Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Well, it turns out that what Gen Z and millennials
Speaker 2: want when they take a vacation is a bit different
Speaker 2: than what previous generations we're looking for when they went
Speaker 2: on vacation. So bye bye clubs, Hello wellness clinics. That's
Speaker 2: the bet that our next guest is making. He's the
Speaker 2: CEO and chairman of SBE. It's hospitality group that manages
Speaker 2: and operates hotels, restaurants, lounges and nightclubs. The company has
Speaker 2: partnered with Wyndham Hotels and Resorts to launch a new
Speaker 2: smart lifestyle brand called Project HQ Hotels and Resorts with
Speaker 2: us as SAMs Aeri and the chairman and CEO of
Speaker 2: SBE joining us from Miami. Sam, good to have you
Speaker 2: with us. I'm so interested in the differences between generations
Speaker 2: in terms of what they want when they go on
Speaker 2: vacation or or or when they're away from their homes.
Speaker 2: Talk to us a little bit about what you found
Speaker 2: in these differences, the market research that you did and
Speaker 2: what you learned.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you for having me. No, it's been
Speaker 3: an interesting journey. I mean from a guy like me
Speaker 3: who started in the hotel business about twenty two years
Speaker 3: ago and I was building brands for myself. I don't
Speaker 3: think we had a generation name. But back then we
Speaker 3: were admiring these new emerging category called boutique hotels and
Speaker 3: that was a very interesting, very very small lane that
Speaker 3: guys like Ian Schrager and Andre Belas and w had
Speaker 3: really formulated and it was very very you know, very
Speaker 3: unique for a traditional hotel operator or a big public
Speaker 3: company hotel company to understand that design, food and beverage,
Speaker 3: you know, at the highest level exclusivity in these hotels
Speaker 3: were going to be you know, exactly what they are
Speaker 3: today in the world called lifestyle. And I think that
Speaker 3: same thinking right looking at things completely different and also
Speaker 3: trying to understand a new consumer for us at SBE
Speaker 3: because we built the largest lifestyle company in the world,
Speaker 3: forty one hotels around the world branded residential, and we
Speaker 3: were building to an aging consumer like myself. But what
Speaker 3: we noticed about four or five years ago is that consumer,
Speaker 3: the fastest growing and most coveted consumer across the board,
Speaker 3: and hospitality were this next generation and to us, you know,
Speaker 3: building you know, for me as a forty eight year old,
Speaker 3: to try to identify what's important to somebody who's nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one all the way up to thirty five
Speaker 3: was probably not going to work. And I didn't have
Speaker 3: the relevancy. So we decided to really kind of double click,
Speaker 3: as they say, or dive deep into the world, into
Speaker 3: their world, and to do that, we were able to
Speaker 3: really understand as a whole new language, a whole new
Speaker 3: language and relevancy and things that are important to this
Speaker 3: new upcoming consumer, the fastest growing consumer in hospitality globally.
Speaker 3: And you know, we decided to really partner with the
Speaker 3: people that they think are important and understand the mindset
Speaker 3: from various different celebrities, YouTubers, entrepreneurs that are relevant in
Speaker 3: that world. And we've done that, I think, very convincingly
Speaker 3: and really understand that this new consumer has different KPIs,
Speaker 3: different things that are important to them, authenticity, experience. They're
Speaker 3: not spending money on things that we were spending money
Speaker 3: on when we were growing up, like homes and cars,
Speaker 3: and they really want a really authentic voice and the
Speaker 3: only real brand that has spoken to them in the
Speaker 3: last five to ten years has been Airbnb, and that's
Speaker 3: a very interesting way to look at their mindset. And
Speaker 3: with Project HQ, we really focused on building a very
Speaker 3: interesting ecosystem around multiple brands, multiple experiences.
Speaker 4: Think maybe you could walk us through a few examples
Speaker 4: of what are we actually going to see in these
Speaker 4: new hotels and resorts, an example of what it looks
Speaker 4: like when a resort caters to the next generation Gen
Speaker 4: Z millennials. Does this mean, you know, more spas, more
Speaker 4: smoothie bars, maybe less nightclubs building in the hotel? What
Speaker 4: is this actually going to look like?
