Latest / Brand Insiders / Namron Hospitality: Comfort, Design, and the Human Kind of Personalisation

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Namron Hospitality: Comfort, Design, and the Human Kind of Personalisation · Brand Insiders

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to an episode of Hospitality Nets Brand Insiders.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: We are here with Eve Naman, founder and CEO of Namron Hospitality.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Evil, how are you?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm good.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: I just took out my lens.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: I say I'm gonna look, I'm gonna look I'm I'm gonna look younger if I take out my lens.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see you anymore, but I'm good.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, all right.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well that that's what's important, right?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is to look good, right?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I don't look good, but I I see I look better without the sunglasses.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: There is a difference as well, you know.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Everything has to be uh said uh correct.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: But nice to to see you, Adam.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great, great to chat with you.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you're joining us from Mexico City right now.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Correct, I'm in Mexico City right now.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna hear about the uh the booming, literally booming Mexican hospitality scene through the lens of uh Namron hospitality.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Give us the background and the elevator pitch for Namron Hospitality.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: So Namron Hospitality is a company that I created 10 years ago.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um I created it.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't come from a background of hospitality, I didn't study that, I studied a business school.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I came to Mexico actually because I finished I studied in Canada, where are you from?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh I commented uh in Montreal.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you're in Toronto, but I studied in Canada, and I met in Canada Mexicans.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, in the in from me, I'm from Belgium originally, and being uh from Belgium, I didn't meet too many Mexicans.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: And when I arrived in uh Canada, they told me that Mexico is the eighth wonder of the world, you have to go see that country.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we were three friends, and we came to Mexico, and we were really amazed by the level of hospitality of these friends that invited us for a week here, and they took us to all the places, and they took care of us.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like last time it was I was taken care of like that was when I was born, and my mother had me in her uh in her uh arms.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we said, Wow, what level of hospitality it has.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I finished basically school in 2000, university I finished in 2001.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: We were uh we wanted to go to the United States, but with the 9-11, we were three friends, and we said, Okay, 9-11 happened, no way to get easily visas to go to the United States.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: We just finished school, we had a little business in the university, and we said, let's go to Mexico.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: I arrived in Mexico and I started a completely different business, but I was always traveling into Mexico, and I was amazed by the beauty of the place because Mexico is a big country, few people know that uh it's four times or five times.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: For example, I'm from Belgium, but I will compare it to France, it's four or five times the size of France, it has the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Caribbean, it has mountains, it has volcanoes, it has everything, and I was impressed by the level of creativity of people.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: People are very comedian in Mexico in their food, in their culture, you see, it's very colorful.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a bunch of young architects that were doing cool things, and I was in this business in which I was producing consumer goods uh and traveling.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was loving what I was seeing in Mexico, and I said, I would like one day to do hotels, and I know that many people do that, you know.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Many people one day they say I would like to do hotels because the reality of hospitality is that it looks like a cool business, it has creativity, it has design, it has services, you meet people.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can see now, and we're probably gonna talk about all the different verticals or different types of uh of hospitality you have, so it's a very broad style of business, so it's it's very interesting.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: But at that moment, when I started it, I had an office in in Roma, which was uh which is uh a neighborhood that is that at that moment was upcoming, and it was a three-floor office, complicated to communicate.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we moved, and I said, Okay, now that I have this three-floor uh place uh empty, I will try to do hospitality the way I see it.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: People told me I was crazy because it was going to be very small, and you know, there is this thing that if you don't do a 50-room model, it's not profitable.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and they said you're not gonna be able, it's a big city with big hotel.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: People don't come to small hotels.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I had this idea that when I was traveling, I was at that moment seeing that you had the big chains, cookie-cutter systems of hotels in which you arrive, you know that the water is gonna be hot, you know that the bed is gonna work, you know that if the AC doesn't work, it's gonna be solved, but there is no salt to it, you're just one guest, or even more, you're a client, and then you had boutique hotels that at that moment were very much focusing on the food and beverage scene to make money, so you have not much comfort in it.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: The water was not hot, the bed was not always good, etc.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: etc.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I tried to blend two things together.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: The first one was comfort because I do believe that we all like to sleep well, we all like to wake up well, we all like to have a good shower.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: So when I started at the first hotel, which was La Valise, I started to say, okay, let's try to have an amazing bed, amazing linen, so that people really feel good when they come.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: I want them to come in a city that is very hectic, it's a big city, Mexico.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: You have a lot of traffic, you go left and right, you have a lot of museum, you have food scene.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a city in which you never stop.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you can be all day long uh outside.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: But once you get to our hotel, I wanted people to really feel at ease with us.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: The sudden thing I said, I said it's a small hotel, let's try to bring design, but not design the way that you go to, I would say, stores, uh designer stores.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: So let's try to find design or build design the Mexican way.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we started putting a Mexican flair into the architecture, but not the Mexican flair I would say that you would see in uh in Orlando uh when you go to Disneyland, but a real like you know, proper, well-curated Mexican uh design so that people arrive and say, Wow, I would not expect that in a room.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the third thing that happened, and that was I think the key to to what started is the hospitality part.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I told you that Mexicans are truly genuinely uh hospitalier, they try to make you feel at ease, they will really, they are really, you know, Mexicans are really proud of their country, they are proud to show you their country, their food, their culture.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted that people would arrive at a hotel and choose a hotel for the people that manages the hotel.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: When you have a small hotel, you have few guests, so you have this advantage of meeting them and talking to them, and as well, the people that these guests that stay one day, two days, three days, four days with us, they'll come up and down from their room and they'll see mostly the same people at the front desk or the same person doing the cleaning tasks.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: So you start seeing a familiarization, and then you start speaking with those people because it's not like you are in a hotel in which you have seven persons at the front desk, ten guys cleaning, etc.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: You don't know who's who, and you need a name tag.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Here you have a real genuine conversation, and sometimes people would even not stay in their room and stay down at the desk and speak uh with someone because you know some people travel, feel lonely, need to talk to someone, want to know about the culture of the country.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I tried as well to bring some of our persons that work in our uh hotels, they don't come from the background of hospitality.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: I want them to come from a background in which you like the place where you live, you want people to discover that place, and you like to talk to people, you don't do hospitality because you learned it, you do hospitality because you want to really mingle with people from abroad, know about their good things from their country, their bad things from their country, and talk about jobs.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what's a little bit how we started.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: We it was complicated, I cannot tell you that it was an easy thing to start a small hotel in a big city.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: But um after a year, we became successful, and uh our level of service allowed us to become number one on TripAdvisor, in the moment in which TripAdvisor was the most knowledgeable uh reputation uh tool in the online.