 This episode of the podcast is supported by Audible. You can download and listen to the world's best storytelling. I use it all the time to and from work. You can listen to audiobooks, original series and more on their free app. To get your free 30 day subscription, which includes a free book, click on the link in our show notes and enjoy. Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. Today I had a great conversation with Hubert Virio who is the CEO of Yotel and they're a really cool hotel chain that have hotels around the world. Key airports and key cities and they're embarking on a really aggressive growth strategy to open more hotels. Really, really interesting. And we speak about Hubert's story. So what he's done and how he's got to be the CEO of Yotel and we hear about Yotel. So what their concept is and the fantastic growth that they're going on at the moment. And we also speak about the changes and dynamics going on in the hotel industry and how we've seen it change over the years. It's a really cool conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Hello Hubert. Good morning. Thank you very much for coming in. Thank you very much for having me. Pleasure, all the way from Marlborough. That's quite far away isn't it? That's quite far. I've been really looking forward to speaking to you about Yotel, the hotel industry and all of that good stuff. But before we do, I'd love to hear how you got to where you got to and what your story is. Absolutely, thanks for that. It's a funny story how I got there because I started in hospitality probably 20 years ago. Oh wow. You know, hotel school started with one of the big hotel brands and very quickly decided that hotels were not for me. So I left the industry and... How come? I don't know, I was much more interested by real estate, investments, alternative investments and so forth. And was this in France? No, I was, when I graduated I wrote a thesis on the Asian crisis which led me to obtain a job over there. So I was based in Shanghai at the time. I left the hotel industry and went into consultancy and then into real estate for the next 15 years, pretty much. And I joined a very large Middle Eastern group called the Al-Bahar Group which has various investments and I was in charge of their real estate investments. And eventually I was looking after one of the property development companies we had invested in in Thailand. So it brought me back to Asia for a while. Property company which we eventually sold and the board of the group invited me to join the board of one of the company they had invested in, which was U-Hotel, early 2014. And you were in Asia the whole time before? I was Dubai, Bangkok, Shanghai, back and forth. So basically the bulk of my career was between the Middle East and the Far East, right? So it was quite interesting. U-Hotel was a startup, kind of, our small hotel enterprise with four hotels and the reason I was invited to join this board was, you know, to work with the management team and to design a business plan to grow this company to the next level. Right, and was it privately owned at the time? Yep, it still is, still is. It was completely owned at the time while it was jointly owned by the founders of the business and the Al-Bahar Group as a kind of LP investor. Okay. So I was representing the LP in these meetings and trying to work out a business plan and so forth and then things have not worked out exactly as planned and there was a decision made that maybe it was time to restructure the investment into U-Hotel. And frankly speaking, to my surprise, I was invited to join the management team and take over the CEO role at U-Hotel. And I first said, no, I haven't worked in a hotel company for 15 plus years and I- And you didn't like it when you started? Well, it's not like you didn't like it where I had no real passion for it and so forth and then eventually, the chairman of the group and a number of people told me like, Hubert, we're not asking you to rent a hotel. We're asking you to build a company and that's what you're pretty good at. Done it several occasions in the past and build them, sell them, build them, sell them and so forth. So that's what you should do with U-Hotel. Just grow a multinational hotel company. Anyway, Arthur was super attractive. I spent a lot of time with my friends, looking at a lot of investors, a lot of partners and the ultimate Hubert. This concept is absolutely amazing. You just should go for it. So long story short, I said, okay, fine. Let's do it, right? Yeah, and let's get cracking with it and that's just over five years ago. Amazing, amazing. And what's the concept and the story behind it? So U-Hotel was founded just over 12 years ago by Simon Woodruff, who's a non-hotelier. It was quite interesting and I think he looked at the hotel kind of spectrum and realized it was rather boring and rather not in tune with what kind of the 21st century traveler and consumer is looking for and a very traditional, basically following a simple rule of the more you pay, the more you get, where when we are actually in the world of transparency, affordability and experiences. And I think he also got a lot of inspiration from different businesses he had set up and completely different industries from his restaurant businesses and also from his travel experiences with airlines and how airlines managed to create a wonderful experience at least for their premium passengers in a very small amount of space, right? I think an airline became a key source of inspiration for our businesses too. How does an aircraft carrier manage to create such a wonderful experience over like a first class cabin, which is typically between three and four square meter. Charge a lot for it, provide a multifunctional experience which is both a sleeping pod, an office, a dining room, a movie theater and get away with it and having people pay five, six times more to sit down there than elsewhere. And this whole kind of concept