Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Business Week Extra podcast. I'm Jason Kelly and
Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masster in New York. This week, not everyone
Speaker 1: could get in still to help celebrate the opening of
Speaker 1: the Time Square Edition hotel. The man behind it someone
Speaker 1: closely identified with the hospitality industry. It is Ian Schreeger,
Speaker 1: founder and chairman of the Ian Schraeger Company. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: when you think of hotels, we think of you. Congratulations
Speaker 1: this well, thank you. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: this new one, because I think everyone was saying Times
Speaker 1: Square isn't that where tours go? Well, that's gonna change now. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a very special hotel, very sophisticated,
Speaker 1: very simple, very refined, juctiposed against the boisterous, noisy, disorganized,
Speaker 1: a chaotic area down in in Times Square. And when
Speaker 1: you can bind those two things together, it happens. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Uh. In that hotel, by the way, we have
Speaker 1: for five different restaurants done by a Michelin Star chef,
Speaker 1: the first Michelin Star chef in Times Square ever. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's the first luxury hotel in Times Square ever. And
Speaker 1: it's the first time that we're going to be creating
Speaker 1: a multi media visual uh popular culture entertainment of everything
Speaker 1: possible and everything imaginable. Um, and you hope to bring
Speaker 1: in a lot of New Yorkers. Right, It's totally gayed
Speaker 1: to the New Yorkers, like every hotel we've ever done,
Speaker 1: because when people visit New York, they want to go
Speaker 1: where they think people in the know of New York. Alright,
Speaker 1: so give us an analog throughout your career to this hotel,
Speaker 1: because I think back, one of the things I thought
Speaker 1: about when I saw this was the Hudson Hotel, which
Speaker 1: is not too far from the from this new hotel,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't living in New York at the time,
Speaker 1: but I did get the sense when I showed up
Speaker 1: to stay there that there were actual New Yorkers hanging
Speaker 1: out in that bar with the lit floor. So is
Speaker 1: that something that we could sort of get our heads
Speaker 1: around when we think about this, Well, sure, but every
Speaker 1: hotel you know we do is uh, it cared for
Speaker 1: the people who live in that city and are in
Speaker 1: the know, because there's nothing more boring than a traditional
Speaker 1: hotel bar or traditional hotel restaurant. People want to go
Speaker 1: where they think cool people people in the no go.
Speaker 1: All right, So how did you figure that out? Not intellectually,
Speaker 1: but how do you write exactly? Like do you use
Speaker 1: We talked so much about people using data? How do
Speaker 1: you figure out what it is that New Yorkers want?
Speaker 1: You know, I do everything instinctive. Uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: do everything for myself. Uh that I personally like, I
Speaker 1: see things maybe other people can see. Connect the dots, uh,
Speaker 1: tells me what's going on? We're aheaded Uh what do
Speaker 1: people reacting to? And I think any creative person, filmmakers
Speaker 1: do films, they like, fashions on is, do close they like, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So it's it's unusual in a very capital intensive industry
Speaker 1: to jettison to data and well the kind of demographic
Speaker 1: things that I think is they're relevant and just follow
Speaker 1: your instinct, follow your nose. And that's the way it's
Speaker 1: always worked for me. All right, So why did you
Speaker 1: get into the hotel business in the first place, Because
Speaker 1: you obviously were in the hospitality business broadly defined. But
Speaker 1: what took you to hotels specifically? Well? Ones uh not
Speaker 1: so sexy response and ones A sexy And I just
Speaker 1: say he's smiling big. Whichever response you want to go
Speaker 1: to give you both, gives you both, you know. For
Speaker 1: the sexy respond it's, uh, it's the the nightclub business
Speaker 1: of the goal is taking care of people, making sure
Speaker 1: they have good, good time, they have fun. And that's
Speaker 1: the same goal in the hospitality business. Uh, the not
Speaker 1: so sexy responses that when we's old Studio fifty four,
Speaker 1: we took back promissory notes, and when the guy couldn't
Speaker 1: pay the promissory notes, we traded his interest in a
Speaker 1: hotel for our interest in the promissory notes. So that
Speaker 1: you're in business, what do you like more? Well? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I I've said everything I have to say
Speaker 1: in a strict dancing, nightclub kind of place. I kind
Speaker 1: of liked the hotel world because it's a combination of
Speaker 1: everything sleeping, eating, bathing, dining, dancing, entertaining, working, socializing. It's
Speaker 1: a kind of combination of everything people you like to do,
Speaker 1: and now the distinction between all those things are getting blurred.