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And when you become the first uh hotel on uh out of 300 hotels in Mexico City with a small uh portion, and you be a small hotel, and then you are in the newspaper, and people start to talk about you, you become known, and then we became always full, very complicated to find rooms with us.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I believed at that moment, I found a solution to hospitality.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: I understand what people want, let's do more.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I started.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's you know, you you think I'm doing we are we have found a little solution on what people want.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: People and and I believe it's clear people want comfort, people want a little bit of oh, design, uh seeing something different when they travel, and a natural connection.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Look, you and me, we we know each other since 20 minutes we've been spoken, but we today, and I speak here about 10 years ago, but today one of the key points that people are missing is this correct, uh, this real connection.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: We most of us work from our home, and it's more and more uh uh difficult to find this genuine uh uh way of connecting.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how I started feeling that, and I said let's let's do more, and then it became more uh another story.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know if I with that I I replied to your question.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, and it answers it perfectly.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: You touched on so much about the heart and soul of modern hotels, and uh that heart, that purpose for a hotel gets passed all the way down to each and every guest.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: They can really they can feel it.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we are seeing this this confluence of comfort design and and personality of people really coming to play on a world stage in many different ways across uh boutique and luxury hotels worldwide.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it just so happens that uh Namron was doing it before it was really uh really codified in the um in the journals of of what hospitality is today.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um therein, I want to ask you first off, is that was the origin of Namron hospitality?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you today?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Just to give a picture in terms of total number of hotels, the the names of each, and a key count, just so that way listeners can have a um a direct site.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to finish the year with around 20 hotels.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, 20 hotels actually.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh we have hotels uh in I would say most of the parts of Mexico from the Pacific Coast, the Gabo place, you know, not the the the Baja California, the Pacific Coast, we have hotels in San Miguel de Allende, we have hotels in Mexico City, we have hotels in Tulum, we have hotels in Miami, which is open to hotels in Miami.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um the names with different uh names.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: We have uh our I would say most known brand and the one that uh that started everything, which is La Valise.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we have Nest, which as well uh we created, which we have two: one in Baja California in Los Cabos and one in uh Turin.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: We have Shela, which is uh all of them, you know.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: The reason why we have different brands is because I I believe that you don't have one type of hospitality, and in boutique hotel, even more.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot do cookie cotton.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh boutique hotel.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: People want different things.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Some people want uh some guests will want uh a very minimalist uh cement uh look, some others would want extravagance.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: So what we what we did was to try to have different types of hotel depending on uh what where we are placed, but always with a vernacular uh concept in which we respect the place where we are, in which we we try to to respect the location, we try to respect the environment uh around it.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: This that this is a is a key point, and um we try as well to I would say magnify what's around it because sometimes what happens when you you put a hotel is that you want to go to the easy things.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Let's bring uh this from the Costco or supermarket, and we try really to go routes, we try to go with more local things because I do believe that if you make the world the the job to come through us uh in different locations that are far, we need to propose you something.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now we also have city hotels.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm now in a city hotel.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking with you, we have it's a quite a big hotel, it's a 15-room hotel, still uh I would say the higher my point of view is up to 50-60 rooms, it's a boutique hotel.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Above that, it can be called a lifestyle hotel, but it doesn't counter really the boutique.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that's like uh our biggest uh size of hotels that we have 50 rooms.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: We have another one like that in Miami.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's more difficult by the way in the United States to find smaller, smaller hotels.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the particularities of our group is that we have different types of hotels.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: We have hotels at the beach, we have hotels in colonial cities that are 200 years, 300 years old, and we have hotels in cities uh that uh that are more I would say city vibe.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Compared to that, uh not compared.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh on top of that, each of these hotels cater to different types of guests.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: I try, I I do believe, like I said, everybody wants everybody wants a good uh moment, but not everyone considers the good moment the same way.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting way to put it, uh, because the future hospitality really is this buzzword personalization.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And to personalize is really to understand the context of the guests in terms of what moment do they want.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: So therein, the question is can you describe?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked the macro about all the various hotels and key counts, urban, uh, different parts of Mexico.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Can you describe one quintessential moment that really stands out for you in terms of one of your hotels and one of those signature guest experiences that really allows a guest to come on site and feel totally cherished and loved?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So um, it's interesting what you say because today, and I and I I've read a lot of articles that speak about hyperpersonalization through AI and trying to understand the guests and CRM systems that understand the guests and questionnaires, and you arrive.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we know that on when you came to our hotel in uh Mexico City, you like to wake up with a coffee uh with two sugars, so we're gonna do the same two sugar coffee on another place.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that is the personalization through technology, but I do not believe that this personalization through technology is a real personalization.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: My point of view is we can do it, everybody can do it if you have the tools.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Real personalization is when, and I will tell you two stories.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one that happened six years ago, seven years ago.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was at Encantada, it's a hotel we have in Toulouse, and I see a guest coming from I don't know where.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Don't remember where, but he comes and he remembers Ismael, which was our front desk manager.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Not manager, he was one of our front desk agents at that moment.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: We call them concierge because we do not make a difference between a concierge and a front desk.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: We do believe that any person at the front desk should be able to comment about his city, his uh his city or his uh value, his uh uh good.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I see him with uh a box like this.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna take one like this of uh of uh uh green peppers that were in uh in a in uh vinegar thing that he had given to the guest a year ago, and the guest loved it, and they contacted and they spoke on WhatsApp, and then when he came back, he had his things ready like a gift, he didn't know about it.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: That is what I really believe a personalization.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what personalization is when someone tells you, you know what, I've been traveling for three months, I'm coming from uh the story is real, but uh, it was a guest that felt a little bit like homesick.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'd been traveling for a lot, felt homesick, wanted uh food from Lebanon.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the chef didn't know about Lebanon, but they listened to him.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Explain me a little bit about the food, you know.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was not uh, and with Mexican ingredients, he was able to provide a kind of I would say mix of culture that the guest said, you know what, just because you listen to me, just and it was a chef, it was not even someone that really is there to listen.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what I mean by real hospitality is when you see that even the chef that sometimes is in the kitchen and don't see guests, because today in many restaurants you don't interact with chefs.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: It I remember I don't know, I'm assuming I'm a little older than you, but when I was a kid, I remember sometimes the chef coming in the in the in the room, and people think, Oh, chef, it was very good, or the chef coming.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: You don't see that anymore, it's very rare.