Latest / The Modern Hotelier / #307: Elevating the Airport Lounge Experience | with David Collyer of Aspire Pre-Flight Hospitality
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- The Modern Hotelier #307: Elevating the Airport Lounge Experience | with David Collyer of Aspire Pre-Flight Hospitality === David Millili: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Don't forget to follow, like, and subscribe, and let us know in the comments what you think about today's episode. Steve, who do we have on the program today? Steve Carran: Yeah, David. Excited for this one. Something new that we haven't really discussed on the podcast yet. We have on David Collyer, the Global SVP Aspire Pre-Flight Hospitality at Swissport. Welcome to the show, David. How we doing today? David Collyer: I'm great, David. Thank you very much. Nice to meet you, David. Nice to meet you, Steve. Thank you for having me as well. David Millili: You're welcome. All right, so we're gonna jump in. We're gonna go through a quick lightning round. We're gonna get to know you better, your background, your career, and then dive into some industry topics. Sound good? David Collyer: Yeah, sounds great. David Millili: All right. Well, so when you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? David Collyer: An actor. David Millili: Ooh, okay. What's something that you wish you were better at? David Collyer: Planning, organization. David Millili: Okay. What's a luxury you can't live without? David Collyer: Time. David Millili: Ooh, that's a good one. So if you could take anybody dead or alive to lunch, who would you take? David Collyer: Winston Churchill. David Millili: That's a great one. All right, so if you had a superpower, what superpower would you like to have? David Collyer: Healing. I'd like to be able to heal anyone who was sick or suffering. David Millili: That's another good one. You're doing—this is a great one. All right, so what's something that's on your bucket list? David Collyer: Ooh, gosh. Something that's on my bucket list. House in the South of France. David Millili: Hmm. Steve Carran: Wow. A great lightning round right there, David. Well done. Now we're gonna dive into your background a little bit. So you grew up in the UK. Did you grow up around the London area? David Collyer: Yeah. I grew up in Hampshire, which you inherited as New Hampshire. But yeah, I grew up in the countryside, which is about an hour, hour and a half outside of London. So very close to London in terms of being able to commute in and out, but still lovely enough to be in the countryside. I haven't moved far, and I live in a forest in Windsor Great Park. King Charles is my landlord. Steve Carran: Very cool. How did growing up in Hampshire shape you into who you are today? David Collyer: Well, there's not a lot to do in Hampshire, so you get out pretty quickly. And that's the first bit that shapes you. You move. But most of the people that grew up where I did, you kind of stay where you are and do your thing, or you go into the bright lights of London, which is exactly what I did at a very early age. At 15, we were, as young kids, going into London, shopping, buying the latest trainers. That was the hip hop era in London, so that was pretty cool. And you could do it quite easily on the train. In those days, London was a different place to what it is today. So it was easy. And that really shaped me early on to thinking, "Do you know what? I could do this every day. I could work in London and have the best of both worlds, not have to live in the city, keep one foot in the countryside, but also one foot in the city." And I've managed to maintain that so far throughout my career. David Millili: That's great. So you got your degree in Art and Design for Communications at University of the Arts London, and then you got your MBA at the University of Chester and Hult Ashridge Executive Education. What led you down that path to choose those universities and to choose those degrees? David Collyer: Well, I wasn't very good at anything at school really other than art. I guess you'd call it fifth grade. Everyone else was drawing camper vans and bowls of fruit and all the rest of it, and I presented an ad for Crombie, which is an English suit manufacturer. My art teacher was like, "Okay, that's a bit odd, but you clearly have a talent for it. Let's do an expo at the end of the school year." We did that. It was attended by a lot of business people, and there was a small advertising network called WPP who came to that show and looked for talent, and thought I had some. So I started an internship relationship with them whilst I was at Central Saint Martins UAL in London, one of the world's top leading design colleges, and thought, "Yeah, this design thing's pretty interesting." I loved the psychology of brands. I loved all the strategic elements of design, not just do things look pretty, but also what makes them pretty in the eye of the beholder, from the psychology of color to proposition to call to action, to all of that stuff. Whilst I was at Saint Martins, the other thing is that they're renowned for a few things: fashion design, 3D design, product design, et cetera. I started to develop this passion for all things three-dimensional. I'll come back to that because in my world today, everything I do is three-dimensional from a guest experience perspective. Then I graduated from Saint Martins and went straight into WPP, into their agency network in London, working predominantly in the travel and tourism department for 10 years. So I worked with brands like Accor, British Airways, Virgin, Bacardi Martini Group as they were then, their global travel retail sector. Everything I was doing was really design, marketing, strategy development, brand development in the travel