and high-performance lifestyle.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, even unrelated, like we think it would be unrelated to uh your environment in the room, but we we decided this goes back sometime, but totally to reinvent the way room service was delivered.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: It used to drive me always crazy in most hotels when room service comes, they bring in out these carts.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Usually the carts are clunky, they're noisy, they don't really fit through.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's the whole thing is just bad.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: The you know, the guy has to unfold them, they doesn't know where to put them.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so we eliminated room service tables and we reinvented the way we deliver them.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: And um people love it because the the staff shows up and they carry it in a very interesting container we developed, and it unfolds in the room in a way that's quiet and elegant and beautiful.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: You have none of this clunky stuff happening, and so you just think about how I can constantly improve these tiny little experiences that all add up.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one one by itself is maybe not that important, but all of them added together uh kind of combine a much better and more holistic view and an image of your stay.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it reminds me of another example, which is the original box design that Steve Jobs insisted for Apple for all of the phones and the iP and the iPods, where it was this box where he wanted a precision cut so that way when it opens, it slides and makes this sucking noise as you're going in and out.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that was again going back to the thoughtfulness and attention to detail in every little point where coming out with that box at a time over 20 years ago where all the brands are going, well, it's just a box, it's just cardboard.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not just cardboard, it's part of the holistic experience.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: We need to pay attention to every single detail and be thoughtful of it, even if our guest isn't conscious of this thoughtfulness, they will still nevertheless appreciate it.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: So now that extends even further because we talked before we started um taping, you we talked about training and staff and and where the service industry goes and where AI and robotics got in.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think about you know these touch points for customers, now you have a service staff.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: How do you design touch points that actually affect the staff's well-being?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because that will then translate into better customer service.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm actually today wearing, not because I thought of it, because I'm testing it out, a jacket that is done in a high-tech material that's going to be worn by our staff in the resort in Saudi in a few months.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's the jacket that the front desk and the managers will wear.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a module approach to uniforming the hotel, which pretty much everybody wears the same uniform with very the with modules and variations to it.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of having the front desk like this and the concierge like that, and the Bellman like this, and it'll be a look that goes throughout.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: But if you would, I should send you one of these jackets, Adam.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: You if you you wear you look like you're wearing a classic Brooks Brothers blazer today or something.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, this this is this is uh this is corduroy right here.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, good.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it's okay.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's old-fashioned as a material.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, actually, I love corduroy.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: But yesterday, two days ago, I put this on when the when the guys were working and designing all of it, and I said, I'll want to wear it for a few days.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's literally, you feel like you're wearing nothing.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: It is so light, it breathes.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was a little bit warmer today.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: I went in, there's AC in my office.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: It is just a spectacular jacket to wear.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I found out that you know this material is actually used by some of the Uber luxury brands, which I won't name, that use it in some of their leisure wear and stuff.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, but the thoughtfulness of like, how do what am I gonna put my staff in because they really feel good?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because you know, when you put on a jacket you like, you feel better.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you put on something you don't like, you don't feel so good.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: But if you walk around for eight or ten hours and you take care of guests, you want to feel great.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so now this thoughtfulness and design and and detailing extends into also that part of the world which is the heart of the house and the staff, and having to provide great human experiences, and so that takes up a lot of our time also to make sure that piece of it is taken care of.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and uh the the thoughtfulness around staff, I think it's important for context here about where the staff is coming from.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And right now, worldwide, we're having a crisis of finding the next generation of hoteliers.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are problems in many markets finding housekeepers.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Those problems are not going away for various macroeconomic reasons.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it is therefore very important for all hotels to think about the staff experience, uh, down from not just the human resources side, but going all the way in depth to staff uniforms and thinking, well, if somebody's wearing a clunky, hard, heavy blazer for eight hours, that's going to cause their back to droop a little bit, which is then going to maybe give them back lower back pain over time.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then they don't feel uh so inclined to not just stay there but give their best service because they just have slightly less energy.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they don't feel like smiling.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: What they call in sick.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: But so so, yeah, but even like if you think so, designing the uniform is one thing.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: You think about the delivery of a uniform, if you've ever worked in a hotel and you're running to your shift and you go in and you go to the uniform window to pick up your uniform, and now it's not there because they're short of inventory, or those are stress and stress factors that you don't want to have.