Speaker 3: I think our perspective has been, you know, food is
Speaker 3: really the key of experiences in hotels, food, design, accessibility,
Speaker 3: and also authenticity, which is a big word, you know,
Speaker 3: but really authenticity means building brands that resonate with people
Speaker 3: that really stand for something right. So obviously for us,
Speaker 3: we've built a huge business in the past around full
Speaker 3: service and you know, very glitzy, glamory type environments. Those
Speaker 3: don't really we've seen it in our clubs and restaurants. Curly,
Speaker 3: they don't resonate to that next demographic, So we've kind
Speaker 3: of pivoted into building more. We call it democratizing food.
Speaker 3: You know, we've gone to all of our James Very
Speaker 3: chefs and we've asked them to create a premium QSR
Speaker 3: version of what they've done for us in full service.
Speaker 3: We've now partnered with fifteen YouTube phenomenons, you know, you
Speaker 3: know people at entrepreneurs that that these people follow, they
Speaker 3: connect with and we've created food brands with those folks.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, I think the property scale also
Speaker 3: has has a lot. I mean, we were now within
Speaker 3: our pipeline looking at resorts in Europe, in the Caribbean,
Speaker 3: urban US markets that are smaller, that don't have three
Speaker 3: hundred four hundred rooms, but also have you know, a
Speaker 3: sense of you know, a sense that isn't overwhelming. And
Speaker 3: we're layering in and a lot of our plan is
Speaker 3: done through conversion. We're taking old buildings and bringing them
Speaker 3: to life and and I think from our perspective injecting them.
Speaker 3: I think you led the segment with wellness. I think
Speaker 3: it's not necessarily just about wellness. It's about longevity, it's
Speaker 3: about understanding, you know, technology. I mean a lot of
Speaker 3: the things that we're doing are partnering with companies with
Speaker 3: MRI scanning, bone density scanning, giving the tools to better
Speaker 3: understand what's going on on the inside of your body,
Speaker 3: so then you can affect kind of the long standing
Speaker 3: health benefits, which I think is very important to this
Speaker 3: demographic and psychographic more importantly. So that's kind of how
Speaker 3: we look at it. It's a comprehensive approach. There isn't
Speaker 3: a magic bullet. I think it's just a commitment to
Speaker 3: authenticity to this group with people they trust.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering how you're thinking about the demographics of the
Speaker 2: people you're trying to attract. Right now, we only have
Speaker 2: about a minute left, Sam, but we do hear about
Speaker 2: the way that younger consumers in this country are struggling
Speaker 2: and they don't necessarily have the discretionary income to spend
Speaker 2: on stuff like this. How are you thinking about that
Speaker 2: just in the last forty five seconds we have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, listen, I think from a perspective of discretionary income,
Speaker 3: the subset is they're spending more money and experiences than
Speaker 3: they aren't traditional So the money that they do have,
Speaker 3: their spending it and experiences. So we're trying to create
Speaker 3: very accessible experiences from a price point from the hotel
Speaker 3: room all the way down to kind of the common
Speaker 3: areas and areas of the resort or hotel, and ultimately
Speaker 3: I think it's really it's really we're investing in the future.
Speaker 3: It's fifty six percent of today's traveler or under thirty
Speaker 3: five years old, so we're investing in the future. And
Speaker 3: a partnership with Windham gives us one hundred and five
Speaker 3: million members, of which a lot of these people are
Speaker 3: in that subset already that we can help unlock with
Speaker 3: our with our hotel partners and assets all around the world.
Speaker 2: Sam's Aarien is the chairman and CEO of SB, the
Speaker 2: hospitality group that manages and operates hotels, restaurants, lounges and nightclubs.
Speaker 2: He joins US from Miami. They partnered with Wyndham Hotels
Speaker 2: and Resorts to launch a new smart lifestyle brand called
Speaker 2: Project HQ Hotels and Residences