5 Star Conversations with Raymond Faulkner | Future-Proofing Hotels Through Global Tech & Culture

Speaker A: Foreign. To another episode of Five Star Conversations where we talk with people having an impact on our industry. And today I have the pleasure of talking with Raymond Faulkner. Uh, welcome Raymond.

Speaker B: Kia ora. Brendan, thank you so much for the time and the opportunity to speak to you and whoever's out there listening.

Speaker A: It's my pleasure and I'll read you by in a sec. But just in a sense coming full circle, it was a recent guest on um, Five Star Conversation, Dominique Eger, that when we going through the people who had a significant influence on their career, it was you that he mentioned. And I said well I've got to get Raymond on so thank you for agreeing to be here.

Speaker B: Cheers. Look, I've been very grateful actually. Over nearly 40 years in hotels have crossed paths with many people who, who have inspired me and who in some salient way feel that um, I've had some connection to them and their careers. And uh, Dominique is uh, it resonates with my career. Uh, I had a couple of years with Dominique um, in the mid to late 2000s and he was an incredible um, leader. He used his intuition and initiative uh, appropriately. He was ready to sort of explode when we took him on board and we just gave him the opportunity to do so. And I'm really, really proud of where he's come and the growth that he's um, experienced both commercially, professionally and personally. He's um, the personal friend of mine. So we've got um, connectivity uh, across running and he does triathlons. I don't. But um, we talk about and I do sort of engage in running and cycling and we do make uh, we do talk to each other about those kind of um, those hobbies. So there's that ongoing connection. And that's probably one of the best things that comes out of hotels isn't it? The relationships that you have um, long after the job itself. And yeah, it's very rewarding.

Speaker A: It is, it's lovely to see. I'll just read your bio then. So. Raymond Faulkner is a distinguished international hospital facility leader with over 35 years experience spanning Australia, New Zealand and China. He currently serves as Vice President of Operations and Development for Swiss Bell International across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, while simultaneously managing the Swiss Bell Hotel in Brisbane. A graduate of Auckland University with a Bachelor of Commerce, Raymond's uh, career is defined by his versatility. Having excelled in high level roles ranging from financial controller to commercial director to General manager for world renowned uh, brands such as Sofitel, Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn through throughout his career, Raymond has built a reputation for driving exceptional financial performance and operational excellence, particularly in challenging environments. So during his tenure in China, he was ranked as the number one general manager in Greater China and six globally on a course Revenue E Learning Platforms. His strategic leadership was further evidenced during his time as general manager of Sofitel Wellington where he successfully navigated the portfolio through the complexities of COVID with zero staff retrenchments while achieving market leading, guest experience and cleanliness scores. So beyond his operational achievements, Raymond is a deeply committed advocate for diversity, inclusion and community service. He served as the Accor New Zealand Cultural Awareness Champion and represented Maori cultural interests at the Accor Pacific Inclusion and Diversity Committee. His leadership extends into the community as a Paul Harris Fellowship Award winner and past president of both the Rotary Club of Hangzhou and Skull International in Brisbane. Raymond's fluent in English with intermediate proficiency in Mandarin. Diral Mari and Raymond brings a truly global and cultural nuanced perspective to every project he leads. Welcome Raymond.