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: I I refer to that as uh personal hygiene, included in that in that is what what's the food in the cafeteria, um and on and on and on and on.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: But it all blends in, you know, we talk about designing a guest room and all of that.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: If the if the infrastructure, human infrastructure and architectural infrastructure isn't thoughtful, uh thoughtfully integrated, your guest experience is going to suffer from it.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of companies miss that.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they think the back of the house is the back of the house, and you know, we'll figure that out.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um well, there's an important part of that discussion where they think the back of the house is the back of the house, and that is the ever-scrupulous pressure for cost controls.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you found a way to convince the bean counters and the financial controllers and the powers that be to show them of the relationship between happy staff, happy guests, better financial returns.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Can you unpack that process a little bit in terms of how you've drawn the line between staff experience and spending a little bit more to then get a lot more out of the end result?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think you know, we're talking about thoughtful design before.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's also responsible design.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and if you work closely with, as a brand with brand standards, if you work closely with developers who are the ones spending the money and putting the building up and being being the prop go, uh you can have a lot of conversations out of experience where you can actually save the developer a lot of money by being efficient in the back of the house, not overdesigning spaces and doing that piece, and then very carefully spending money where it actually matters and has a real impact.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and a lot of that, you know, it's some of it is as simple as right sizing the back of the house.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you've been through backs of the house with huge kitchens and huge corridors and big ceiling heights.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like not very thoughtful.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: In here, and when we build this hotel, and part of it was driven also by you know being a you know 1400-foot tower with lots of elevators, and so you have this the and New York City, so space is so prime that you want to be very careful.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we spent a lot of time to make sure that the back of the house was as efficient as possible, and I think we saved the developer money in in doing that and doing it right.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so I think I think they were pretty happy overall.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, and being being thoughtful doesn't always mean you have to spend more money, I think.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes by being more thoughtful, you're much you're much more efficient.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we're very we're quite efficient as an operation.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that then translates into you know, maybe you lead need less head count because of the way you lay out the building, uh, the multitasking some of these things, some of the some of the tasks, um, how you interact between departments, uh, the money you maybe the money you spend on uh communication equipment so you could be more efficient.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we're quite careful, I think, as a brand to make sure that we work through that very carefully.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, another space that you've thoughtfully considered is the spa.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um can you talk to us about some of the unique features you've put into the spa to differentiate it and also a lot of the technology you put into the spa as well?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the spa um from from the spa is about six and a half, seven thousand square feet close to five million in revenues in the spa.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it sits adjacent to the club, which is a 60,000 square foot Equinox Club, which is spectacular.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Unlike the club, which is a membership model, the spa is open to the public also.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we designed it in a way that you can access it from the public.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: The idea was to simplify the terms, is to do something that was appropriate to New York City, so something that was fast, you can go in and out quickly, but also something that was high-tech, high touch.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't want to give up uh the importance of the pampering side of a spa, if you were looking for that.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: But we also introduced a lot of tech treatments like the biodome, uh, like cryotherapy.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: We have a whole area where we do Ivy drips, and we do a huge business in IV drips.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and you'd be surprised how people just want to get in, they want to get fixed, get a massage, get the drip, you know, take a cryo and blow out of here.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's very New York.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so we designed it around and all of these elements.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: We uh were very cautious in the design.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: We we usually are usually single-load corridors and spas.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you your journey as you go to the rooms is along, in this case, along views of the Hudson River.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Then go inside the rooms, which are more like warm organic cocoons.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: They don't look, they don't look clinical.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh they were designed, everything floats archivally, so you nothing is attached anywhere.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you feel like you're in a space that is very light and very warm and um and very caring.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think I think people really enjoy this stepping out of New York as this incredibly busy city and really getting treated both on high touch, on high tech, and then the whole section, which is beauty, and so we very carefully curate the offerings of various beauty manufacturers and beauty products, and so the you know, the using the experience inside the spa, then having a retail component where we can actually buy some of the stuff uh is is is highly curated and constantly changes to make sure we get the best of what is new and what is different.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it it works, and I think people really enjoy uh the service levels they get and the quality of treatments and therapists.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: And are you finding that a lot of the guests are more they're coming more to understand and appreciate a lot of those advanced technologies you've put into the spas, red light therapy being first and foremost among them, but there's a lot more advanced machines that you have in there.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Are guests understanding this, or is it still the yeah?