and tourism industry, and that's where it all started. That's where really that ignited that passion that I still have today for this great industry, which I still think is one of the best industries in the world: hospitality. Ten years at WPP, one of my clients was a little small hotel chain called InterContinental Hotel Group, who you may have heard of. I worked across a number of various accounts, but that was my favorite. They invited me to come and join the business. So I moved from agency side to client side, as they say, and I spent the next 10 years at IHG here in their HQ in the UK, also in the countryside, just down the road in Windsor. I left there 10 years later as the Director of Marketing and Strategy for one of the world's largest hotel companies. Since then, after 10 years, I'd worked with Holiday Inn, InterContinental, Crowne Plaza. I helped launch Hotel Indigo in China, the whole boutique thing when that exploded. That was really, really exciting. Then, when you work for Coca-Cola, you don't go and work for Pepsi. It was like, "Well, do I go to Marriott? Do I go to Hilton? Where do I go? Do I go boutique? Do I go specialist?" In that time, we had loads of really cool hospitality brands popping up in the UK. I was exploring Hotel du Vin, Manoir aux Anglais, et cetera, and had opportunities to go and work for them, but I was like, "Yeah, no, I've kind of done that thing." There was this American company who were banging on my door called Value Retail for about a year, my final year, saying, "We see you win all these travel and tourism awards, and this guest experience thing, we're interested. We don't really understand what that is. Would you like to come and work for us?" I was like, "I know nothing about retail. I'd be useless." They said, "Look, can we come and talk to you?" I said, "No, guys. Thanks very much, but it's not quite what I'm looking for." Then the COO phoned me directly. He got my phone number from the headhunter and said, "Look, I drive past your office every day. I know you've got a Starbucks. Can I come in at 8:30 one morning, buy a coffee, give me 15 minutes of your time, and I'll explain to you why?" I said, "Well, okay." I looked him up. Pretty heavy hitter, this COO. I was like, "Yeah, come and meet me for coffee. Great. Okay." Simon and I sat down and he said, "Look, what you don't know about Value Retail is that we are the world's largest luxury outlet retailer. We have 11 outlets globally. Our owner, Scott Malkin, within his family there was a link to the Empire State Building, there was a link to Macy's, so it's a lot of retail and real estate. He brought this concept to the UK and developed this proposition, which was out-of-city luxury outlet shopping." Actually, 80% of their footfall and a huge amount of their revenue was international tourism, mainly UAE and Asia, China. Then he said to me, this is like minute four, by minute five he was like, "Our revenue per square foot is bigger than Harrods, Selfridges, Macy's, Saks." I was like, "Wow, okay." He said, "But these guys are tourists. They're day shoppers. They're coming into the UK to visit Buckingham Palace. They're coming into Milan, Rome, et cetera. We have 11 of these. But we know nothing about guest experience. Could you come and help us?" I was like, "Yeah, okay, but I still know nothing about retail." They were like, "Look, we'll teach you everything you need to know about retail. You teach us everything you know about guest experience." The next three years of my life were taken up helping them develop their guest experience strategy, from building what is essentially a lounge, the apartment strategy that they have now for personal shopping, relaxation, and their high-net-worth guests. Think of it like a suite in a hotel, but in a shopping mall. Also around all of the amenities, from food and beverage to prayer rooms to all of the things that these cultures need. The dwell time rocketed, the spend rocketed, double-digit growth. I learned a bit about retail. I got to work with some of the world's largest luxury brands: LVMH, Richemont, Kering Group, et cetera, so the likes of Gucci, Tod's, Prada, et cetera. Again, all about how do you make these people feel welcome? How do you give them great service akin to a hotel, restaurant, bar, et cetera? That really opened my eyes up to the world that doesn't really understand our industry in terms of guest experience. Ever since then, I've been working with companies in healthcare, an upmarket WeWork called Fora, which I helped develop, which was all about hospitality. Really cool offices with destination dining on board so that your staff felt rewarded. They can have almost a Michelin-star dinner every lunchtime. Really, really cool stuff. Then I got the call from Swissport, who are the world's largest aviation support provider. They are in pretty much every airport in the world, certainly in every country in the world somewhere. Their core business is ground handling and cargo. They're the guys that wear the high-vis jackets and get you in the air and get you off on your way on business or on holiday. They said, "Look, we've got this lounge thing, and it's a serious part of our business, but we don't have any expertise. Do you think you could help?" I was like, "Oof, airport lounges. No thanks. No. Not unless it's Cathay or American Airlines or someone. I'm not interested." Then I started thinking about it, and I took it upon myself to have a look at the sector and the market, and I was amazed. I phoned my friend Rob, CEO of the Institute of Hospitality here in the UK, and I said, "Airport lounges." He said, "Yeah, not really in hospitality, but should be. On the fringe of the sector, but not quite there yet." I was like, "Okay." Then I looked a bit deeper and