Speaker B: I know that guy

Speaker A: sounds like he run a hotel. Well, right. I like it. Uh, the first question I always like to ask is the calling. So we touched on it but we didn't touch on enough. You've got a triple major. So you did commercial law, accounting and international international business. That's like uh, a, you know, really strong academic background. Did you, when you were doing that foresee that you would end up in hotels or you know what, what brought you into the hotel industry?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'd like to say that it was um, organized and structured sort of um, entry but I fell into it. Well look, I've always been a numbers guy at school. I love maths, I was good at maths. I did accounting at school and so I sort of gravitated to, to that at university. I was a young guy and I really didn't have a lot of direction um, when I was 17 and 18 like most 17 and 18 year olds. But I went to university because good friends and those friends all went to university. So I came from a very blue collar background. My father was in the air force, my mother worked at Woolworths back in the day when they had those push button teller things and um, you got your, your shopping and paper bags. Uh, I had three older brothers, we were four under four. So each of my brothers, there's just a year between us. Um, so very blue collar background. I went to waitake college and. But I was good at numbers and I ended up with a great group of friends who were also uh, reasonably academically minded. A number of them Headed into university and this is a, this is an era when 1986, uh, I graduated from, from high school I think we started form three it was called then with like 340 and our year and only 12 of us went to tertiary education. That's kind of how things worked back then. And, and I was lucky enough to be surrounded by some people that went um, to Auckland University and I followed them. So I'd like to say it was a calling but it was really by chance and by circum the people that I network with and that's a, that's a life lesson isn't it? If you can surround yourself with people that head in the right direction and uh, that share the same kind of um, ethos and thinking and values as you then it really um, fortifies um, the outcomes for you and your family. So I was lucky from that point of view. I went to university, I needed some money so I took a part time job at Sheraton Auckland as an outlet cashier. Two nights a week, Monday and Thursdays I would work from 4 to 12. And uh, this is back in the day when there was like 480 staff of a 407 room hotel. It wasn't a big thing. It was all customer facing. There was individual people. Whole job was just to do checks and see people. It would be difficult to find those kind of roles in this day and age. Most roles are hybrid. You won't find a restaurant where one person, their only job is just to do the cashiering. Um, generally people now, um, all waiters and waitresses know how to do the cashiering. All cashiers know how to do waitress and waitressing. There is no such job as a cashier. So I took a job as a cashier. I did that for a year and then they advertised for an income audit role, a night audit role actually. Fridays and Saturdays start at 11 o' clock at night, finish at 7 in the morning. I'll tell you something about 19 um, year olds that work Friday and Saturday at nights, start at 11, finish at 7. You have no friends so you work Friday to Saturday. The very Strong upside pre 1991 contracts, Employment act in New Zealand. The money was exceptional. Two nights work back then you get $230 or something and that was a week's pay to everybody else because you've got all these penalty rates for starting at 11, finishing at 7 on the weekend. Friday became a set day, become a Sunday. So I did that um, for two years. And the great benefit about night audit And I think a lot of people miss this, especially when you're recruiting for that role is that you literally run the entire hotel but in little bite sizes of process. So you check people in, uh, because from 11 to 1 you're checking people in. You're um, running the night audit processes and the balance sheet and the banking and you're reconciling the outlets, you're reconciling all of the payments and um, the PMS to the um, accounting systems. And then you check people out. So you literally run a whole hotel and you get to see the entire hotel process and bite sizes. If you work during the day, in