we thought were very interesting, how airlines utilize technology to fast track their passengers through checking process into the aircraft, select their seats and all this good stuff. So all of this kind of inspired, I think, Simon and the team at the time and Yotel was born thinking, okay, how do we create a product which is premium, multifunctional and affordable in key cities around the world? And eventually the conclusion was, well, the only way to do that is to provide to our target customers what they need and not what they don't need, right? And so remove from the room all the non-essential elements and just focus on the essential luxuries. So, and we thought, okay, in today's world people travel a lot, travel often, they don't travel for long. The average length of stay of a trip is two or three days. And yeah, and everybody's looking for a great experience and an affordable price. So with that customers in mind, we thought, well, then space is not the major differentiator, right? If you're only in your room for two nights, one night and actually during those two days or three days you're gonna spend it in a place, most of the time you're gonna spend discovering where you're at, either for work or for leisure or for whatever reason, then you really spend just a few hours in your room, right? So what you need in a room is not a lot of space. What you need in a room is a great bed, a great shower, a great cocoon environment, lots of technology to charge your batteries and so forth. But having a 40 square meter room is not essential. And that's very important because we were able to remove, my focusing on that, let's design great rooms as the first class aircraft do in a small space but very well designed, very well built off and removing the real estate. We were able to remove the most expensive element of a hotel which was the land, right? And as a result, our hotels became more affordable to build naturally, right? Which allows us to break even and make money for our investors at a lower price point and we then can reach an affordable price point with a good experience. We also removed all the non-essential services of hotels. We've seen over the 1970s, 80s hotels getting involved in all sorts of businesses. They shouldn't be in. Why are hotels offering six, seven different restaurants? They're great restorators in every city to do that. Why are they offering spa services? Great healthcare companies doing that. And on and on and on. So let's just focus what's important for a hotel customer, which is the room, a great lounge to chill and hang out and have a good breakfast in the morning. And also a health center because we've realized that today's customers are always health conscious. You want to do the gym, work out, yeah. And that's how your hotel was born and that's how we started doing business. Brilliant. And did you start in the airports? Yeah, so finally. You've only got two brands, right? Yeah, correct. So I suppose at a time in 2007 when the idea started to be rolled out, as I said, a lot of our inspiration came from the airline industry. So quite naturally, airports become the area where we let's test the idea there. And so the first hotel to open was in Gatwick Airport in 2007, very quickly followed by London Heathrow Airport and then Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Small hotels, 50 rooms, on average. And it located right into the terminal and targeting firstly and foremost one type of customer, the passenger, right? In transit, checking in early. So one night stay? Yeah, or just a few hours stay. Which is a few hours. This is what we realized. We should give full flexibility to our consumers. Instead of telling them you need to book a whole night, just book the number of hours you need. I need from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. because that's what I need to wait for my aircraft. Give it away, all right? Which creates operational challenges because you need to clean up the room several times a day and so forth. But which meets exactly where the customer wants and also allows us to be affordable because instead of sending a 24 hours stay, we just say again, exactly where the consumer wants. So that's where we started in 2007 and 2008. The three little airport hotels which still exist today and still do exceptionally well were very well received by the global travelers. There was a huge amount of publicity. I was not involved in the business then but I remember reading a lot about it. It was like so different, right? It took the market by storm. That at the time, the investors group decided, well, it's working, it's fantastic. We need to bring this one level further which is let's bring the concept in the city. Let's not just be an airport hotel. Let's be just a hotel, right? So the group embarked into a strategy which was let's create one flagship property in what's probably the most prominent hotel market in the world, New York City. Let's make it big. Let's make it really amazing and let's launch the brand and from there we'll start doing the company. Awesome. And was that, you opened that or was that already started? So the group, our holding company was already involved at the time, an Al Bajar group. I was still in a different division at the time. But yeah, I knew a lot about it of course which was a big investment. So Yotel, New York was born and opening 2011, 713 keys, right? We were managing three airport hotels averaging 50 keys at the time and suddenly we're managing this giant property in New York. And where about is it based? It's based on 42nd and 10th Street, so midtown, right? Hell's Kitchen, which is today one of the most dynamic, amazing district of New York. But I tell you, back in 2011, it was really like kind of maybe upcoming, right? It's very cool now. It's super cool. It's like where all the cool restaurants are. There's love to great condominium. It's super accessible. It's very close by Hudson Yard and so forth. 