started looking at what airport lounges are and what they serve, and I found there were two very different segments. There are the business and first-class lounges that we all know and love, and there is this other sector called common-use lounges, which is a mix of airline customers, card customers, bank customers, walk-ins, website bookings, et cetera. I was like, "This feels like a hotel revenue strategy. This feels familiar to me." Then I started looking at the market and said, "Okay, where's the segmentation? Where does it start? Where's the three-star? Where's the Holiday Inn? Where's the five-star? Where's the Six Senses?" There weren't any. I was like, "Okay, so there's no segmentation in this market. But then how do you put a first-class guest and a stag do in the same lounge? That can't work from a guest experience perspective." Then I started to get really interested. So I took the job, and I spent the first six to eight months researching the market and the industry, talking to airlines, talking to airports, talking to guests, developing some proprietary insight into this market, and realized there was an opportunity to segment the market. I thought of it purely like a hotel. If you think about a hotel, you've got a classic room, you've got a deluxe room, and a suite. Depending on your need, stay, stay occasion, et cetera, you've got something that either fits your budget or your occasion. Not in lounges. So I thought, "Let's build a prototype. Let's build the world's first three-tier lounge." Effectively you've got, in hotel terms, lifestyle, upscale, and luxury. We launched that quietly in the UK in case it didn't work, and it was a huge success, not just with our guests, but also with airlines and airports. They said, "Crikey, we've been waiting for somebody to do this. This is fantastic." That little pilot that we did in '23, we're now putting into every single airport in our 110 lounges globally. Every airport and every airline has adopted that strategy. Steve Carran: Wow. That's awesome. That's awesome. So I have a question during your hotel days. I understand you have an interesting hotel story where SAS and Secret Service showed up to the hotel, you closed the floor, and they had to remove some guests. For what you can, can you tell us about that experience? David Collyer: Not really, not without getting arrested and put in jail. But I think that there are lots of stories from my IHG days. That particular hotel in Central London, I don't think it's uncommon in cities for that sort of thing to happen, whether it's somebody who's a wanted person or an arms deal or somebody who shouldn't be in that country. But yes, a floor of a certain hotel was evacuated, and the SAS did play a role in that, and an individual was extracted from the hotel. Steve Carran: That's funny. That's funny. So David, we usually go over your career, but you kind of covered that already. Can you share a little bit more about Aspire Pre-Flight Hospitality and how you all stand out from different airport lounges? David Collyer: Yeah. How long have you got? It's a bit of a journey and a bit of a story. I approach it purely like a hotel in every single way. So if I think about guest experience, that's the beginning. What have I done? I've partnered with EHL, École Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland, the leading hospitality school. So I partnered with them immediately and went to visit some friends there that I worked with throughout my career. I also brought them into some of the luxury brands that I work with as well and explained to them what I think needed to happen. This industry needs to transform, and I like to think we're leading that from a hospitality perspective. I then also work with the Institute of Hospitality in terms of developing the service skills, the training, the bedrock of our industry. What our guests tell us is that in an airport lounge, they expect the same level of service that they do in a four- or five-star hotel. From my perspective, when I joined this industry, it was absent. It didn't exist. So we developed brand standards. In the same way that you have them in a hotel, we developed 156 brand standards. Our people, our service, our food and beverage—everything must live up to that brand standard. In the same way that if you're a hotel franchisee and you don't meet those brand standards, the flag is taken off the door. I think that's probably where we began. I think the other thing that's really interesting is that our airline partners don't like certain things about common-use lounges. They worry about overcrowding, occupancy, and cleanliness. So I was like, "Okay, guys, where's the tech? Where's the revenue management engine? Where's the occupancy engine? Where's all the stuff?" It didn't exist in airport lounges. Completely. The booking engine was a nightmare. It's inventory-based, similar to car hire, airlines, and hotels, but it's very different because we need to book by the hour, not by the night. There's no checkout. It's the same model, but actually very different and very complex. So we developed something called Smart Lounge, which enables us now to manage occupancy and cleanliness. It's a clever piece of kit that uses a lot of AI. Using camera technology, it can see tables and detect when there's stuff on the table but no people there, indicating that the table needs cleaning. It also enables us to analyze people coming in and out and establish how busy we are from an occupancy perspective, so we can manage that process in the same way you can in a hotel. It also helps us with our yield strategy in terms of time of day, peaks, and periods when we're busy or quiet. In terms of online sales, we can close, open, and allocate inventory depending on that mix. I think the