the morning you might be just checking people out. That's the whole process. If you work in the afternoon, you're just checking people all in. But night would it um, working as a night manager you get to see the whole business in little bite sizes and you get to deal with some um, really unique situations which um, you know, fortitude, you know, they create this kind of understanding. Um, and you get to see experience um, scenarios which maybe other people can't, but you get to remember them. And when they happen again in the future, you can sort of remember the solutions that you had around those really unique situations. Canceled flights, late arrivals, angry guests, inebriated guests, um, weddings that have turned to custard, the whole shebang. Right? And uh, angry wives, uh, you see all of that and you can take those stories with you and apply them to other scenarios uh, in the future. So I learned a lot from that. And then I went into uh, I was lucky. The uh, financial controller at the time pulled me into kind of a pseudo training, financial training program because I was doing finance at, at university. Ah. And so I went into um, an accounts payable part time role in my last year at university. And when I was available at the end of my degree, um, they took me on full time and I went through uh, a role in income audit. Assistant accountant, accountant. And so I learned all of the hotel operations, finances, functions and workflow um, over that, uh, that three years post graduation, specifically in hotels because of the opportunity I was given at Sheraton. Probably the biggest thing that happened to me in that period was um, and, and this happened a few times. You'll hear a few stories about this. 1991 there was the, it was the second. There was 1987 financial crisis and in 1991 there was another financial crisis. And this is back in the day when Sheraton Auckland at the time had uh, 407 rooms, 420 staff or something, 22 in finance. 22. We had um, two people in it, three people in accounts receivable, two people in accounts payable, just 22 in finance. And with this, this uh, crisis, they bought a new leadership. We had to think strategically, effectively. We took uh, a headcount in finance of 22 down to 13. And I was heavily involved in that. And it's a difficult time. It's really challenging both from a personal perspective because you're dealing with people and obviously there's redundancies and displacement. But it also comes down to about how do you re engineer the business from 22 down to 13? And one of the biggest learnings I had was you just stop doing stuff. You literally go in value propositions and say, what was this doing? And a very good example is internal control systems. So way back in 1989, someone thought it was a good idea that we had these printed dockets with numbers on them. And part of the job for income audit was we were to collect all of the used numbers and put them in order and make sure there were no missing so that nobody could have taken an empty docket and made up an invoice and maybe got a free meal or use that invoice to make a claim on their tax return or something because. So we had to make sure that all the numbers were there. Why not sequential? That process was really time consuming as you can imagine because, you know, there's thousands of transactions a day. Well, we just stopped doing that when you go from 22 to 13. And the impulse cost of somebody having a free meal, maybe, we don't know. But you know, just to control that, to stop them from having that free meal, um, or using a, ah, uh, redundant check, obviously a chick. Um, personally the cost of that was far less than the cost of managing it. So we just stopped doing stuff. And, and I learned um, a lot from that. So a lot of what we do now in this day and age, even strategically, is we ask ourselves why, why do we do this? When people are saying this isn't working, we need to find another way. Often the first question is why do we do it anyway? And, and, and you know, that's a big. That creates process change that's constantly evolving. So you need systems that are evolving. So yeah, so that experience at, um, Sheraton Auckland was invaluable to me. And that's really how I first got into hotels for eight years with them. I just fell into it and followed. Friends found something that paid the bills and other people around me, as became apparent throughout my career, saw some light and help me uh, into a path in high fields.