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, you I you know I find that the our guests uh they're very sophisticated as consumers.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of them travel a lot, they've seen a lot, they read a lot.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I would guess that our mix in the spa is probably 50% local.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: They come in from the area, and Hudson Yar, it's a lot of residents and offices.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the rest, uh and then of course from the club directly, and the hotel guests and residents in the building come down.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they're a very sophisticated crowd, very sophisticated.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we we come in with some of this new stuff, and and I like the the uh one of the first things was our uh infrared sauna, which we added to the we have a regular sauna, the infrared sauna.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um the LXT dome, which is a detox, you the cryotherapy, which is incredibly popular.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um they they know or sometimes we're the first ones to bring them into the country, and they have read about it and they come down and they they they like it.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: So um yeah, I think I think it's a very sophisticated clientele.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, that that speaks to the overall trend of health as wealth, where this new paradigm, people are sophisticated, they're going specifically to spas not just for uh traditional body treatments or mani petty or day or day salon services, but they're going there for to seek out these machines and to mix them in in a circuit style experience.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: We put it, we just added last year.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: We added a very high, a very sophisticated ice bath.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm one of the big trends.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: My general manager of this hotel is a is a big fan, it's very, very fit, kind of very on brand.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: But we put in this ice bath, it gets so cold you like almost have to pick you know pick through the ice when you get in.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, people just you know loved it.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and so we we keep we keep changing and adding and and researching and and doing new stuff.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um but if you think of the spa, you know, you know our our monthly club membership, uh, and again we have 5,000 members in this club.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: Globally, we have I think 350,000 members now, but an average monthly spa um monthly membership is 400, you know, 350, 450, you know, an Equinox type um club rate.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Our average hotel rate, I think last week was around$1,400 average.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you go into a spa and you have some of those treatments, you can spend four or five hundred dollars within 90 minutes.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: But if you think per minute, it is probably the most expensive uh time you can spend.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so the sophistication level and the at that level, spa, the delivery and the detailing of what you use, how you use it, who you who touches you, how the cur how the tech stuff works, has to be very curated and very thoughtful.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we're very careful with that.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting that you are able to put that into cost per minute in terms of terms and really sort of give it that context relative to something like a dinner where everybody's trying to increase the average check, but that dinner could be three hours versus a spa treatment.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the when it all adds up, it could be half an hour to an hour for the same.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: Or let's say yeah, let's see your treatment is 50, 60 minutes, but in the pre-post, you want to get in and out.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, 90 minutes.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then of course the there's the what else do you can you buy and spend?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so the retail often.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: I remember in Paris we had a spa that was very popular, and you know, they're the clientele.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: What did we spend thousands on retail just because they you know they thought it was amazing or special?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so we tried to curate the stuff and we bring in often we introduce new product, beauty product, that isn't uh available yet on the market, and we're exclusive, at least like for the first year or two.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's an interesting experience here.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now that we've covered the product and really given people a good background on the thoughtful approach you've taken, I'm wondering, could we shift over to marketing and distribution?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the question I always ask is for a North American context, who is your customer on a Wednesday raining in New York in mid-January?