biggest change is that I have created a world-class team of hospitality experts. I haven't brought in people from aviation. I've brought in people from all of the hotel groups you'd know. I've brought in people from some of the best airlines in terms of food and beverage. We just won, and we're the first independent this week to win Cellars in the Sky for our wine selection. Our culinary strategy is absolutely going upward. What's happened in this industry, which is really interesting, is it's gone back to where it was in the early days when the first airport lounge was created in the U.S. It used to be an age of elegance. Then it got a little bit mass market in the middle. Now it's going back the other way. If you look at the IATA seat growth data, premium is what's driving the aviation and travel industry at the moment. It's all about business- and first-class seats and their growth. That is the growth engine of the industry. We're now looking at data sources like CoStar, previously known as STR in my old days, looking at what luxury hotel keys are opening and where. In Europe, for example, I was in Rome this week looking at a couple of opportunities. We know that Rome and London have the two highest levels of luxury key openings, so we use that as a signal for which markets we want to go to next. We absolutely use premium seat growth as a way to signal and target where we're growing. So we're massively improving food and beverage, massively improving our service standards with the help of world-class experts. Then there's design. Three things our insight tells us that guests are looking for: First, a quiet, comfortable, well-designed space outside of the chaos of the terminal, which is getting busier and busier. Second, a comfortable seat. Third, really high-quality fresh food and beverage. My academic partnerships with EHL help guide us toward the future of hospitality in airports. Learning from the hospitality industry across all sectors helps us do that. I've also recently partnered with a certain design college—it hasn't been released yet, but it won't take too much effort to work out who it is—to develop the world's most comfortable lounge chair. That's a really exciting project that has taught us a huge amount. Working with tomorrow's design talent, I originally thought it was all about your bottom and simply having a comfortable chair. What it's actually produced is the learning that comfort is about more than how you sit down. Comfort is about quiet. It's about sound. It's about the environment. Do I feel secure? Am I cocooned? Am I protected? Can I see my luggage? Can I adjust the lighting depending on my mood? We talk about modes of travel: fast and slow, at the most basic level. But then you've got what we call experience enthusiasts who ask, "Where's the bar? Where's the champagne? What's the food like?" Then you've got the business traveler who's asking, "Where can I plug in? Where can I charge? Where can I get Wi-Fi?" The psychology of comfort is something we've learned through that design process, and it will be something we roll out globally. It's also part of our sustainability strategy. A lot of our guests, airports, and airlines care deeply about sustainability, and so do we. I've set my team the goal of becoming the most sustainable lounge brand in the world. We've got 110 lounges on pretty much every continent in the world, and we're growing that to 200. You can't buy amazing furniture in Italy and ship it to the U.S. without increasing your carbon footprint. So how do we create a global standard in terms of design, and then move that into the U.S. where it can be manufactured locally using the right wood from that region or fabric from that region? How do we create something with a real sense of place and make it meaningful? There are lots of things that we're doing that make us different from the competition. Steve Carran: That's great. David Millili: Yeah. So I've got a question for you. I recently did a post, and I'm curious what your thoughts are. It seems like behavior can become different in airports than in hotels. In other words, you're not going to lay down on the floor in a four- or five-star hotel lobby and take a nap, but you do it at the airport, and you do it at the lounge. My post was about, "Am I the grumpy old guy because somebody's sleeping right next to me who's got his feet out by the bars, and I've got to look at his socks as he's laying on the couch?" How do you balance that? Because these are obviously, from listening to you, upper-end lounges. How do you balance that comfort of the guest with the comfort of the guest who's not feeling comfortable because of another guest? David Collyer: Well, you've got to have some rules of the room, as I call them. You've got to have some standards. I read a really interesting piece in the Financial Times about a similar problem with Airbnb. A guy had his lovely holiday home, his neighbors rented theirs out on Airbnb, they were having an all-night party, and he said, "If this was a hotel, you'd have a guy in a nice smart blazer who, at midnight, would have said, 'Guys, can you turn it down?'" It's the same in lounges. Firstly, those brand standards I was talking about—we have some rules, whether it's about dress code, behavior, et cetera. One recent big problem is the number of people who think it's acceptable to sit in a lounge on a video call to their mum. "Hi. Yeah, look, I'm in the lounge. Look, I'm invading everyone's privacy. Isn't it amazing?" It's like, "Guys, whoa. Okay." So we've trained our staff to have a polite word. We've installed telephone booths in all of our lounges, or we're rolling that out as we go, to say, "Guys, if you want to have a conversation, please do it in private." The sleeping thing is an issue. I am