I think the second thing you’ve got to do is create a compelling, motivating vision – not just for your colleagues, but for your owners and your guest so that collectively people can say ‘you know what, I’m willing to take the risk to go down the road to try to accomplish that vision’ whatever that vision is.
And then the third thing you’ve got to do is take risks – you’ve got to be willing to put yourself out there and say ‘in order for us to get there, we’ve got to make this change’.
As owners you have to make this investment, we as managers must be willing to commit to a certain kind of return or a certain kind of performance so it’s all about taking the right kinds of risk.
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If you don’t take risks, you’re never going to change, you’re never going to improve and you’re never going to grow.
On the real estate side of the hotel business, the money is made when you buy the hotel, not when you sell it and our industry runs on about a seven to nine year cycle.
We may not have exactly hit the bottom, but within six months before and six months after right now, we’re at the bottom.
So the people who have access to capital who are willing to step up right now are really going to be acquiring at the ideal time and what they need to do is ride it up for five or six years and sell it off at the peak.
It has been said that that 2010 is going to be a vintage year for hotel acquisition. Do you agree?
But the problem is that it’s hard to get financing right now. And it’s also very hard for people to have the clarity on the performing side, the operation side to know how they’re going to perform.
So if you go out and you get a loan, and you think you need a certain amount of cash to support the loan and it doesn’t materialise, you may end up losing the asset. So that’s the art of the game.
Where do you see the hospitality industry in 20 years time and where would you like to be in that industry?
Well, they say that the hotel business is the second oldest profession in the world and you can guess what the first one is.
So I don’t think it’s going away, that’s for sure. I think for Fairmont, what we’re all about over the course of the next 10-20 years, is bringing our unique kind of hospitality to as many markets around the world as we can.
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