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: But when you have a chef that comes in the reception and that starts speaking in the lobby with people and that listen to someone and find a solution, this is to be personalization more than the other one, which is gonna happen.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: The personalization, I love, for example, uh, how Google knows what I want on Instagram or knows what I want when I'm I always have the right the nice advertising of what I want, you know.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's always like this: you look at something to it, or you I speak with you about something now, and in two hours in my phone, it's there, the advertising is there, but that's technology.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I do believe that real personalization can only happen in small hotels where people have a real connection and the factibility of speaking, and by speaking, you can really have the time to understand what people want and provide them a specific experience, which does not have to be written in a menu.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: We have experiences that are written on a menu, we have wellness experience, we have yoga experiences, but sometimes people say, you know what, it's been three years.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh I'm with someone and I would like to do something special, uh, and I can show them uh we have that and that and that.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but do they want to go a little bit more far?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: How can we personalize something?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is what we have because being smaller hotels, we have more time to listen to that to this guest.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have 17 massages per day in five uh rooms that has to be done one after the other, and uh and and they tell you, you know what, your time is up.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there is someone behind you.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: That is to me uh the real personalization.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's very interesting what you said about that um, you know, the jar of pickles or the jar of uh of peppers there.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what I get from that is that it's almost like real personalization is special moments shared amongst uh people that form bonds.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's um it's it can't be done at the large scale, and this really it signals something very large in hospitality where boutique hotels are essentially their own their own category in a lot of ways, because this can't be done at scale, and it stands in the face of scale by its very uh meaning and definition.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I'm very keen on using AI.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna tell you.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: It allows me to write faster, it allows me to write better, it allows us, all of us, to be more efficient, but we are more tired as well at the end.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's it's what will allow a lot of, I would say, more.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Conventional hotels to get closer to the guests.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the key point is the human behind.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I took.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I commented.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: If the human person doesn't want to read that document and is really interested in who is the guest, you know.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you another personalization.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking about someone, something you know, you remember Coco, the movie from um course from Disney.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: So the the the start of the movie was here, and the producer was thing a la valise, and um it star it started on the 1st of November, which is uh the day of the dead in Mexico, some years ago, and there is a very specific flower in Mexico, which is called a pasuchil, uh, for that moment, which you see a lot in the movie.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't know that that person was coming, and they didn't call us to tell us, you know, you have someone from Disney, Pixar coming.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: We just had time to see who is the guest, we understood who she was, and we filled the room when she entered with all these flowers so that she could feel that she was already in the cocoa adventure, arriving there.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: That is the little thing that you can only do if you have a few guests, otherwise, it becomes too complicated.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: You could you would need an army of people to read all this information because information from AI we can get.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Tools are being built, they are connecting to the PMS, and every one of all the hotelers will get that.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do you implement that from the information to reality without looking like a robot?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because at the end, and I was reading an article some days ago of someone saying, you know, I want a hotel that works only with robots, only automatic, only automatization.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's true, it's it's cheaper, it's nicer.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have issues of people saying, I don't come today, I'm sick yesterday, uh, I'm late, sorry, today I don't want to smile, whatever.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: It takes out a lot of headaches.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I do believe that people travel to see other cultures and as well to meet other person.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, on the note of talking about encantada, that's in Tulum, of which you have six properties in Tulum.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and a lot of that has these properties have come about and evolved right as Tulum has evolved from a fishing town that no one knew about to one of the hotbeds of hospitality and design and artwork.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And your developments have and and your property launches have been in lockstep with that evolution.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, can you talk to us about what influenced your decision making to open six properties, how that came about, and how that's that's influenced and magnified, as you said, the um the design style that is now quintessentially known as Tulum.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I knew to I uh first time I went to Tulum was in my first trip in Mexico.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I I stayed here and I simply traveled, and we went to Planet Carmen and I went to Tulum, and there was nothing.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: There was uh really nothing, and it was kind of even I was young and I was like kind of anxious of being in the middle of paradise because you have these whites and this amazing opponent, and you have to imagine it 20 years ago.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then I continued going every two three years.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to Tulum and I was seeing how it was changing slowly, slowly.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Everything moves even much faster with the social media, like everything, you know.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: The social media and the consumer is the way that we are.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at every magazine today, it's the new place.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Where is the new hotspot?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: Where is the new hotel?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: What's happening now?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you need always to be there.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is no, there is an obsolescence, you know.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: We we we we hear about the obsolescence of computers and that they say oh their program to be uh two years, and after two years they break.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit the same with hospitality.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like uh you don't finish uh uh a new uh I would say new trend, that there is already a new trend, you know.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So what happened with Toulouse is that it was, and it I do believe that in the essence it's still a place uh that has a lot of energy.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: This place is special, it's a it's a jungle, a vast jungle, it's uh a place with a uh a monumental and I think it's the only uh uh Mayan room that is on the water.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it grew because it was a place in which you could buy small lots and build hotels without a lot of regulation, and so people were coming from abroad: Italy, Argentina, United States, and they would come to Toulouse and say, This is paradise, amazing weather.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: I never saw such a wide sand.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the cocos are amazing, uh, people are nice, the food is good, and you had all these people that says, I'm staying here.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: I can buy uh for a hundred thousand dollars, I buy a lot and I can build things.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And people started building amazing restaurants like Hardwood, uh, building Azuliq and all these places that became very well known because they were one of a kind, they were small, they were different in architecture because no regulation, and people were building with what was around, and it became a place that was kind of a secret.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: People were going to Tulum and saying, I stayed at Tulum, and they were paying an extremely expensive price to be in a place that had no TV, but that had 12 rooms, and you were sleeping in the in the top of a tree, or you were taking a bath in uh in a bathtub that was inside a carved uh wood, uh something, and it was like a snowbiz to go to Tulu.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: What happened with 2016, 17, 18, 19?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Instagram becomes big, and it's a blessing and a curse because when I was a kid, you would go somewhere, I would say New York, and you would see a restaurant that was the restaurant in New York that someone had thinked for two years, and you would need to take your codec camera and film it.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: You would need to go back to Belgium, you would need to print it.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you were lucky, it was print, and then you would need how do I do now to explain this to someone?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have the pictures here.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: How do I explain this to someone?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Today you go, you take a video, you put it online, and it's finished.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can copy anything.