tackling it in a slightly different way by building some hotels in airports inside the terminal. I think that is the next evolution of this market. Not sleep pods. Think of Tokyo. Think of what happened in Tokyo with mini rooms that have all the amenities, everything you need, but nothing you don't. We're working on a concept that we're launching in Europe and hope to roll out globally, which is, "Do you know what, guys? If you want to be horizontal, there's a place to do that, and it isn't in the lounge." Steve Carran: That's great. So now we're going to dive into the industry thoughts and thought leadership section of the podcast. You kind of touched on this, but I'd like to dive a little bit deeper. What have you learned from guests, maybe even from your hotel days, as well as travel trends that are happening, and how are those learnings being applied to how lounges are designed? David Collyer: Firstly, post-COVID we saw a huge increase in volume—what I call revenge travel. What we're seeing now is that's kind of morphed into people traveling better. The lounge industry globally is growing about 15% CAGR. We grew at 30% last year and 80% over the last two years. So what are we doing differently? We are spending a huge amount of resources, effort, time, and money understanding guest needs. Guest needs have changed dramatically. They are no longer looking for comfort food. They want a more balanced, fresh experience in the lounge. Point one. Point two: because of this, more people are traveling in business and first class, and they're traveling further afield. What that means is we're seeing an increased trend of people dining on the ground rather than in the air. So our Suite product, which is our first-class luxury product and is purely à la carte, as you'd expect from a five-star hotel restaurant, is seeing more and more people say: "Do you know what? Yeah, I am flying first class for 12 hours, but I'm going to eat on the ground where I have a proper restaurant-style table, white tablecloth, beautiful cutlery, a lovely experience, and a nice glass of wine. Then I'm going to get on the airplane, and the minute I do, I'm in the toilet changing into my cashmere tracksuit, and I'm horizontal for 12 hours." What we're not seeing is the flashy travelers. We're seeing a lot of people traveling better and traveling well. That means we've had to adapt our food and beverage strategy and work with airlines to ensure we're meeting those expectations. Airlines are really transportation systems. They're looking to ensure that you have a meaningful experience onboard. Our role is to make sure there is a transition or connected lounge experience between the ground and the air. That is not just from Aspire's perspective, but it's shaping the industry as a whole. Guest expectations on the ground have increased significantly. David Millili: Yes. I think I'm going to change up my question here, and this will be my last one for you. You talked about the technology of identifying that there's nobody at a table and the table is dirty, with plates, cups, and dishes. What other technology are you using that's helping in the overall operational aspect of the lounge? David Collyer: There's a ton of it. Digital stock management is one thing. It's not like a restaurant or a hotel where a truck can just turn up and say, "Oh, I've run out of eggs. Can you deliver some more?" It's a very difficult and sophisticated supply chain. There's also the security element. Every crate of food and beverage that comes through the airport has to be scanned in the same way your suitcase does. There's a cost involved in that as well, and airports have very limited cold storage and storage space available to us. So we have to get our stock ordering absolutely right. That's one piece of technology. I mentioned booking and booking engines. When was the last time you walked up to a car hire desk, airport hotel, or hotel without a booking? You'd be amazed at the lack of forward online bookings in the lounge sector. It blows my mind that people still show up and get disappointed when we're full because they haven't booked. You can book through pretty much every channel, whether it's someone like Priority Pass, our website, or any other website you want to use. Even Booking.com is into lounges now. That shift keeps me awake at night because, from an occupancy perspective, we want to manage our yield as effectively as a hotel does. So a yield management system is high on my agenda. The other thing that doesn't exist is dynamic pricing in this sector like you'd expect. None at all. So we're working on that as well. Another area is table booking. I stay in a lot of hotels and travel extensively around the world. I not only know which hotel I want to stay in, but often which room I want. A lot of our guests are like that. They get upset when they can't have the chair that's second to the left overlooking the runway because that's why they paid extra to be there. So I ask, "Why don't we launch a booking engine that enables you to book your seat, just like an airline? Why can't I book 1A?" That's another piece of technology we're thinking about. Some guests actually don't want that. Some guests say, "I want to look around, see how busy it is, decide what mood I'm in, and choose where I want to sit." Currently, what we do is host. We say hello, and empathy is a big part of our service standards and what we teach our people. I can tell if you're a family with two kids carrying 15 bags and struggling. I know how I need to look after you. If you're a business traveler who just wants to get to a charger, I know that too. Part of the guest experience is giving people the freedom to sit and choose how they want to interact with the lounge. Those two ideas are a juxtaposition. There's