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you who it is because of how we how we do business.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: The fur, you know, so you pick January, Wednesday, Jan.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: The first quarter is probably the slowest, Jan, Feb, March.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: So because of who we are and how we do business, that is a period where we tend to probably have more sports teams stay with us than would in May, October.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, from basketball, football, hockey, uh, they often come in, they play games, or they're it's gardens, or they cross the water, or they're all over.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we we have we honestly we totally get them, we understand how they function.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're in and out of the hotel so fast.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they're there's spectacular customers to have, and they like it also because imagine you're you're an athlete to go down to a 60,000 square foot gym and work out, pretty spectacular.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so they they love it when they come in, and and so we uh have taken that market you know full on.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we we probably do about this is a hotel without meeting space.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, you know, the meeting space we have is 1,800 square feet.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: That is actually part of the restaurant, so we don't have a ballroom, we don't have breakout rooms, but we do and 212 rooms with a close to 80% occupancy.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you can figure we do 70,000 room nights, 18% of our business is group business.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's without meeting space.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not this is not the regional Cadillac coming in for the annual convention.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it's sports teams, uh music orchestras, and these guys that come in and just love to stay with us.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when I was there, I noticed uh speaking with a lot of other guests that there were a lot of creative people there, uh, people who identify as as artists in various categories, but also just creative nomads, digital nomads people working in the advertising field or other ones where their job enables them and dictates that they go to New York, and they're specifically choosing your hotel versus others that maybe are closer to Madison Avenue over in uh Midtown East.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, did you figure out why that was?
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or you have an opinion?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, I'm I'm I'm asking.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you why.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think a few reasons, a lot of them you know, are they maybe not in the 50s and 60s, but in the 30s and 40s.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh a lot of them have adapted a healthy lifestyle.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: So for them to travel and have a gym experience, a workout experience that is as good a better as what they have at home is a no-brainer.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, because a lot of you know, if you if you work out, and you know, and you I always frustrated when I work out, and I work out every day, but when I travel, sometimes I'm like, oh my god, I have to go, it's just not as good.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: So they have that.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, a huge piece of our quote gym is not just a gym as a full equinox club, the classes and the group activity and all of that is massive.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, our club is 50-50 female male, uh uh, and you know, 35% of the activity is around classes, something you don't find in your typical hotel gym.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so they love that, but they also like the fact that the way we redefine luxury is a bit more laid back and relaxed.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if you you don't have you don't have to feel like you have to wear the button down and the blazer and the gray slacks and the loafers because that's maybe the dress code, you're not quite sure.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of my guests, I have a lot of Hollywood guests here.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: They're from the movie industry, for the film, music, creative, as you said, directors.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of tech guys that come in that, you know, they're 30 years old and they've made their first billion.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: But they wear hoodies and sneakers, you know, they don't wear suits.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the brand gives them more than permission to just be themselves.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to walk around in a t-shirt and I mean, if I had breakfast today in the restaurant, the people sitting in the shorts and t-shirts, it's perfectly okay.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think they just feel very comfortable in the environment.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the way they seamlessly connect the club with the restaurant and the hotel and all these spaces kind of connect seamlessly.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it just gives people a very relaxed and laid-back uh environment that probably mirrors the environment at home much more than your traditional luxury places.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think the word laid back laid back describes it perfectly.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a lot of buzz around this term barefoot luxury for the similar, similar sort of feeling, but in a resort setting.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh laid-back luxury in an urban space has not yet been fully defined or uh commonplace, so to speak.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sometimes the hoodies, no, the hoodies sometimes I see in the like Dolce Gabbana.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: So probably so, but it's it's how they like to dress and wear.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: And when we for us, it's it's totally on brand.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that it's very comfortable with it.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: And Equinox Hotels, uh, how does how do you work with Equinox as the parent company?