Speaker 1: So it's a I still have a lot, a lot
Speaker 1: to say. Well, and I mean this in in both
Speaker 1: the literal and maybe figurative and wider sense of the
Speaker 1: word but hotels ultimately are about intimacy as well, right absolutely,
Speaker 1: And uh, you know people forget when they go for
Speaker 1: all the focus groups and the data and the millennials
Speaker 1: and a lot kind of thinking that they forget. It's just, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a business about people and people's desires and dreams
Speaker 1: and urges and and and those things don't change. I mean,
Speaker 1: everything else changes, but not those uh, human conditions. Right
Speaker 1: you talk about we talk about the animal spirits of
Speaker 1: the market. You know that you just react to things
Speaker 1: and that's just how it goes. And you want somebody
Speaker 1: to walk in and have a certain kind of reaction, right, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know. And and it's hard to define it, but
Speaker 1: we all know it when we see it. That we
Speaker 1: all know it when we feel it. We know when
Speaker 1: we're in an exciting place. We know when there's time
Speaker 1: or an excitement in the air, we know when there's
Speaker 1: romance in the air, we know when there's danger in
Speaker 1: the era, you know. So you know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: kind a very obvious thing to me. Well, and and
Speaker 1: maybe as an homage to your past, I mean you're
Speaker 1: including a club in this hotel, correct, Well, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: not a traditional club. Uh, it's it's a UM, it's
Speaker 1: very hard to put in a box because I know
Speaker 1: we all like to Even with studio when we did that,
Speaker 1: it was very hard to define what it was. You know.
Speaker 1: We we have to see how the people use it
Speaker 1: and then we can try and put a name on it.
Speaker 1: This is for nightlife, and it's also during the day,
Speaker 1: and it's also for business. But it's a kind of
Speaker 1: very communal, socializing, visual invigorating place. Um that Um, the
Speaker 1: last two nights we've had things there and it had
Speaker 1: the same kind of energy. Uh. That would have seemed
Speaker 1: it was gonna to explode of that studio act many
Speaker 1: many years ago, but it was different. It was a
Speaker 1: different kind of thing. So I want to go back
Speaker 1: to something you said about your instincts, because obviously they're good.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody would doubt that. But we also
Speaker 1: know that instincts are honed, they are refined over time.
Speaker 1: So take us inside your mind. What how do you
Speaker 1: do that? What do you read? What do you look at?
Speaker 1: We know from getting to know you a little bit,
Speaker 1: you're a consumer of many media. What do you look at?
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a consumer of all media because I
Speaker 1: never know when something will give me an impulse for
Speaker 1: an idea. You know. The my um tech person in
Speaker 1: my family's my eight year old son. Uh, And I'm
Speaker 1: not from that generation. But the one thing, you know,
Speaker 1: I've never part of the Facebook, never, never part of
Speaker 1: any of that. But the one thing I do do
Speaker 1: a lot is um Instagram. Why because I used to
Speaker 1: read everything I can get my hands on, every magazine
Speaker 1: or every book of interest, so magazine, all the magazines
Speaker 1: I used to read, they all had great a great editor.
Speaker 1: On Instagram, there's tens of millions of editors with tens
Speaker 1: of millions of different viewpoints and ideas, and so I
Speaker 1: look at that, not socialized, I look at it for ideas,
Speaker 1: and it's incredible. I'm looking at a magazine with tens
Speaker 1: of millions of editors, somebody's Instagram profile and just kind
Speaker 1: of look through their pictures. What do you do when
Speaker 1: you start putting things that you like and it kind
Speaker 1: of builds on itself and you start seeing presumably sort
Speaker 1: of little trends, You start connecting some dots among all
Speaker 1: of those, as you say, editors out there, Yes, and
Speaker 1: it's uh, I find it so stimulating, you know, when
Speaker 1: I looked to Instagram, I'm not looking to socialize with someone.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for what other people are thinking and and
Speaker 1: and ideas emerged from that and I so I find
Speaker 1: it incredibly stimulating. So can you tell us something that
Speaker 1: you that sort of bubbled up for you from looking
Speaker 1: at Instagram that maybe you've put into practice, you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: I see the Uh. Well, I get that also from
Speaker 1: my son, by the way, like I the other day,
Speaker 1: you know, my son plays Fortnite, UH, and UH, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize, you know, what a huge business it was
Speaker 1: and how much money it's evolved with it. And then
Speaker 1: I saw on one of the uh it might have
Speaker 1: been Bloomberger or something else. I saw where one of
Speaker 1: the people who run the Big game company and the
Speaker 1: kind of the scope of what's happening with that and
Speaker 1: how big business it is. And then I was in
Speaker 1: UH in Florida, and I took my son to a
Speaker 1: a virtual reality place which is really the next generation,
Speaker 1: which is which was probably millions of dollars put into
Speaker 1: this thing. It's in the very beginning stages. It's changing.