2011 was a bit of a different story. 2011 in New York, we were still in a post-GFC kind of environment. It was a bit sour in the overall environment and both domestically and internationally. Anyway, the hotel opened with Big Bang, July 2011. First year of operation, the hotel achieves 80% occupancy rate. And ever since then, the hotel has been pretty much fully booked. Amazing. We're running a 93, 94% occupancy rate year after year, year after year. And this is still the kind of two nights stays on average? It's actually, funnily enough, it's actually increased a bit. We're now at two and a half night stays, right? So people definitely enjoy it. Although the cabins were definitely designed around a short stay, but we see more and more long stay. And it's also quite amazing because when that hotel opened in 2011 in Manhattan, there were 85,000 hotel rooms in Manhattan, right? And Airbnb was not yet launched. Right, right. Today in Manhattan, you've got 130,000 hotel rooms. There's another 15,000 coming up, right? Wow. Obviously Airbnb launched. There's now, I'm not exactly sure, but 80,000 apartment listed in Manhattan a lot. 80,000. So if you think about it, the supply in Manhattan of short stay accommodation has more than doubled since we opened that hotel. The occupancy rate hasn't moved one dot, right? So it proves the strength of the concept. And that's what got me really excited back in 2013-14 when I was offered to join. So that's quite amazing a concept like that, right? How resilient it is and how popular it is. And New York is a cutthroat market, right? I mean, it's not like, not easy to do business there. So I got super excited, got involved. And on the back of those original three airport hotels which we now call the Yotel Air Properties because of their uniqueness within airports. And Yotel, New York, we started to launch the next phase of development for the company. Brilliant. And is it what you expected it would be like? Well, yes and no. So when I embarked in the business, we signed up with all the investors on the five-year business plan and we set up a number of targets, right? And I had, as I said earlier, a bit of time to think about all these and travel around the world and talk to other investors to really test the waters. How fast can we go? And we said, look, there's no reasons why within five years we shouldn't have 50 hotels, right? Which was quite bullish given that we had four, right? Yeah. This concept has got so much traction in New York, there's absolutely no doubt if you look at key CTVs around the world, you know, around the world, which is critical from Tokyo to Sydney to Singapore to Los Angeles, whatever, you'll find a market. We'll find the Yotel customer, right? And our investment thesis also, if you look at it from an investor point of view, building these very efficient kind of hotel real estate assets will be very attractive in these markets where the land is super expensive, right? So we can unlock value on projects which were until then perceived as undoable, too difficult, hotels are not going to work. So we embarked into that and today we have now 13 hotels in operation. We're opening number 14 at the end of the month in Amsterdam. Amazing. And we have another 17 under construction. So we're already at 30 properties, you know, and I've already stated them, either open or under construction to be delivered over the next 24 months. And we continue and finding new investment partners, new real estate companies. We keep on getting attracted by this concept. So in one hand, if I look at a big picture, are we on track with the plan as it works as planned? Oh yeah, even better. It's absolutely amazing. If you go into the details, it hasn't worked exactly as planned. It's been a bit more difficult with it. Nothing does, right? Interesting. And so once you're like working week like, are you are you focusing on these new openings and looking at new locations? Are you all running it operationally? Look, I think I've got, I'm very fortunate and blessed. I've got one of the most attractive job in the world because in one hand, we're building a company. So it's very much an entrepreneurial environment. It's, you see how this kind of startup kind of environment and excitement and speed. On the other hand, we're definitely becoming a bigger company, right? When I started, we were nine employees. We're now 65 employees in London, plus employees in New York and Singapore, plus all the hotel employees. So we also have the multinational enterprise challenges, right? We do business, we have hotels in operation from San Francisco to Singapore, and we've just announced our first hotel in Australia. So we really spread all across the world, which does create a number of challenges. So the way to deal with this in my kind of day-to-day weekly working life is firstly, I try to balance how much time I spent, you know, with the team and dealing with operational issues and then how much time I need to spend on traveling, meeting our investment partners, working with the hotels, et cetera. And I basically spend one week in London, one week traveling, one week in London, one week traveling, right? And London's your home base? Base in London with the rest of most of the team, and that's where our heads of departments are, and that's where we work on the business plans, we build the infrastructure, we work on HR-related issues, et cetera. That's, you know, so one week, I'm basically very much in the back office working in a building with the team, the company, and the other week I'm with the investors on all focus and growth. Yeah, yeah, interesting. What's been the biggest challenge you faced? I think honestly, the biggest challenge for any enterprise, generally speaking, but specifically small and fast-growing enterprise are people. Building a team is difficult. It's funny because in one hand, we're, when I listen to students or when I read about them in newspapers, et cetera, and everybody