friction there. So how could we potentially use technology to say, "Do you want to book? Fine. If you don't..." David Millili: Right. That makes sense. Steve Carran: That's great. So David, what is next for Aspire? David Collyer: Well, that's a very good question. Product development is a massive part of where we spend our time and invest. We've done the whole three-tier thing, and that's worked really well. What comes next? Two things that we're looking at. Are you familiar with the phrase FBO, fixed-base operation, private jet terminal? One thing we're looking at, and we're seeing demand for, is private airport terminals without the jet. We have one in Geneva, one coming in Tel Aviv, and one in another part of the world that I can't talk about yet. Basically, you arrive through a separate entrance, separate customs, and you're either on the plane first or last, depending on your preference. It's very private and very exclusive. You think you've made it in life. You go to get on the airplane, get into the Mercedes Vito outside, and head toward what feels like a private jet. Then, at the last minute, you swerve off onto a commercial aircraft. That is something we're seeing huge demand for. The second thing is airport hotels like you've never seen before. Having worked with a brand where airport hotels were a big part of our business, I know they're high turnover, expensive, and come with added stress. "Am I going to wake up? Am I going to miss my flight?" What about a hotel in the terminal that's hosted in the same way, feels like a boutique hotel, is fully staffed, has showers and amenities, and gives you confidence that you're never going to miss your flight? Think about what we usually call a best sleep guarantee. How about a won't-miss-your-flight guarantee? You don't have to leave the airport. That goes back to that comfort piece that we're learning about and how we use that insight to enhance and deliver a better guest experience in the airport. I think those are the next innovations that this sector will see, and I think we're leading them. Steve Carran: Very cool. Excited to see that. So David, this is the part of the show where we turn the tables and let you ask David and me a question. David Collyer: Okay. What's the best and worst lounge you've ever been in? Steve Carran: I knew you were going to ask that. For some reason, I was already kind of thinking about this one, to be honest with you. David, you've been traveling more recently. Do you have any? David Millili: Yeah. I would probably say my best experience was at Heathrow in the very highest-level British Airways lounge. I don't know exactly what it's called. Jeff Goldblum, the guy from Jurassic Park, was there. It was a cool atmosphere. Service was great. It was very clean. There was ample seating. For the worst, I'll just say a Priority Pass lounge in the Dominican Republic. The furniture was from 1975 at best. It was bad. There was no food. It was really, really bad. This has been very interesting listening to you because I always embrace the lounge as my calm before the storm. It's either before you take off or after the storm, when you're coming down from a busy trip. We're going to HITEC next week, for example. After three or four crazy days, being in the lounge is a nice way to end the trip. If the experience isn't spot on like you're mentioning, it definitely affects the journey. David Collyer: So you're talking about the Concorde Room at Heathrow Terminal 5. That's their first-class lounge, which is excellent. British Airways is one of my biggest clients. Wherever British Airways doesn't have a lounge, we look after their guests in our lounges. David Millili: Not to steal the thunder, but British Airways is amazing. In the U.S., I can take a four-hour overnight flight on American and get no food. Then I can take a flight from Berlin to London, fly business class on British Airways, and get a full meal. The flight attendants are like, "Did you like the wine?" I'm like, "Yes, it was great." And she's like, "Here you go, dear. Here's two bottles. Take them to your hotel." You feel like a rock star. Then on some other airlines, you're stuck with a bag of chips and thinking, "Great." David Collyer: One of the biggest problems we have as an industry is consistency. I had a complaint recently from a lady from Australia who said, "Look, I just flew from Australia to Liverpool. Could you explain to me why your biscuits were different in Liverpool than they were in Australia? I was very unhappy with the biscuits." The first reaction is pride. She's chosen my brand because of the experience. That's pretty cool. Secondly, I'm pretty sure tastes in the UK and Australia are different as far as biscuits are concerned, but I'll stock the biscuits just for you. No problem. Consistency is the challenge. There are parts of the world where airports think it's appropriate for airport lounges to be worse than Starbucks. No disrespect to Starbucks. Starbucks is amazing. It's a brand that I use as a reference point with my team in terms of quality and consistency. But a lounge should be something different. It should be an experience. There are some pretty poor operators out there that think that's fine. You're flying business class, like your example in the Dominican Republic, and you walk into a lounge and think, "Really, guys? Really?" Europe is no different, by the way. There are pockets of Europe where you walk into a lounge and have the exact same reaction. I think getting airports to understand and listen to consumer insight is critical. People now expect a four- or five-star experience as a minimum. Next question. Go on, David. Or Steve. Steve Carran: I was going to say my favorite one is probably Denver, just because I know the people there. When