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, what happened with Tulum is that it grew very fast, people were going making amazing pictures because the place is beautiful, and then it became less of a secret.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: And when it became less of a secret, it grew fast.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and uh I was there a little bit before that happened, and I decided our the way that we decided to to manage our hotels.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: I do believe that Tulum appealed to a certain kind of people that want to go to a place that you don't go there because you want to go like Las Vegas, you go there because you want to retire from the mundane world, you want to be like uh Rob Robinson Cruiseway, you want you don't need TV, you don't need to see Netflix, you want to refine yourself.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: And how why did I do six hotels?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you why.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: I started with one which was in Cantada.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I live in Miami since 10 years.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: I lived in Mexico, then I went back to Belgium, then I live in Miami.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And Miami is an hour and 15 minutes away from Cancun Airport.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew Tulum, and when we had success, I told you we had success with Lavalise.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: I said, okay, I think that I understand what people want.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: People want small hotels that have great services and that in which you can sleep well.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I had two cities I really enjoyed in Mexico, one was San Miguel de Allende, which we took something over there as well, which we have a Lavalise there, and one of the other one was Tulum.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I said in Toulouse, I want to find a place that already has this special soul, and I found Encantada, which was a hotel that was for years, it was number one on TripAdvisor.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: People were craving reviews about it, and I said, and the guy wanted to sell, so I said that's amazing.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: I can take a hotel that is already well located.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: It he it has the similarity with me in Mexico, he's number one on trip advisor.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they they care about the guest.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna continue, but I'm gonna change the name and the look to La Valise.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when we started, people the first guest that I met they told me, Please don't change anything, it's an amazing property, it's been four years become two times a year.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: We know everyone here.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want, please don't change a thing, and it's true.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Why would I change this is making people happy?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in a business in which the idea is for people to basically work to save some money, and that money that you save, you're gonna spend it into vacation, which is the moment in which you want to be happy.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not gonna do I'm happy, I'm gonna change the color of the wall and the furniture and make unhappy guests.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Not what I want to do, so I kept it.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: The thing happened that next door there was a guy from Holland, I'm from Belgium, we're neighbors, and he's 70 plus year old.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: And he tells me, you know what, it's been 10 years, 15 years.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: I come to Toulum, it's becoming too far for me.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: I want help.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to buy this property?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I bought the property, and I said, Okay, now we can do La Valise next.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we started doing La Valise.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: And when we built La Valise, we built it in a way that was like, I would say, a landmark.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: It became uh uh the the way we built it.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: We built it very fast, we built in a way that people thought us you're crazy.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot do uh touch roof that high.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: You we changed many things.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: We took techniques from Japan that we brought uh into Mexico, not that we brought Japanese, but we explained how to do things in Japan because one of the guys that we work with is a fanatic of Japan, and he said, Okay, let's do the Mexican way, but change the technique to Japanese things.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we we we brought a product that did not exist at that moment, and we became very famous instantly.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the place had a lot of guests, and so what happened is that when you have success in the place and you are doing it well, some people say, you know what, either I ask him if he wants to operate my place, because we are Lamron Hospitality, has I would say, uh, two different things.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: We own some properties and operate them, and we operate properties for others.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so what happened in Tulum is that uh it's not an easy place, it's uh it's in the middle of the jungle, you don't have electricity, you don't have water, you don't have a sewer, you have to do it everything by yourself, and you have to understand Spanish.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: But as I told you, many people come from abroad to make it happen there, and they say, Well, I thought it was easy, but it's not easy because I want to be clear here hospitality is a 24-7 business.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: You gather to breakfast, the you have the most cherished thing of someone you're cared to their sleep and their food and their drink, and you're there and you need to make it happen every day, and you always have an issue.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: If it's not the air conditioning, it's the hot water, if it's not the hot water, it's the Wi-Fi.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: If it's not the Wi-Fi, it's someone didn't come to me, it's always an issue.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if everything works well, then you have the insets like the box, so you have always something that happens, so it's very difficult to make it well.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we were selling, I would say, while expensive and having great reviews.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: So people said those guys must be doing something good.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: So some people came to see us, and I'll be honest with you, I said, okay, it's nice to be your own company with Lavalise and owning the properties, etc.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a lot of risk, and maybe if I start taking as well some operation, I can lower my risk, learn from others, because you take operation from others, you learn, and grow my pool of talent.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because the key point in hospitality, the most difficult is why do people do 100-room hotel, 200-room hotel?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's sometimes the only way to cater to the cost of operation, which is one room hotel or 200-room hotel, is one website, it's one social media account, it's a press, it's all this that you need to do for guests to come to your place.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And all these costs, you if you look at the way that today you market a hotel or distribute a hotel versus 10 years ago, it has changed completely.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure that you know even better than me how today they are speaking about that.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: The next step will be to book online through your phone with chat GPT or with perplexity or whatever.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's changing a lot.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we have we allowed some people, owners that that believed that hospitality is an easy and nice, and and I'm gonna have fun, and I'm gonna be at the bar speaking with people and drinking, and I'm gonna, you know, like this image that you have of a hotelier that you believe it's uh I'm gonna be cool with my uh the only problem is that I'm gonna be too much sun, you know, I'm gonna be sent.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is that there is a very heavy back office, and this back office kills you.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: This back office kills you, uh, because you have to reply to reviews, because you have to reply to someone that lost the plane, because you have to reply to someone that uh is at the airport and don't find the driver, and all this you have to do it faster and faster.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you are, you know, if you don't have a team in with imagine me, if I didn't have a team behind, I would be now speaking with you, and I would be on top on my WhatsApp and checking my emails and everything because it's non-stop.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how we grew.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: I I started building, I would say, a cluster in Tulu, in which the the cluster allowed us to have a better operation, whether it's on site or uh on the back office, than some other that would start from scratch.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: And uh from there, we said, okay, now that we learned the way, because I will tell you something, Tulum is very difficult.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's a place that has a lot of complexity.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and when we said okay, now after three, four years over there, we understood all this complexity.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I'm I I come from a background of uh of uh I I told you I was producing consumer goods for big brands, so I was telling someone that you would get these uh glasses.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this uh I would give you, I would say that's the price you're gonna pay.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be delivered at that place, at that year, at that moment, in this packaging, and you have to make it happen.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: You need a lot of processes and you need a lot of systems, and you need very good people.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: By building that triangle, we were able to become, I would say, very reliable.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: I always believe that the most important in hospitality is to be reliable.