Speaker 1: So what do we do. We go into Times Square
Speaker 1: with the Times Square edition. We have a JumboTron outside.
Speaker 1: We hire a lot of video and visual artists to
Speaker 1: put stuff on the JumboTron. We're not selling anything. All
Speaker 1: we're doing is visualizing art increasing our presence. Uh and
Speaker 1: uh it's been amazing. Uh and uh so you know,
Speaker 1: and if I was wrong, no problem. Does your eight
Speaker 1: year old get a consultant fee for that one? Sorry?
Speaker 1: Does your eight year old get a consultant fee for that?
Speaker 1: My wife asking me Jesus agent today? Doesn't? When you
Speaker 1: were also part of our year Ahead summit here um,
Speaker 1: and you talked a lot about co living as kind
Speaker 1: of the next wave or next disruptor in terms of
Speaker 1: the hospitality industry, how do you see that impact? I
Speaker 1: still living, and I still believe in coworking. You know,
Speaker 1: in the coworking space there hasn't been a lot of quality,
Speaker 1: quality product done. But you know, my theory on on
Speaker 1: the co working, by the way, is that you know,
Speaker 1: we work in these marble edifices, beautiful office buildings of
Speaker 1: old uh and in our little cubicles. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: we go home and you know, we get on the
Speaker 1: computer and Facebook, so just kind of really a little
Speaker 1: less personal interaction. So what happens coworking comes along. You
Speaker 1: can work and you can have personal interaction. That is.
Speaker 1: I think that's the way things, you know, happen, and
Speaker 1: you can only tell by connecting the dots. And I
Speaker 1: think you know, with the living, you know, these trends
Speaker 1: going on about um uh, younger people, um, living home, longer,
Speaker 1: having babies later. Um. They don't put the same emphasis
Speaker 1: on things I did. I couldn't wait to get a
Speaker 1: call when I was eighteen. My girls they don't care,
Speaker 1: but they don't want a car. They don't want the
Speaker 1: headache of it. So social things change. And I think
Speaker 1: the co living uh, provided somebody could do a good
Speaker 1: job of it, and provided somebody you know, you still
Speaker 1: have your privacy. Uh, but it's much leorth expensive, which
Speaker 1: is the benefit of technology, by the way, right, it's
Speaker 1: less expensive port it's easier. Uh. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the future. Well you're already I mean, you're in the
Speaker 1: hospitality industry, you're doing residential. Are you saying that Ian
Speaker 1: that you would think about doing office? Uh? I think
Speaker 1: about doing anything that people uh uh immerse themselves into
Speaker 1: and would like something momore stimulating, more inspiring and makes
Speaker 1: them productive. I don't care what that is, offices, hospitals,
Speaker 1: we're timing homes, whatever that is. It's interesting for me.
Speaker 1: So you've talked about sort of the through line of
Speaker 1: your own career, you know, from studio to to where
Speaker 1: you are today. Whiten the aperture for us a little
Speaker 1: bit as a society, as as a people, you know,
Speaker 1: especially here in New York City. What's the legacy now
Speaker 1: so many decades on of studio? You know, studio there
Speaker 1: were too Uh. I think paradigm shifting events, cultural events
Speaker 1: in my life Woodstock, uh and uh and uh and studio.