I walk in, it's more of a personal experience. Nothing specific stands out, and I'm sure people would disagree with me, but the one I always have a problem with is San Diego. I don't know why, but every time I go to that lounge it's packed. Certain food isn't available, or you can't find a seat. It's just a little more chaotic and not as relaxing as I'd like before getting on a plane. David Collyer: It's really interesting. When we were going through kind of like the rebrand and the repositioning to match the product that we'd developed, again, we speak to... You know, I look after 7 million guests a year, 16,000 a day. We have tons of insight. We talk to hundreds of thousands of guests every year, gaining insight in terms of what their needs, drivers, behaviors, attitudes are, et cetera. And when I first started, people used to say about, "Oh, kind of it's where," what do they used to say? The perfect start. I'm like, "Guys, getting up at 4:00 AM is not the perfect start," right? We can't say that, right? Or claim that, right? "Oh, we're a destination." No, we're not. The destination is on the other side of the aircraft, right? When I land. And so we started to understand, delve into with focus groups, and insight, and in-depth, and one-to-one interviews, what is it? "Well, I'm just waiting, you know." And we were going through all of this brand work and all the rest of it, and one of the guys, one of the very clever guys in my team said, "Yeah, all you really want is to just wait wonderfully, don't you?" And I was like, "Sorry, say that again." "Wait wonderfully." I was like, "Wow, okay. Yeah." So now our brand promise, if you like, is Wait Wonderful. And I just think, guys, the reality is, right, we talk... And then the other thing we talked about to get us to that was we talk about process passengers to cherished guest in terms of our SOPs and our trainings, right? In an airport, you're told what to do, where to go, what to take off, what to put in the tray, what to put back on, where to go, where to go next, et cetera. And in my view, once you come through the door of the lounge, your shoulders should drop. That's it. I'm done. I've just gotta wait, right? And the first thing I did actually in terms of the guest journey within the lounge is I put scent machines into the reception so that immediately it smells different to the airport and your senses immediately go, "Hang on. This is more relaxing. This is something different." And that's made a big difference actually. That sense of arrival is what I call it, is really key and really important. Next question. If you were in my job for a day, what would you change in The Lounge? What would you add, take away, delete, stop, start? David Millili: Well, I always, for me, and it depends on the lounges, but if I were to be in the design phase, I'd always just find it very funny when you're in a lounge for 100 people and there's one urinal and one toilet. So I would say most of the time, for me, that's where I'm like, "Seriously?" I'm like, "I can't use the facilities because there's one toilet?" So if that— I would just say from the design perspective more than the operational, because I think to your point, Steve and I know this, just like a hotel, it's the people. If the people are nice and they welcome you and they're friendly and the bartender smiles and the person checking you in smiles, that makes a big difference. Just like Steve said, he knows the people there, so you might have a crappy glass of beer and whatever the quesadilla crap is that's been sitting out there for four hours. But if the person smiles, you're just like, "Okay, all right, whatever. This is nice." David Collyer: Yeah. I think the future of airport lounge food is fresh. We're working with EAH actually from a technology perspective where how we can actually make that supply chain and that whole thing, but it's a few years off. But I do think that's the future. Interesting you say that, right? So the other thing I did when I joined Aspire is I changed our design philosophy and created our design guidelines, and I now work with six of the world's leading hotel designers. I don't use... Actually, I use a mix. I use a bit of retail as well, and actually what I do sometimes is I have a hotel design agency that you'd know that do Four Seasons, Rosewood, et cetera, to design the concept, and then I'll have a retail designer who understands footfall usage, scuffed-up chairs, et cetera, because of the high footfall and quality. I'll mix the two together, and the outcome is incredible. So here's a recent bit of insight about toilets in lounges, right? So they, from a business perspective, take up space that I could be charging for in terms of revenue, but the guest expectation is if I'm paying for that experience, I expect a toilet in the lounge that isn't in the terminal with everybody else, because that's kind of what I'm paying for. So it's like, right, brand standard, guys, we have toilets, right? If we're allowed. Sometimes the airports don't allow it, plumbing, water, et cetera. But if they do, then it's really important. Then we started to ask guests about it and they said... Well, I'll give you verbatim. "It's my retreat. It's where for that 15 hours I'm surrounded by people. It's the one place where I can go and lock the door and I'm on my own, right? And I just get five minutes, right? That's all I need." So I then said to the design team, "Okay, this is really important." So then we started to not put toilets in, but super loos, as I call them, right? So it's a slightly bigger space with a shower, bathroom, toilet, bidet, water, changing facilities, depending if you need those from a religious perspective, et cetera. And we made them feel like hotel bathrooms, right? And we called them