says, oh, we want to be part of startups, it's so exciting, we want to be part of big MNCs, et cetera. But then there's the hard reality of joining a startup, and it's hard, it's hard work, right? And the 80s also startups are not great training grounds because you just need to get on with it. And if you just get out of uni, you know, you're pretty very bright and super excited, et cetera, but you haven't trained yet. Yeah, you want to be a bit more direction in training, yeah. You need to, right? You need mentors, you need to grow, and the reality is in an enterprise like Yotel, we go so fast, you know, we are not yet very good at it. We try, and it's definitely part of our growth plan to build careers, learning development programs, et cetera, but at this stage, it's still a little bit all over the place. So you need to attract right talents, dynamic, see the vision of the company that enjoys this kind of entrepreneur environment, but at the same time, has got the experience. And now you've got second problems that very well experienced kind of executive in companies. Well, they're comfortably sitting in their armchairs with big jobs, nice perks, lots of people helping them, et cetera. And when you tell them, you know what? You need to come and join Yotel and nobody's going to help you. Okay. You know, you kind of go 10 years behind. After you're in a company. Exactly. So building a team is difficult. I think for any enterprise, any group, it's always difficult fighting the right talents. It's a little bit exacerbated in our case because we're global, because we're growing so fast, because the challenges are multiple. But I spend a lot of my time on the onus and it's working and it's happening. And it's, you know, I think that the biggest success we'll have besides the fact that all these hotels working hard and all this money and all this good stuff, but I said earlier, we started, we're like, you know, less than 10 people. And now we're multi-national companies with 65 plus HQ employees and all we've created all these employment opportunities in all these hotels across the world and creating that culture and people. And when we see career path and we've seen some of our executives who started a kind of meat ranking role within hotels and are there general managers of hotels? Yeah. That to me is the greatest sort of satisfaction. Satisfaction. No, definitely. It's interesting because a lot of young people, even if I find a lot of people wanting to work for high growth, small firms versus big companies, it's a bit more personal, you know, kind of more family people care. It's interesting. The reality is often a little bit different. You know, you don't necessarily get well, you get less support. I think that I was fortunate enough when I started career, I worked in the groups and even though eventually I did a circle and my career and going back to hospitality, etc. It's good to start and have people to mentor you through your first year into the active world, right? Some people don't need that. Great. But a lot of people do. And then you fly with your own wings and you can jump into an environment like ours. Now we're increasingly less of a startup and we've got much more structures and we can enroll executive at any levels and have the right programs to support them and grow them, etc. But the very, very early days of a startup are very difficult. Tough. I mean, you've got to do everything. Yeah. It's interesting because if you've gone to university and maybe you've done your masters, your life's just been laid out. You're told what to do, you do the study. Suddenly you're in the real world. And it's not the same as when you're in education. I couldn't wait when I was a student to go into the real world and I've enjoyed every day since then, but there's an adjustment period. And for us, it's very important to understand it because our business is built around a younger consumer and also a younger employee, right? And we believe that we're setting up an operation which should provide career opportunities to graduates and allow them to build up quickly their career. So it's very important for us, having said what I've just said, that we create the environment which allows and makes this happen. And our hotels are not meant to be run by veteran general managers with 30-year plus experience. It's meant to be run by young, dynamic, excited, entrepreneurial, executive, probably graduated three, four years ago. That's it. That's the vision, right? Because they build the energy that needs to drive into the hotel and so forth. And we also have, we're building infrastructure around in our head office and so forth to help them and ensure that, we give them a lot of leeway to make decisions at the same time, we ensure that they don't fall over, right? And now, so you started with one investor. I know you've recently taken more investment and has that changed the dynamics? Yeah, a little bit, right? And so two years ago, with our original investors, the Al-Bahar Group, we decided that to fast-track our growth, to validate the business as well and to help in operation, it would be in our interest to sell down part of the business to an institution, a group with great expertise in that domain. So that naturally brought us to speak with a number of groups and more specifically with Starwood Capital which obviously has a huge amount of experience in hospitality, being behind the creation of Starwood Hotels and Resorts and generally speaking as an investor in that industry. So a group which has the investment capabilities, the global network, but also the operational expertise because they have actually run hotel companies and even though it would be dilutive to bring a group like this in our company and to understand why you do that, you do it very well, why you sell down your company. So because it's going to add much more value than the share of the capital we're going to lose. So eventually we worked at a very