Speaker 1: I think people don't talk too much about Woodstock anymore,
Speaker 1: even though that happened you a little bit later, but
Speaker 1: around the same time. And I studied about Woodstock in
Speaker 1: law school, you know, the suspension of laws and what
Speaker 1: was illegal and so and so forth. You know. But
Speaker 1: I think I am surprised, and I am amazed about
Speaker 1: the interesting in studio And what is it about that
Speaker 1: that people still fascinated about and and and what The
Speaker 1: only logical explanation I can come up with is that
Speaker 1: there are very few times in in people's lives where
Speaker 1: you can h experience absolute freedom. Um, there are no
Speaker 1: ramifications of anything that you're doing. You can be yourself
Speaker 1: if there's a celebrity right next to you, nobody cares.
Speaker 1: Everybody's there to just let it all hang out and
Speaker 1: have fun. Uh and uh, you know, I think there
Speaker 1: aren't many times that you experienced it and there wasn't
Speaker 1: anything you would do that night. You couldn't get up
Speaker 1: the next morning and walk away from so Althowise, I
Speaker 1: cannot come up with an explanation for why the fascination
Speaker 1: with it, you know over of forty two years later?
Speaker 1: Can we can we not do that again? Because of
Speaker 1: social media? I think about people when they go somewhere right,
Speaker 1: everything is documented. Can we not have that kind of
Speaker 1: space again? I think that's um, you know what the
Speaker 1: intellectual uh people think. You know, it was a different time.
Speaker 1: New York was different. Uh, you don't have the technology
Speaker 1: and the demographics are different. But I don't believe that.
Speaker 1: You know, I think everything changes. But you know you
Speaker 1: still have Burning Man where something similar to Studio happened.
Speaker 1: You still have those uh really cool nightclubs in East
Speaker 1: Berlin that is happening. Those are the only still have clubs.
Speaker 1: And I besa that still it still happens. I just
Speaker 1: think somebody has to find a current expression of that,
Speaker 1: you know, for a nightclub, which we're not calling it
Speaker 1: a nightclub, but we think we're playing around and flirting
Speaker 1: with that at the Paradise club, at the hotel, you know,
Speaker 1: to to achieve that full, full freedom. So you know,
Speaker 1: the Matt Turnout, who was the director of the Studio
Speaker 1: fifty four documentary, he doesn't think it could be repeated.
Speaker 1: I do, uh and uh, you know, because uh, it's
Speaker 1: just the the to hims of the skirts go up
Speaker 1: and down, and they need to call its. Change haircuts, change, refrigerators, automobiles,
Speaker 1: everything changes, but the basic human condition doesn't change. I
Speaker 1: think about we've talked about just workouts, how people are
Speaker 1: now wanting to come together to work out, to kind
Speaker 1: of have that sense of community. And I do wonder
Speaker 1: because the social media has been so increasingly isolating, where
Speaker 1: the people will look for places like that where they
Speaker 1: can just kind of come together with friends or even
Speaker 1: people they don't know. Yes, it is isolating, and and
Speaker 1: and and people will be reacting to that, you know,
Speaker 1: like they have rave now where people coming up they
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of them, and and and and they
Speaker 1: exercise to music, and it's kind of a social thing,
Speaker 1: but there's a serious aspect, you know to it. So
Speaker 1: those things change, they evolve, they make left turns, right turns,
Speaker 1: but all of those things to me indicate there is
Speaker 1: a desire to socialize. So we have a couple of
Speaker 1: quick questions that we want to ask you, a little
Speaker 1: little rapid fire, we like to call it. When you travel,
Speaker 1: where do you stay only in the public or addition, okay,
Speaker 1: if they're not around, though, you know, I always try
Speaker 1: and stay in a place that's stylish, you know that
Speaker 1: I I feel comfortable and I don't want to stay
Speaker 1: in a hotel that has fake French antiques, you know,
Speaker 1: over the top or pretentious or presumptuous. You know. So
Speaker 1: I like staying in in in a hotel not contrived,
Speaker 1: you know, not something over the top, not over zealous design,
Speaker 1: but something that kind of tasteful that I feel comfortable
Speaker 1: and so um. You know. But but there's there's editions
Speaker 1: every real and growing and growing, I know. So you
Speaker 1: talked about taking this macro view and seeing all of
Speaker 1: the different influencers, but if you had to zero in
Speaker 1: on one or two people who were really influential in
Speaker 1: your mind right now, who would it be, oh, dead
Speaker 1: or alive? Alive? Alive is more difficult, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think uh historically will be Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: in Walt Disney by far and away. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and they still resonate obviously with a lot of their influence,
Speaker 1: still clearly felt definitely stay with that. Why Steve Jobson
Speaker 1: Walt Disney, you know, the and between the two. Uh,
Speaker 1: even though Steve Jobs is more compelling right now because
Speaker 1: of the technology, Uh, Walt Disney. Uh did things across
Speaker 1: a lot of disciplines, not just one thing. So you know,
Speaker 1: by thinking about it, you know, I I love what
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs did. You know, I love the marketing I
Speaker 1: you know, I love his relentlessness, you know, his drive
Speaker 1: for excellence, uncompromising. You know, that's the way you do
Speaker 1: a product, and that's the way you create a cult.