The Retreat, which was great until my team said, "David, nobody can find the bathroom." Right? They think The Retreat was a spa. That kind of backfired in terms of my guest experience strategy. So now I think they're restrooms now, but you wouldn't believe how important that point is, David. Steve Carran: Sure. I think my point, and maybe it's just because I travel for business and leisure and I go to lounges for both, but it feels like when I'm traveling for business, I'm always next to a big family or maybe I'm on a call and a family's right next to me and their kids are being loud, which now I have a child, so I'll be that loud one. But when I'm traveling maybe for family, there's a loud business person on a phone call. I've been next to a guy who's upset, yelling on that phone. That's a business call. So maybe having a business lounge and a family lounge as well, where it's just a little different demographic, or the same demographic as you're traveling. David Collyer: I think I'm gonna add you two to our focus groups. One, you'd meet a lot of friends that have the same views. I think your input would be valid. But we do do that. We zone the design of our lounges. So we make it immediately obvious that's business, that's leisure, that's families, that's what we call frictionless fly solo business travelers. And when we design a lounge, one of the things we do, a bit similar to when you're building a hotel and you're looking at a demographic and go, "Well, how many suites do I need? How many deluxe rooms? How many family rooms?" and you look at the data of that market and where you're entering. We do the same, but we call it ones and twos. So we look at how many single travelers you've got. We've got the airport data. The airports are very good. They share all their data. We go, "Right, how many single travelers have you got? How many people have hand luggage rather than check-in? How many ones, twos, and fours?" Nobody travels as a three. Well, they do, but not very many. So we configure the lounge so that actually intuitively you go, "That's for me, that isn't for me." So our newer lounges adopt that design strategy to make it feel a bit more comfortable. Steve Carran: Very cool. David Collyer: Nobody should be on the phone in the lounge, in my view. My team rib me for it, but I find it really intrusive, right? But it's the world we live in. It doesn't matter if you're in a restaurant, on the train, people just do it now. Buy some headphones, guys. My team will tell you I travel with a spare set of headphones. So whenever I'm in a lounge and I see that happening, I just go over and offer them. "You need some headphones?" Normally the person goes, "Oh my God, I'm really sorry. I didn't realize. Yeah, of course. Hang on. Let me get them on." But it's the world we live in and it's a bit of a thing. It's difficult for us from a guest experience perspective. It tends to be older people. The kids are brilliant. They've got their headphones, got their iPad. They're fine. "Leave me alone. I'm cool." But it's the older generation who'll be like, "Yeah, I'm not sure this is working. Can you hear me? Yeah, I'm in the lounge." That's the problem. Steve Carran: That's great. That's great. Producer Jon, he's been listening the whole time. We're gonna kick it over to him for the final question before we get you outta here, David. David Collyer: Sure. Jon Bumhoffer: So you kinda mentioned that and talked about how you've taken a lot of things from hotels or your experience and brought them into the lounges and used that as inspiration for what you should be doing. Is there anything that you've learned doing the lounges that now, looking back on your hotel experience, you would say, "Why didn't we do this in a hotel?" Or, "We could do this." Maybe some advice for hoteliers out there from a different perspective. David Collyer: Yeah, sure, Jon. I think "stolen" is a bit of a strong word, right? I talk about my vision being translating the hotel guest experience into the airport passenger lounge experience. And I have taken a few bits and brought them over. No harm in that. I think if I was looking at it the other way around, I would probably, as a hotelier, invest much more in guest insight data. I think we have a constant ongoing stream of feedback, and we do lots of clever things and lots of things first, and we're very good, but we just listen to our guests and what they want, which is why I ask you guys. It's not rocket science to understand what the guest wants and what the guest needs. I think a lot of hotels are guilty of enforcing their vision on their guests rather than talking to their guests and building what I call data up. We design data up rather than brand down. David Millili: That's great. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. David, this is where you get to plug away, let people know how they can get in touch with you, how they can learn more about Aspire. So the floor is yours. David Collyer: Sure. aspirelounges.com. You can book direct. A little bit of insight for you: if you book a lounge direct, you generally get a better deal and you get free delay cover. What does that mean? It means if your flight's delayed, you get to stay as long as you need to. Most lounges only allow you three hours. If you book online with us, stay as long as you need to until your flight departs. You can change, book, cancel, rebook, et cetera, which you can't do through other channels. So just like any hotel, book direct, get a better deal. David Millili: That's great. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to be with you again soon. Thanks for joining us, David. David Collyer: My pleasure. Thank you, David. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Jon. Travel well. Steve Carran: Thank you.