Speaker A: There you go. From an inspirational point of view then. You've led teams across remarkably diverse cultures, everything from the Gold coast to Hangshao. Is there a leader or mentor that inspired you and helped create your philosophy for management?

Speaker B: Um, one of the kindest, courteous, quietest, best leaders I've ever had is a man named George Lee. And very few people will know George Lee. Some will, uh, in IHG and CDL. He was actually the managing director for CDL, um, in the late 90s. He was um, regional um, director finance for what was in Bass hotels became IHG in Australasia. Um, he was incredibly instrumental to me and I crossed paths uh, with uh, George numerous times over, in, in different companies over the last um, uh. Uh 39 years. And generally all of those um, interactions have been engineered by George. Even when he had no vested interest in me, he, commercially or professionally, he retained contact and he helped me and he not only helped me commercially but he moved my life, my personal life, um, significantly. Because when you change jobs and you change companies, obviously you change your earning capacity, you change the environments that you're in. And this man helped me uh, move within what was Sheraton at the time, ITT Sheraton. He took me into an. Another company, cdl and he took me into ihg. So across three different companies he's been a feature in my, my professional and personal development. And I, I am indeed to him uh, as a man and as a person and you know, he was an incredible role model. He, he taught me so many lessons that come, they can come from, from being a quiet, pragmatic, practical individual, uh, but that actually cares about people and enacts that care. I've got a good story about him. When I was a young guy, about 22 years old, um, in New Zealand we had to pay uh, PAYG on the 5th of the month and the 20th of month or before electronic banking when, when people printed paper that was worth money and paper and you went around and swapped paper for things. So um, we had cheques obviously printed cheats. And on the 5th of the month and the 20th of the month you had to go down and pay the payg. And this hotel was the PAG. YG was so significant it was like $120,000 a payment. So on the 5th of the month, the 20th of the month we'd have to write up the cheque. 120,000, walk it down to um, the IRD at the time and pay it. And one day, uh, in order to do that as the assistant accountant or accountant, I can't remember the role, but I had to calculate, you know, that exact amount, 120,000. And I needed to get that from payroll. And there was a delay in getting that number. And so I called the IRD and said, oh, I'm having trouble getting this number together. What should I do? And the advice was, go down the next day and pay it. So that's what we did. We got the full proper number on the 6th of the month. We will. The 21st, we went down, we paid 121,000, and a month later we got fined 10%, which was a flat 10%. $12,000. $12,000 for this one era. And we got lawyers involved and, you know, the big guys, um, our accountants at the time, um, Deloitte Tomarz, went down and wrote letters and, you know, the response was the advice should have been just go and make up a number, write a check for 119,000, 20,000, pay that on the 5th, and then we only be up for 10% of the difference. They didn't accept that. So we. So the company had to pay $12,000. And George Lee, he stood in front of me, um, with the owner, and, you know, his position was we had done all the work, and whilst this mistake cost us $12,000, the same thinking or lack of thinking or lack of concern about the impact could have caused a, uh, $12 mistake. So whether it was $12 or $12,000, it's the same era, the same scale of act. The repercussions are not the same, but the act, the scale of the act is the same. So whether it's $12 or $12,000, the lack of thought is the same. And that taught me a lot. Conversely, people can spend huge amounts of time making a really small mistake multiple times. Yes, that scale deserves a different action, too. That scale deserves a kind of a darker action because they're not listening, they're not reading the situation, they're not learning, and. And they may only lose 100 bucks or 200 bucks. So George really institutionalized my thinking around scale of act, not repercussion of act. And. And I'll always remember that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that is interesting. So we've seen the vp, um, watch. I didn't realize you're a fire warden, past president of Skull, Paul Harris fellow. What is something sort of outside that professional side that a talent or a hobby that you might have that not Many people may know about.

Speaker B: I love rugby. I love rugby. I'm not very good at it, but um, I've loved it, uh, my whole life actually since I was a boy. I loved watching it, I love playing it, I love being involved in it. And I was really, um, in my, my personal life I was, I was really grateful that I had an involvement with club rugby, uh, because my son got involved in club rugby and he, he was pretty good at it. So he ended up representing, playing representative rugby at different levels for a number of years. And through him I started to get involved with, um, Logan City Rugby Club, which is south of Brisbane. Um, very blue collar area. We were raising our kids out there. And um, I took up a role as treasurer for this club and I was that role for eight years. And in that eight years we moved the club from what was called Homestead Ground to a new ground, um, in Meadowbrook. We got a four and a half million dollar grant from the state government and it took us, ah, three years, but we built and opened in 2012 what would have been the best club rugby facility in the country.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: But the greatest value for me was that, that action, that process, not me, but many, many people involved in it obviously, but that, that process to get that club up and running. I really, I'd go out to it now and I can see 200 junior rugby players, kids under 15 that are playing rugby on Sundays, that are training two days a week, that are outside living that wholesome Australian life. There's 60, um, senior rugby players across three or four teams that uh, have the camaraderie of rugby. And there's a community. You can go to the rugby club a couple of times in the winter every two weeks, watch the home team and sit and watch sports or rugby, talk to your neighbors, have cheap beers and connect, have that connectivity, that community connectivity. I love that life. And I don't speak about it, um, in terms of recognition for what we did. I speak about it because of how rewarding it was for me personally and for my family. We just loved going down there, uh, with the three kids and uh, we watched the All Blacks play the wallabies and we'd be in the club rooms and the kid to be running ban samanas outside under lights. Yeah, probably not the safest thing, but it was, you know, if you're going to lose one, you're going to lose them all, aren't you? Um, but, but it was just great connectivity with friends and neighbors and the community. So I, um, was really grateful for that opportunity and really grateful to work with a bunch of senior um, business leaders who were not in hotels. Um, but together we were able to sort of orchestrate this significant change to club rugby and Logan and uh. Yeah, that will stick with me. Um, and, and you know I feel connected to that experience.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Nice. Great. Great. To create that community. I want to ask about the best advice you've ever received. So obviously you navigated Sofitel, uh, Wellington, um, during COVID with zero retrenchments, which in itself is a massive feat. What's the best advice you've ever received that help you stay the course during such high pressure periods?