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: I want that people, you know, we were speaking about a little bit when we just met two minutes before the show.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: We spoke about food, and you told me if you come one day to Toronto, I'll tell you where to go lunch or dinner.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it happens that sometimes you say to someone, you know, I went to a restaurant, it was an amazing restaurant, you should go.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: I ate amazing, and you go, and it was a complete fiasco.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: It can happen, and then and then you say, You know what?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted it was terrible.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: The meat was not cooked, or uh the service wasn't nice.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm not gonna tell you anymore to honor friends to go because you had a bad experience, and you're not gonna say it.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: So being reliable is very important.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we try to build, and this is why we sometimes try to go into clusters.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: For example, in Mexico, we have now three hotels, and we're gonna have a fourth one because it allows us, even though we are boutique, to have this critical mass, to give a boutique and personalized uh service to guests, but to have the backbone to allow us to be on top of our games in all what has to do with uh I would say running a hospitality business properly.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the undistributed costs of hospitality and really the clustered management you're talking about, it's as if you you gain in both uh efficiency and ability to be reliable with each new hotel that you build in a given market.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's a network effect in a lot of ways that you're that you've built.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Correct, correct.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's honestly, uh, and I have to thank my team because they've been lately in a lot of uh rushes.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I have a great team of people in other departments in sales, and marketing, in branding, uh in revenue management, and we have grown a lot recently, and they are under a kind of a lot of stress, but they love what they do because two things.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: First, they travel, and I have to admit that they travel to meet the location, to feel the location, to understand the location where we have hotels.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one thing that uh that that they enjoy.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you don't enjoy it anymore, right?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, sometimes you travel too much, you say, I don't want to travel.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: But the second thing they enjoy is that they are not only working on one type of hospitality with one kind of look.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: We have hotels that are minimalist, we have hotels that are maximalist, we have hotels that look like old haciendas, we have hotels that are completely modern, we work with very good architects, we work with people that are more uh, I would say, uh, hand uh self-made.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that is something that they have fun.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that every day it's another uh they will switch from one hotel to another, from one city to another, from one level of price to another.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: We all, I will be honest, all of our hotels are in the high uh boutique, uh, I would say in the in the experiential boutique hotel.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: We we I do believe, and I'm gonna be honest here, I do believe it's very difficult to do few rooms very cheap.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not uh you you cannot you cannot survive having great service with very few room at a low cost.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot strive in that business because it doesn't it doesn't happen.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we are in the I would say uh high uh high segment in the in the market in terms of pricing, but it allows us to give this experience that people want to do when you go to Putin.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh to go back on a previous point you mentioned or a previous hotel, Le Valise in Toulum.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the previous point you mentioned about how people really want this comfortable experience in the room.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: They want the nice linens, the the beautiful bathtub that's uh that's in wood, uh the great bed.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, they want the hotel to be a design experience.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: To put that all together around Le Valise, one thing I really love is you look at it and it has the A-frame structure, which is just beautiful with the nice vaulted ceilings when you're in the rooms, and then the beds themselves, uh, those tweets, they're on the motorized rollers and could go all the way out onto the terrace.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: That is so cool.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's just mind-blowing.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, people are on Instagram, they're seeing that and they go, I want to be there.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care about the cost, I want to be there.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what what what inspired you and your team to come up with that specific feature?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: And how did you fight to make that happen against all the accountants who would say, No, we don't have budget for it, no, it's too expensive, no, there's no capex.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the way it happened, we were building La Valise in Mexico City, and it had this room which has a huge terrace, and we're inside, and we're taking a drink at night because we worked all day long, and we're there, and we say, Would be cool.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: We're sitting on the floor, and you say we say it would be cool to have the bed outside.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: Someone says it would be cool to have the bed outside.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: We were three, so great idea.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: How do we do that?
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we thought about it and we made the rails.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not motorized, we're in Mexico, it's not America, so it's not motorized.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: You have to push it, yeah.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which is, I think, another part.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Particularity of the coolness factor, that you you really put it inside and outside the way you want.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it's true that once you sleep or wake up and take your breakfast in the bed outside in a frisk uh atmosphere is an experience that you cannot uh you cannot have anywhere else.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we've been doing that in some of our hotels, and every time that people go in these rooms and they they have this uh feeling, I think that's uh it's one of a kind.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's interesting how you mentioned how that came about, how it was just you with the team sitting around uh drinking, and uh of course the first thought is uh what were you drinking?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Was it wine, rum, uh something special?
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: We were drinking mezcal.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: Mezcal, okay.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we were drinking mezcal, and the person that had the idea was Oberto, who still he was the first one in uh in La Valise working with me.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's our head of interior design.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we started with two booths, and we were doing third one, and uh and we were there, it was like nine o'clock, something like that.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and I really remember how we are sitting on on on like kind of a couch in the floor, and we said it would be amazing if this would be outside, if we could sleep outside.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: And two days after he had it on on the sketch, the way to do it, and that's how we do it.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: How did we convince the accountant?
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: We invited him with his wife in the bed outside, and it was done.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: He was convinced.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, seeing is believing, uh, I guess, right?
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, it it speaks to almost um a timeless element of culture, which is to say a lot of your best ideas are not coming from nine to five, they're coming at at 9 p.m.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're coming outside of that.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And realistically, what enabled that to happen was you are working with people day in, day out, and and it's almost like they're family, where you know you're you're not just sitting down around a boardroom and then saying, Oh, email me your ideas.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's you're hashing things out, you're having dinner, you're having uh mezcal espadine, or you're doing a tasting.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, oh I know, I know a lot about mezcal, I love it.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you're you're you're hashing things out and you're living and breathing the product, and that passion eventually came through.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: If it wasn't that night at 9 p.m.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: when you're having mezcal, it would have been the following night uh around the dinner table or the night after that where you would have had these great ideas.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, real realistically, that's that's what it takes to be at the forefront of hospitality design.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then that design gets translated into the actual build, which then gets translated into unique and irreplaceable guest experiences, and then that translates into unique properties and ADR growth, etc.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: etc.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny that you said you said twice unique.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, our lemma at Lavalise is as unique as our guests.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the key point when we do lavali, when we did the first Lavalise and the one after it is always to try to do it in a way that hasn't been done before.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I can tell you that we get gray hair of saying, How do we do this entrance?