interesting partnership with Starwood Capital whereby the Al-Bahar Group sold them 30% of their shares in the hotel to the fund and they also agreed to deploy part of their fund to invest into the hotel property. So there was multiple impact in there? It allowed us obviously to do more hotels, right? We've done Yotel Amsterdam with them, Yotel Edinburgh which opened last month, Yotel Glasgow which is opening early next year. So that you've built the buildings? Well they built the buildings. They built the buildings. We've converted them in where they are right now either under conversion or open properties under the Yotel standards and we're looking at many more deals with them. So immediately it has a growth impact, right, to be associated with the fund allows us to do more hotels, but it's more than that and we didn't just want to have a capital partner because the rate is we already, you know, it's great to have a strategic capital partner but we also have many others to be very frank. I mean we work with any capital partners out there from the Blackstone to the Willock to the whatever of the world or family officers or real estate development companies. I mean we're very, very open but what Starwood also brought to us is credibility, frank speaking, because you know whilst Yotel was people who think well that's interesting what's going with Yotel but the fact that in an institution like Starwood invests into the company is like I think the whole world suddenly realized what the heck is going on. There are these guys in Yotel that's certainly doing something right which is good and beyond that is a real help, you know. I mean the Starwood team is fantastic. They know the business. I mean you speak to real estate investors who understand hotels as well as hotel managers. I mean it's just amazing. So for me search as a CEO and having guys from Starwood on our board is very helpful to bounce ideas, build a business, recruit people, etc. And then they're quite hands-off so that they can use them when... I don't think Starwood would, I think they would agree with me that they're not a hands-off investor. They're a private equity hands-on investor which is perfectly fine with me. The Alba Haar Group is also a hands-on investors. I think there's a lot of passion from both from the top heads of Starwood Capital and Alba Haar Group that they both love this little project, Yotel. And so they're always quite interested in what's going on and it's great. That's great, yeah. You know, the worst thing is actually a hands-off investor that doesn't care about what you do. I mean Yotel is high up in their agenda which is great. So we have attention. We look at so many projects together. We review business plans together and so forth. And they also force us to be a better management company, right? Private equity groups require way more reporting, probably... More rigor. More rigor, which is good. Yeah, it's great. We need to be ready for that anyway. More options, better decisions. Agreed. No, it's brilliant. Absolutely. Have you seen the market, the hotel market change since you've been... How have you seen it developing? It's changing constantly. There are some global trends and then because we're exposed to many different markets, we see also many different local trends, right? I mentioned one earlier about New York, right? That has gone through such a supply increase. I mean, that has to change the way you run a hotel. When your supply doubled in five years, six years, seven years, you need to run your business in a more cutthroat manner and then probably used to. I think it sounds like your concept is playing well to that. Oh yeah, yeah, correct. On the global trends, which is certainly supporting the business, is generally speaking, travelers are more cost-conscious, right? For different reasons. One is because maybe the economy is doing not that great or is expected to do not that great. Two is because enterprises are way smarter nowadays in how they manage corporate travel. It's not just all business class, all five-star hotels for everyone, far from it. And I'm talking about the biggest MNCs out there, just small enterprise. And the leisure traveler, the independent traveler is also traveling very differently because he got all the information from the internet and so forth. And also different options, right? Besides hotels, you know, have apartments, you've got all sorts of ways to stay, you can go glamping, whatever. There's also many different trends coming up out there. So I went glamping a few weeks ago. So these trends actually, well, they create a more competitive environment. They play quite well for us, right? Because we are this affordable, cool, high-quality product and it kind of ticks the box for these travelers. So you'll see we benefit from some travelers really who used to stay in more luxurious hotels and realize it's either too expensive or their company doesn't want to pay for it anymore or what the heck, I don't need it. And so we see them going downstream towards us or the other way around is those people saying, I want more experience. I'm a terrorist, it's budget hotels that provide me just convenience. I want something more cool. I want something more in line with my own me, right? And as a result, and that's what they see in Yota. This is more in line with their beliefs and so forth. So this kind of trends, well, everyone would say, are you not scared about this? Airbnb? Well, actually, so far it's worked out quite well for us because we were all positioned we're in a nice part of the segment in a nice niche segment. And then locally, as I said, there's plenty of different trends. I mean, we've got supply issues in New York. We've got our two airport hotels in London, our hotel in Edinburgh, soon opening in Glasgow, soon opening another hotel in London. So we're very exposed to the UK and here we are in the middle of Brexit and so forth. It is what's going to happen here. But you know, I