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we're, I mean, we're very sister and brother, we're very closely connected.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we always we work very hard to make sure that it is, you know, Equinox is a lifestyle brand, or you know, has become a lifestyle brand.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there's an ecosystem that kind of includes a lot of the things which I mentioned, you know, next to the club.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's also regen in the room.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the hotel here was voted, as you know, one of the 50 best hotels in the world.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the brand positions itself, you know, uh in that in that piece.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: But it also has to do with nutrition and what you eat in the restaurant and then the community piece.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh, you know, we work very closely together.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: This morning we had a design, we had a meeting with kind of the brain thrust of the company, and everybody is in there.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we we talk as you we talk about equinox the brand.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: We don't talk about you're the clubs over here, the hotel is over here, and the restaurants are there.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you'll see continuous integration along the lines of our canopy downstairs at the driveway.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: When you pull up in front of the building, it says equinox.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: One glass door says hotel, club, office, sole cycle is there.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I think you'll see that as we we talked about other buildings.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Today, the branding is going to be an equinox brand that, as a lifestyle brand, encompasses all these different elements with a very strong DNA and a very strong purpose, which is high performance living.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: So within this broad banner of a lifestyle brand, you have hotel, gym, restaurant, spa, club.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: Not gym, we call it a club.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: Club, club.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's really about you know, if you think of it, Adam, if you think about it, you think about your classic 70s gym, you know, it's like guys going in and pumping iron.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was great, but but it our environment, the the community and the mix of who it is, and you know, is a much is different, a very different feel.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like when we find the social spaces are growing, like the lounge space is growing.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: You come to New York and you walk in, it's a huge lounge space, actually bigger than the hotel lobby.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, people sit there.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's that it's nutrition, movement, regen, which is the guest rooms and spas, yeah, and community, which kind of is you know why you want to be part of this ecosystem.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for me, uh, one thing you should know, Chris, is I use the Roman definition of gymnasium, which is if you look at the original design of a Roman gym, only about 10% of it was devoted to actual working out.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: The rest was all a tepidarium, a library, calderium, and it was all places to be social, all healing and and uh self-restoration, and it was all centered around community.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, there was a lot of wine and uh various just spreads of olives and cheese uh laying about, but it was all built around community.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you're bringing uh a gym, a club back to its original form in a modern uh futuristic setting.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the good old the good old Romans, and I think you'll see more of that actually.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think you'll see the whole integration of a lifestyle uh more and more.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: You see the brand you know encompassing that more and more, I think, for sure.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what other elements tie into lifestyle as a term?
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the lifestyle, I think lifestyle is an overused term a bit.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody uses it.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but everything is lifestyle, and you know, luxury is a lifestyle.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, sometimes they say, well, this is luxury, this is lifestyle.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: But if you go back to the original definition in hospitality of a lifestyle hotel, it was a hotel that was more centered around design and local F and B.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that was 50% of the revenues versus the traditional luxury hotel.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: We think about Aman, you know, it was all about you know rooms, beautiful rooms and architecture, and you these amazing spaces.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was never about F and D, really.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you went the you you know, Amman was never really about food.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: And Adrian Zeke always said, you know, give him good breakfast, and you know, that's it.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: But um, so lifestyle was defined by you know, vibrant bars, restaurants, rooftops, 50-60% of my revenue comes out of F B, and then there's a rooms component to it.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: You think of the standard on the Highline or your traditional luxury hotel, you know, probably did 70% rooms, 30% F B.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, the F B was there, but it wasn't like the driving force why you went there.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: You go to some of the traditional luxury places, and the places and the restaurants are empty.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not good.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I think when you say lifestyle luxury, everything is a lifestyle.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, for us, lifestyle luxury meant that we combine these circles of activated spaces, food and beverage, bringing community together, uh, but also having spectacular guest rooms and making sure we deliver world-class service levels.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we'll forget how important that piece is.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, I I think our service levels could compare to anybody today in the industry.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's we're as good as any brand out there in the luxury Uber luxury level.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's it's great that you reframe F and B as nutrition, as part of the pillar of the lifestyle you're creating.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when you mentioned Adrian Zeka uh of Amon, I remember him, there's one quote of him saying that if any of my chefs ever win a Michelin star, they're fired.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, but Adrian was a genius in so in so many ways.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I I met him in many, many times.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I remember going to his hotels in Bali when I moved there 25 years ago.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: But you remember Adrian's definition of luxury was also different because where a lot of the lifestyle hotels, especially, you know, they try to create community coming together.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: The bar and the restaurants need to be busy.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: The definition of luxury for Amman was to pull people apart.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you ever stayed in an Amman, you can walk around for three days and you think you're the only person in the hotel.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the that was their definition of creating a luxury experience.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's and it was amazing.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's like brilliant.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh for us, it's different.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: Community for us is people coming together and hanging out together, sharing values.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll talk about shared values.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's one other element of lifestyle that's becoming a big buzz term and important is the word is sustainability.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what is Equinox doing on that front to incorporate that into the lifestyle brand?