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: or why don't we do something?
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we do things that are completely like crazy in terms of why would you do a door like this or why would you do that?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: Or too many windows we're in a prone uh, for example, we're in a prone uh zone of uh hurricane.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've seen La Valise in Masonte where it's built, it's built on a cliff that you would not believe that someone was uh even me today.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think how to build that, you know, how did people go and build that place?
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we try to to have this wow effect.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: The world I was I'm coming back from from Cannes, there was this ILTM, very big uh fair on luxury travel.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I went out depressed, you know.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Wow, so many hotels, so many places to travel.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: You feel like you really feel you know, sometimes such a small world, when you go there, you see how big is the world, and how I do believe that we see so much now online and we see so much everywhere that it's difficult to have this oh moment, this moment in which you really feel a connection with whatever.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: When we build La Valise, what we wanted is people to feel this uh this I would say hospitality in which we said, you know what, we really thought about how you will feel when you enter in our hotel, and we did it differently.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: For example, La Valise in Mexico, and most of our La Valise plays a very small uh I would say desk or lobby when you enter.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because I went when I was a kid, my parents we went first the first time with my sister to to the United States, and we arrived in a hotel that had an amazing route, and the lobby was like marvelous, and and I was like, you know, in all seven ten meters full you believe that you died, you are in paradise, and then you go in the room, and it was a shoebox.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt like my father felt like what happened, you know, it was like I paid the lobby, and this is what we didn't want.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted the guest to not pay for the lobby but pay for the room.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we try really to bring a lot of value to the room, the bathroom, uh, the experience because that's what you pay for.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want you to pay for a nice lobby.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: You want a nice lobby, you can go to uh big hotels, they have nicer lobby.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot build a nice lobby than a big, big, big, big, big hotel.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have the this vast it should, but I can do very nice rooms and I can do very nice and unique experience.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we try to do, and that's how we did Lavalise.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: We tried really to bring in Lavalise Toulouse because you told me about Lavalise Loom.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: We try to bring that to come and to say you're coming, you know.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: When you go to Tulum, you go, you are confined in an airplane, it's dark, then you go and you take an hour and a half to two hours of drive in a highway that is a big highway, which a lot of sun, and then you are in a lot of it's very white.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: I would say you have a lot of feeling that you are out of the of the sun, and then once you're in Tulum, you are beginning between trees.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: I told you it's like a jungle, so you already fail confined.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: What we wanted in La Valise was that people arrive, and when you arrive, you are in the jungle, you enter in La Valise, and you go up, and then you start.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's difficult to explain, but you enter in our it's kind of a lobby, it's not a lobby, it's like a living room, I would say it's the living room of the place.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: And when you go up, you start seeing the ocean opening yourself.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: And by by having that impression that you finally arrive there, but you you only discover it at the end, and in the way that we framed it, you say that was worth the trip.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: But the most important is that when you turn around and you go behind yourself, you have the same frame, but now you see the jungle on the other side, and it's framed into a way that on one side you see the beach, on the other side you see the jungle, and you really feel that you are in the place where the jungle and the water are colliding together.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: That is the kind of experience that we try to bring to people.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot, I will never be able to build hotels with the nicest uh finishes, the nicest uh uh marmal or or or whatever.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe that this is luxury.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: I feel that luxury is the feeling you have when you either buy something, because let's be honest, sometimes you buy something and you have the new phone and you feel it.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's a feeling that you try to give.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what what we try to do in the hospitality.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, the the phrase I use or the word is um luxury hospitality is storytelling.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, the the whole the whole era of the nicest finishes, the nicest marbles, that can work in certain locations, but this that's not the story you're telling.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you you have that at Lovali's in Tulum and uh Lovely's in Masonte uh on Costa Elsmeralda, so the southern coast of Oaxaca.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: That opened up um 2022, 23?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, it opened uh seven months ago.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: Masonte is new.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh, and of course, uh so that would have you would have been developing while there was the hurricane there.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, we we had we we had two times to redo the deck.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's uh do you did you want to talk about that at all?
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: Or uh is that a dark part of your uh no, it's not uh you know I had uh La Valise uh in Toulum burnt completely as well.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's part of uh hospitality.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: We had uh a fire.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: We we don't allow people to smoke in our properties and less when it's touched roof, but uh things happen.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we had a big fire that uh that broke one day and we rebuilt.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think that my my general manager uh who's been with us now for two years and who's essential in what we're doing always tells me, and yesterday it was our dinner, uh our annual dinner, you know, for to thanks all the people that work with us.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he says that if he defines us, he defines us by resilient.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because we wake up every day and there not, you know, it's we are today in a world in which nobody or few people really can say I have an amazing life, everything is pink and everything is amazing, and everything beautiful.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: We all struggle at one moment.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: If it's not uh financially, it's mentally, if it's not mentally, it's uh physically, it's it's all so.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: I do believe that having issues, and we had issues with the with hurricanes.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, luckily, the the property is built uh as I told you on a cliff, and it's very it's a strong, it's a it's a very brutalist uh property, uh, with an amazing view.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: When you arrive there, you you are on top of a cliff, we have a private beach downstairs.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually later to like one of the nicest uh beach hotel uh in the world recently, because with this particularity that you you will not you will not believe what you have arrived.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: You go to a jungle that is very dark, uh, and then you arrive.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit like Lavalise in Toulouse, but a different way.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's built in in a kind of concrete and wood, so it will stay well the the hurricane, and it's uh what we had is the the sea level was going up and it broke twice the deck.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: We dealed it again, and a second hurricane came, but it happens, it's it's you know it they are not very big.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what sometimes when you speak about hurricane, you people it's hurricane level one, so it was not a big hurricane, and uh, but it it's it's like that's what uh what can we do about against that, you know.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, um, you know, it it is rare.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh just for context for people here, we're talking about the southern Pacific coast of Mexico.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: Mazunte is a little town, I guess.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say?