Speaker 1: Which that's our goal, creating a cult. Uh. Walt Disney
Speaker 1: was but he did so many different things over the
Speaker 1: first guy to do merchandise, and I mean he did
Speaker 1: over so many first guy to do those nature programs
Speaker 1: that we all love. I mean, he animations, movies, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: so they both inspired me today. Um, you know, did
Speaker 1: I have a different kind of group. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: fascinated by the the men that run uh big big companies,
Speaker 1: you know, like Mike Bloomberg, who I wish would run
Speaker 1: for president, Like Annie Sorensen who uh your runs Marriott,
Speaker 1: who's the loveliest guy and smartest, you know, a whip.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of inspired by them because it shows me that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, entrepreneurs. Skill set of an entrepreneur is not
Speaker 1: suitable for running a big company, nor is the suitable
Speaker 1: for running the country. And so those guys, uh, they
Speaker 1: can run anything and we have to of course they
Speaker 1: Michael Bloomberg, the owner of Bloomberg LP. And of course
Speaker 1: that's this podcast falls under. All right, so how do
Speaker 1: you relax? Uh? Now, I really just being with my family,
Speaker 1: and I'm probably the happiest I've ever been. You know.
Speaker 1: I love what I do. It's a job I would
Speaker 1: take if I didn't need a job, uh and uh
Speaker 1: and I don't uh. And when I'm not working, I
Speaker 1: worked very hard, but because I enjoyed it, you know,
Speaker 1: like hanging out with my wife and and uh and
Speaker 1: my five kids, and you like watching news, right, all
Speaker 1: the time. We know that. Can I just tell a story?
Speaker 1: Do you mind? You've come into our studio before, and
Speaker 1: we have a lot of monitors in in our radio studio.
Speaker 1: We have to monitor different networks and feeds. And you
Speaker 1: walk in you're like, how do I get one of these?
Speaker 1: And we're like, you're inch ring or you could get one.
Speaker 1: It's a dream, all right. So before we let you go,
Speaker 1: gotta ask you your favorite moment from Studio fifty four,
Speaker 1: you know would be at perhaps a little surprising. I remember,
Speaker 1: you know, Steve and I I was twenty nine, and yes,
Speaker 1: uh and uh, I think Steve was like a thirty
Speaker 1: three thirty four, you know, and up to that point, uh, nightclubs.
Speaker 1: That was right on the end of the garage phase
Speaker 1: of doing nightclubs, like the garage phase of doing rock
Speaker 1: and roll, the garage phase of doing technology. So you know,
Speaker 1: there wasn't you didn't get on the front page of
Speaker 1: a newspaper or anything like that to remember the opening night.
Speaker 1: As soon as the club um passed to the critical
Speaker 1: point and everything was, you know, working well and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. Of course I went home and
Speaker 1: Steve stayed there, and so I get a phone call
Speaker 1: from Steve at five in the morning. Uh, like, exalting
Speaker 1: that we were on the front page of the New
Speaker 1: York Post is just the first, never been been done
Speaker 1: before with the opening, so it was like we just
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. It's funny. That's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: favorite moments. And then of course I have a lot
Speaker 1: of them, but um, I'm not telling you. All right,
Speaker 1: we'll say that hopefully for a future maybe we'll love it.
Speaker 1: You get the new hotel and we'll do that. Ian Steer,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, really appreciate it. Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. And that wraps up our Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: Extra podcast. Check out our daily show every day two
Speaker 1: to five Wall Street Time for Carol Masser. I'm Jason Kelly.