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: So uh before I answer the US specific question, I'll pre preface it by saying that I grew up in Zurich in the 60s.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: But even today, you know, Switzerland, when it comes to sustainability and recycling, is like decades ahead of everybody else.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of the stuff that people think is you know incredibly inventive and new, you know, I kind of grew up with almost as this is the way it is.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was five years old in the early 60s, and we recycled paper and plastic, and you know, today in Switzerland, Germany, you get fined if they find that your glass bottle is not in the green bag and all this stuff.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we decided that we would be we would fully embrace sustainability, uh, but we wouldn't lead with it.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we felt that being sustainably responsible was part of our responsibility, our corporate social responsibility, but that it was table stake and you know, just like having a clean room as the basic point of entry and not being proud of it.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sustainability for us was an important thing to do.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we always felt if somebody was starting would dig into it, we would have all the answers and we would have a list that would be comparable with anybody out there.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so you know, one of the things we decided to do very early on was to go paper and plastic free in the guest rooms.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: So what does that mean?
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: That means you know, no printed menus, no laundry things, no uh no tent cards, no guest directories, all of that was digital.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in the mini bars, no plastic, all glass, all recyclable.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so the room when it's very clean when you come in, there's no clutter.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so we we wanted to make sure that that was an important piece of of that.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you go, I could give you a whole list of stuff if you wanted to read how we recycle and how we do all these things, you know, how we serve our water amenities and aluminum bottles, even though they cost more.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: We would have plastic uh amenity bottles on water.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the way that we, and I remember people laughing at me, the luxury guys were laughing because I decided to put uh ANPM shower gel, shampoo, and conditioners into recyclable plastic bottles that were pumps.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's not luxury that you know that the gyms do that, or lifestyle hotels, they do that.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I said, no, that's the new luxury.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: Today, I just traveled through Europe last for the last few weeks.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: Any of the luxury hotels I stay in, everybody has adapted to no, no, nobody goes with those little plastic bottles anymore because in our case we counted it would have been about 300,000 throwaway plastic first-use bottles a year.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in addition to that, we decided that all the stuff going inside the product uh would come from the Highline in New York.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now we don't harvest on the Highline, but we tipped our hat to local community, you know, herbs and stuff.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so we tried to be like, you know, you know, uh respectful to our environment.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we were very thoughtful, I think, in putting it putting it all together.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh and as things develop, we'll we'll we'll keep going.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: But again, we we don't want to lead with it and be proud of it.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: We think it's just our duty to make sure that we comply as much as we can.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's it's yet one more thing that guests can feel, but it isn't necessarily something that is just in their face, so to speak.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you you talk about it where how things are developing, and that brings us back full circle to the Saudi and uh the Saudi resort and beyond.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what's the future hold for Equinox Hotels, both in terms of development, uh developments in the pipeline you can talk about, and uh what's next for the brand uh looking ahead to the next five years?