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: An hour's drive from Puerto Escondido.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly an hour drive from Puerto Escondido.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and uh very vibrant uh yoga scene there and wellness scene.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and of course, uh right along a turtle migration path of the turtle museum, I believe, is uh it's either in Bazonte or the next town over, uh as you can tell.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's in Huatulco, it's uh not far out from there is a turtle place in Huatulco.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: We have turtles as well in Masonte.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: There is a lot of total as well in Mexico, uh in Tulum.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but it's uh it's a little fishing village, it's a little not fishing, it's a little village, as you say, that has as well this particularity of I feel having uh something, you know, like you people some people believe that some places on earth have this vortex of energy, and that place has probably that because it's true that you have a lot of people that are into wellness or or or but not into wellness, like okay, that's a new trend, let's build a wellness.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: They've been there for 10 years, they've been there for 20 years doing yoga retreats, very low profile, but it's full of them.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it but it it just it speaks to how big Mexico is and how diverse the hospitality scene is.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people here they've probably heard of Tulum, Los Cabos, uh Cancun, but you know, very few.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, for Mizunte, Huatulco, uh the entire coast there, which is which is really becoming the a very vibrant scene for design-led hotels that can have a wellness and ecotourism component.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an amazing place.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when you I I went to Watulco, I didn't know Watulco, and it's an hour away as well from this way.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: I took a plane to Watulco and I went to visit it.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's like some these places that you don't believe exist sometimes, you know.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing our project in Veracruz as well.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Veracruz is a place in Mexico that has everything, it has petrol, it has coffee, it has uh the big port with Europe.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a rich state into Mexico, so they never really needed to do hospitality and hotels because they have a lot of other uh resources.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: But recently uh we've been approached by by people from there to say, you know what, we have an amazing uh location, and I want you to tell me honestly.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was in Veracruz, but I only know it about the port and the petrol and all these things, and then we went and I thought I was in Ireland.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't had I thought I was it was so green, I thought I was in Ireland.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: The the the way that that the the shape of the of the location, the way that it was done.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I could not believe that you see that, and that is what has Mexico.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's that people have this idea, and I would say it's the same for Canada, it's the same for United States, it's it's the countries.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot have one image of the country.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's a country that has it goes from left to right, it's half of Europe, it's five times four, five times the style of France.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: It has different climate, it has different types of uh of uh uh fauna and flora depending on where you go, and it allows and different type of food as well, and different type of culture.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: Although people speak all everybody speaks Spanish, they it's not the same culture from one place to the other, and that's what's bringing a beauty into traveling with Mexico, which by the way, sometimes has a bad reputation.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: I understand.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you want, we can talk about it in two seconds.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it has a bad reputation, but I do believe that it's kind of exaggerated because if you look at the the real situation, you don't hear a lot of times things happening to guests, you don't hear many times that people come from abroad and it issues in medicine.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: They might have a little issue at the red light, some policemen, things like that that are you know, they they the the things that are not annoying that are annoying, that they can take sometimes your your your it exaggerates, but and how I say that, and sorry for what I'm gonna say, but you can go to other places that are more dangerous, uh that they are not uh you can go to Las Vegas and you had a problem in Las Vegas with a guy killing 135 persons uh from a hotel, the next day it was open again.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this would happen in any country in the world, it would be difficult.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, I do believe that Mexico has more to offer than what people believe, and it's less dangerous that uh that what uh happened.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the danger that you have in Mexico are between those bad people.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: I do really believe that you do you know, you don't have crazy people arriving somewhere and shooting randomly people.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: That does not happen.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're really nice person, then you have the bad guys that between them are bad.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I mean, um, you know, talking about Mexican hospitality, you also have Le Particulier, but that's the one we just opened in Miami, yeah.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: In Miami, which is you know, the which is a very vibrant hospitality scene unto itself.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: So what motivated that move, and uh, how are you creating synergies amongst uh your various properties in Mexico and now into the into the US?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been living 10 years in Miami, yeah.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think it's a city that has transformed itself, it's a city that has it's international, it has brought a lot of people, uh, it's much more cultural than before.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, post-COVID cities post-COVID in which people start to say, you know what, I want to change and live another style, uh, another way of life.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but we were focused in Mexico.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I always say, you know what, uh, you cannot ride too many, right too many horses at once, it's too complicated.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: But uh recently we felt that we were ready to try to do something in the United States and why not to travel and not too far.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we started two hotels over there, one which is uh particulier.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: Why do we call it Le Particulier?
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because we believe that we're bringing something a little different to the place.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's uh it's a hotel that has um uh 60 to 70 years.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's an art deco building.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's in it's very well placed, it's on Collins Avenue in 42nd.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that you have many more uh locations that are better than that one.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we are trying to bring back a little bit this oldy uh look of Miami that made Miami famous, you know, this this art deco scene that people today don't don't want to see, and everybody wants to have everything modern and gray and blah blah blah.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: We try to bring it, but not in a cheesy way.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: We try to bring it in a way that doesn't make it cheesy, or like I commented earlier.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_01: You remember I said the Mexican uh vibrant colors, but not like in Orlando, it's it's a bit that way.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's a challenge.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a challenge.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: The United States are challenging compared to what I know in Mexico, you even though I live there and I know America, it's it's the regulations are stricter, the way to operate are more uh complicated.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, it's very good because I do believe that we have been in Mexico now for 10 years.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we started the first three years, it was only one hotel, and then so seven years of hotels in Mexico, and it was about time to see if our model works elsewhere, to see if we are able to provide this genuine hospitality to uh other uh countries.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I remember remember I commented about cluster.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we opened the second hotel in Miami as well, which is well on Miami Beach.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's called uh Meso Felix, and uh and it's quite 20 streets away from the other one on 74 in Harding.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that's a hotel that we stripped from scratch.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's a hotel that we kept the shell and we did everything new.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um two years and a half of hard work, a lot of inspections, a lot of uh regulation to go through, a lot of gray hair.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we work with Felix, who's uh a gentleman that has lived in Miami for 35 years, uh, and uh that has been uh autodidact in first in garment industry and then in building spec homes for for a person that wanted a special house uh in Miami.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um he wanted to give a little bit of his idea of what is hospitality, uh, what is his way of seeing hospitality in the way that he decorates.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I liked that uh that we took someone that has a lot of knowledge about Miami from uh 30 years and brought it to life today.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we have these two hotels that just started, one started 10 days ago, the other one started uh a month ago.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, challenging.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a challenging uh uh I wouldn't say challenging in terms of operation, but it's challenging because it's completely new for us.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but for so far, so good with these two properties, and uh we'll see where where it leads us.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it still is uh incredible growth.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um then the question is let's look to the future.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: What is next for uh hotel development for Namron hospitality uh that you can talk about and what other markets intrigue you in Canada, US, or other countries?