think if you ask most hoteliers in the UK so far, it's actually worked out quite well for them. So so far so good. Well, maybe people are staying and doing doing trips in the UK more and also the pound while this journey is significantly cheaper than what I moved here four years ago. So certainly makes the UK much more affordable through this nation for a lot of people. Yeah. An Airbnb? Have you seen? Yeah. Well, Airbnb is, I mean, clearly has an impact. Blind not to see that. But it's the funny thing is, I think it has a it doesn't have a really an impact on on demand, like as in the volume of demand, quite the opposite, they actually induced new demand, you know, because Airbnb is growing globally, but you know, and so for us, we see here in London, as in New York, San Francisco, their head office, the in Singapore, it's even started everywhere, right? But our occupancy rate is doing very well. What's what's Airbnb is doing? So which means, which seems to indicate that they're inducing new demand into the into the market. Yeah. What it does, I think it impacts quite hard some segments, right? Probably the more luxuries, long stay kind of business, because now there's a lot of alternative to your traditional service department businesses. And it impacts overall for everyone, including us rates, right? Because more supply is tougher to build your rates, right? So there's no doubt in my mind that without Airbnb, we would have seen pretty a faster growth in our ADRs, average room rates overall, that what we've seen. Now we've still seen some very positive growth across the portfolios, which great. But the fact that there's alternative accommodations out there puts a bit of pressure on rates. Yeah. Interestingly, Airbnb is increasingly getting into the distribution of hotels, right? Oh, really? Yeah, they are starting to list hotels on their on their website. I mean, we've tested one of our hotel here, which is listed on Airbnb. And then they get them. Well, it's still minimal business compared to other distribution channels. But it's very interesting that they're getting in there. That is interesting. So Airbnb is increasingly becoming an online travel agent. That's right. Yeah. Which is another trend, which we need to deal with, right? And it's a very different trend. Online travel agents are not negative. They bring in a lot of business and visibility for hotels. They're just expensive. Yes. Yeah, yeah. But they charge, they charge both, the customer and... Airbnb does, yeah? Yeah. You're booking.com and they charge us the hotels. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what are the plans for the future? Well, we're continuing. So with with Starwood that came on board two years ago, with all these hotels coming online, we have two major plans going on, or three major plans going on. One is, obviously, to continue growing, right? And we're doing well, but we're not yet where we want to be. And we want to continue. And it's very important for our future because objective right now is to establish those flagship properties in all these key cities around the world. Yeah. So establish the brand, route it in those markets, which we think are key for our long-term future. And once we've done that, we'll be able to grow locally, right? So, okay. Like we've done in the US, New York, opening 2011, we've just announced our 10th hotel a month ago. So now the US is becoming the whole region, right? And then we're going to continue growing that. Similarly, in the UK, now we've got five, six hotels. So we'll grow the regions around these flagship hotels. So we need to continue establishing our footprint around the world. That's a key objective, of course. In parallel, and as importantly, we need to continue building the operation, building the platform to ensure that, you know, deliver on the results that investors have appointed us for, managing those hotels properly. So building the platform is as important because we need to deliver results to our investors. And then the third objective is, you know, and it's, to a certain extent, it's a more complex one, is we need to, you know, we've integrated technology in the heart of our company and technology to facilitate and to improve guest experience, technology to make. So like check in, check out. Correct. You know, remove some of the traditional, boring things you had to do in a hotel. As you said, check in, check out, whatever, queuing, paying, etc. Technology to facilitate and improve operations. And also technology just to continue remain an innovative and worthwhile brand, right? I think that today's consumer is always looking for more. And it's difficult because it's so, you know, remaining at a forefront of technology is not just about buying the latest TVs and latest iPhone and all that. It's not sustainable to always do that and secondly, it's not really what it is. So we need to continue working on that and remaining innovative, etc. So we've made some time ago a partnership with a big tech incubator called Plug and Play, based in the valley. And they help us, you know, keep on reviewing new ideas, new innovations. You can try some things. Yeah, they were introduced us to, you know, startups. It can be a startup of one person, saying enough, you just come up with a great idea or actually a pretty well-funded business, which is where we come with that. And see continuously how we can integrate these ideas to continue being at the forefront of kind of the new hotel industry. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. I love it. Great story. Thank you very much for coming in. Thank you very much. I look forward to staying in one of your hotels soon. Please. And yeah. You're most welcome and I hope that those listening to us had an interest in that and we'll visit our hotels very soon. Definitely. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye. Hey, folks. Thanks for listening. 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