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: So what I could say there's there's probably so one is open, there's probably nine others that I will we'll be announcing very soon.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um we uh we had a global strategy uh which was slowed down during COVID.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we we uh we kickstarted the engine again you know after COVID.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: So in the next few months, we'll announce a few uh big ones.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in the meanwhile, what I can say is our strategy always was to go urban and resort quickly because we didn't want to get pegged into being perceived as the urban guys or the resort guys.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think of some of the brands, even in the beginning, you know, if you let's go to way back, but four seasons when I joined them was all urban, it was an urban strategy.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it was Ritz-Carlton when they did the Ritz-Carlton in Naples back in the I think it was the 80s or 90s.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's like a new everybody was blown away by it.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but if you think, you know, even that Ritz-Carlton has done some beautiful uh resorts, if you think of Ritz-Carlton as a brand, you you think more urban because Ritz started off in London and Paris.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you think Sangregious, even though they have some beautiful resorts, Sangregious to me is you know, if I think of the brand, it's chandeliers and marble floors, and it's more an urban brand.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if I think about Aman or Six Census, even though they have city hotels now, they started off the first 10, 15, 20 years of their brand as resorts.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we didn't want to do that.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, first New York, which is about as urban as it can get, next one, West Coast, Saudi Arabia, uh, but active.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we're sitting on this 110 slip marina.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're next to four seasons, Rosewood uh Six Census, Namos on our south side, and then Ritz Carlton across the marina.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we're sitting definitely in the luxury set uh of brands.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um we have the then the the strategy was to go US first and tie into the urban locations, and the urban locations were gonna be LA, Miami, Nashville, Austin, um, and then have resorts on both the West Feeding West and East Coast.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna be announced, being announcing one of those very like imminently, uh, which is also an integrated marina concept.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: 60 rooms, 60 residences in a beautiful, it's an amazing setting.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but then internationally we said Middle East would be good because there was so much growth in the Middle East.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we announced we designed Amala, we announced Amala, of course.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um we did NIOM up on the further up on the coast, which is a little bit delayed with some of the delays they're having in the construction.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um Riyadh Hotel, which we're planning, and then we signed two other locations in the Middle East, which we'll announce the next few months, uh, which are spectacular uh projects.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so we have about 10 cooking, we're like seriously cooking.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's uh I think it's very exciting.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it's about half resort, half urban.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: So the mix is there, and uh, we're looking at Europe.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: We have some really interesting discussions uh in some European destinations, even though Europe is more difficult to penetrate because of density and the big cities out you know that building like Paris.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: As I looked at Paris for years now, it's very hard to find something that would fit us with a club and the hotel, and we need we need a building also that is uh appropriate for what we need to do.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Europe's very difficult to adapt a historical structure and take one that's big enough to fit all the amenities you need.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm very excited about the growth ahead and uh and where we'll go.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned this one that has a marina has residences, which speaks to another huge trend, which is the growth of branded residences.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is that part of Equinox's future?
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't think we have any one of our upcoming developments, either resort or urban that doesn't have residences with it.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what we have found interesting and that resonates with the developers and the brand is two projects which I can't talk about, but the urban US projects have you know 150, 200 hotel rooms, 250 to 300 luxury residential branded units for rent.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think about the rental luxury market, some of the owners like it because it's the recurring revenues for them.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and for the younger clientele that might not be willing, you know, already to put down a few million bucks for a luxury apartment or condo, you know, they're very happy to rent something.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_01: And what they like is you know, you go and you rent this great two-bedroom apartment and in a great location with a great rooftop restaurant and some bars and restaurants at the bottom, and a great Equinox club.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_01: Your lifestyle, you know, you're 32 and you just started a career with you know, what could be better?
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's all that's all built into this integrated experience that defines your lifestyle uh and community.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just you know, you see some of these boring gyms and some of the residences, and you've been in them.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's like two guys, you know, two creepy guys in a treadmill working out at 8 p.m.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's we're gonna activated in a way that's just brings in community.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's gonna be a whole different.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited about those.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: So well, we've covered a lot of ground, Chris.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything important that you want to mention before we close out?
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't think so.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate your interest, Adam.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you're a very talking about sophisticated uh traveler, you know, you're very you're a very knowledgeable and sophisticated journalist, and I really appreciate the interest you're gonna be.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's there's so much happening in the world uh that it's just amazing, and I'm just in awe of all the amazing places that are out there, um, equinox included.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I I only see a very bright future ahead.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Adam.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: Chris, thanks so much for coming on.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.