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing is that we want to we want to stay boutique.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: we want to stay particular we want to to to really try to find uh locations and uh and hotels that really you spoke about storytelling i would say that that can really fit in the storytelling uh our storytelling is to to to try to convince uh people person that traveling boutique has really a charm that you cannot find in big ones we're not fighting with big ones and i go sometimes to big hotels and i don't have an issue to go to them but i want to have a particular flair um into the boutique hotel uh for sure the united states it's once we started there we say okay you know what if we're gonna go the the the full nine years in the United States and understanding how it works we would be happy to continue uh in the United States uh and Europe i'm I'm from Belgium as I told you I do believe that Europe uh has a good uh potential of uh of boutique it's much more of a market that has compared to the United States there is a lot of boutique hotel in uh in in Europe uh some of them are family owned some of them are uh owned uh 10 20 years by by by families and I believe that we can bring I would say this little professionalism that sometimes you you would lack in these uh in these hotels that are very nice and very well catered but they are not getting to the level of I would say the way that young or not even especially young but modern traveler wants to to travel um but it's one step at a time you know we we just honestly we we doubled the size in the last uh two years so I would not tell you that I want to double it again in the next two years because it's it's it's complex business and the top on top of that it's complex because we're multi-brand uh it's different to be a multi-branded hospitality in boutique usually when you see boutique hotelier they build their brand they have one brand and they say I'm gonna build my brand and I want to be my brand is the next soul house and uh that's what they're gonna try to to build a brand and let's do one in Ibiza let's do one Mykonos let's make one in uh Bali let's make one in New York and then we have a brand we went a little bit the other way we said I do believe that hospitality is changing so much I do believe today today it's wellness longevity uh next after tomorrow is going to be spirituality it's gonna be uh eating uh uh vegan you don't know what is the next i i we commented that we are always chasing the next trend uh we are doing actually a wellness hotel in loscabos that we're gonna start in in some months but i don't want to be like that's the wellness brand uh and that's what they do we said we want i do believe that hospitality is it's it's something that that works whatever type of hotel you have you are either a good host or a not such a good host and that's about what you have in your heart what you have in your mind and how you want to to to to relate to the people that you are hosting so where do I see ourselves uh in the future we'll see i i i cannot tell you what i like today and i will tell you something we did all that with no funds behind us uh and no no we have no funds there is no banks uh there is no uh board of directors and uh and people it's all uh done by uh by us and uh and by the team that uh that we build so i prefer to uh it allows us to choose our projects it allows us to go through projects that sometimes might not be fitting a PL completely for a fund uh but it allows us to do what we like uh that's a little bit uh the the the thing so it makes us a little bit more flexible it makes us a little bit more I would say allowing us to take fast decisions uh we are more we are as well if tomorrow someone calls me and tells me you know what I have an amazing place in Bali it's been 90 constructed and I and I love La Valise and I would like to do it I'll tell you that I'll be on the plane tomorrow you know so if I tell you where do we go I it depends but my team will tell me you're crazy we don't want to open more give us a little break so it all depends so I want people in my team to be happy uh it's very something it's something very important i uh we're speaking about longevity we spoke about wellness you want to people want to live long when they are happy no you want to stay alive because you like life and all of us work a lot most people today work a lot of hours even if you don't consider it working you're always on your phone you're always checking your phone it's very difficult to to have this differentiation between your life without work and your life in the work you will always check your emails most people do it at least so I I the first thing I want is our in our people inside the company to be happy with what we do and uh because otherwise I cannot do anything without them and then to see uh we'll see where where where the wind bring us I'll tell you yeah it'll be another uh another night of um sitting outside uh with a bottle of good mascal and then the idea will come with you it's uh you know it's it's the Newton moment the eureka where the instead of the apple falling on your head it's you know the it was the eureka moment the moment of the eureka moment for Robert exactly yeah uh I mean that was sort of mind blowing when you mentioned that you're you're completely self-funded that you have no LPs or uh financiers that are you know forcing you to go to a certain mandate or have you tied up to certain covenants and that is a rarity in hospitality.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Very rare we have no we are completely self-funded and uh uh it's not that I I would I would like to tell you that I won the lottery and that I have uh the the PowerPoint behind me but uh no it's uh we try to reinject our profit into growing so so far that's what we've been doing we've been growing with we are profitable and uh we reinject our profits into new projects and into growing our back office into growing our people into growing our systems uh and uh and that's why as well I don't want to grow too fast I don't have like uh uh I do believe that what we're you know they tell you the the when you do the what is where you want to be it's the path it's not where you want to be it's the the the journey that is important I like the journey so far although although I have to tell you that some days I wake up and I say again I have to to to see those emails and that's it's not always uh uh the funniest uh job in the world sometimes it's fun sometimes it's not fun and it can move during the day as well but I think that's this particularity of not having to do things only for the sake of money and only for the sake of uh we need to give a return of uh that percentage and we need to have an IRR of that amount between doing something allows us to do these cool things that we're doing.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and I would say that that lack of obligation to meeting a hurdle rate or uh servicing debt etc is exactly what allows you to fully express your soul into each project and your your soul being your soul your interior designer your general managers your team fully into each project correct we have we currently have zero debt so it allows us not to we don't have to sell to we have to sell to to pay our salaries and everything but I don't have exactly all these uh things that doesn't let you sleep at night but we grow less fast yeah but it then you you you it ensures you stay unique with each product correct so evil um is there anything important that we haven't talked about that you want to mention to close out no I think that uh we went around uh everything I think that uh that uh it was an interesting conversation uh at least for me i i it was a monologue i almost spoke alone that's my issue my wife always tells me you speak too much my wife you you you you raised some very important points about hospitality and the stories behind uh your line of thinking is invaluable uh for for me talking about nameron hospitality and for the industry as a whole worldwide thank you i appreciate a lot the time that you gave me to to to share with you today evil thank you if you come to Miami or to Mexico ring me and I I know as well some restaurants okay awesome well gracias a tivo thank you thank you to you