Speaker B: Patience I think patience and transparency, those are the big lessons.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I think the value, what I learned about COVID and I, and you know there's New Zealand at the time had a very um, left leaning government, a Labor government that was very protectionist and um, uh, very focused on um, as they should have been at the time, um, health and safety and welfare of the population. Um, hindsight is a wonderful thing. We now know maybe um, some of the measures that they implemented went a bit too long. But at the time to call family and friends outside of New Zealand who were not in the same predicament, not able to walk around and go shopping and go into um, theaters et cetera or watch rugby games live. It was at the time it was incredibly valuable and safe environment. But it also allowed um, corporate thinking to slow down because there was government assistance which we're still paying for now of course um, New Zealand. But that government assistance allowed businesses to slow down and think about the decisions they were making. And also there was legislative requirements around consultation around um, telling people what to expect and the changes that you were planning. And um, as an example we went into this lockdown in March, uh and we started getting government um assistance pretty quickly. Uh, that government assistance split um, your staff into part timers and full timers. Anybody less than 20 hours got $375. Anybody between 20 and 40 hours you got $750 with. Now once you started educating people about this um, allowance, people who would have worked 10 hours before the lockdown and would have taken home a hundred. And I'm um, just making this up 200. They turn around and start saying but you're getting 375, where's my 375? And we could educate them that actually we're taking the $175 and we give it, we're paying a uh, a top up to people who only get 750. They used to get 1200 and their families will run on 1200 a week. Now they're only getting 750. We're going to take your 175 and give them 800. So they're not going to get 1200, but they're going to get more than 750 and we're going to help them by taking your 175. So you'll still get the 200 you got before. Yeah, but were you using your, your um, 175 to pay these other people so they can get more than what the government was giving us for them as full timers? And you have to, you have to educate people about that thinking. And 99 of people are good, decent people, they're kind people. And once you explain it like that, once you sort of simplify the workflow so that they understand, well, I'll still get my 200 and I'm helping somebody else who needs help. There's immediate buy in from 99. So that's what we did. We, we had transparency. When we educated people about the, the process and what we were doing, we also told them about the forecasted profitability of the businesses. And the thing I talk about, um, patience and transparency. Patience kicked in because the law made us slow down to some degree. But in doing so, um, there was an evolution that was happening, uh, a macro evolution that was happening, uh, to the country. We were learning more. There was some, there was a growth in the freedoms that we were entitled to and those freedoms allowed people to move around. It changed the economic returns for the business, which allowed us to change our plan. And so for example, we might have, the first draft plan, might have taken our staff of 80 down to 16. After a month through that consultation, suddenly we realized, well, now we can open up to level whatever it was, three or four. And we were seeing some revenue flow and now we can fund another eight people. So we can go from 80 to 24, not 80 to 16. So then we would have to consult to see who the 24 would be. And another month would pass and there would be more, um, opportunity and, and revenue streams would open up. Now we would go from, we could go from 24 to 30 people we could save. So now we're going from 80 to 30. So we would consult again to see who the 50, uh, roles were with that we would have to displace. And so that patience sort of played into the changes that were happening, the macro changes. So we rode that wave and that allowed us to manage, um, ourselves so that we didn't displace anyone equally. The underlying message that we had across all of our hotels in Wellington, um, we can hurt 10 people in a big way or we can all hurt in a small way. So we all get hurt a little or we go and burn 10 people hugely.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: 10 people lose their jobs or 80 of us lose 20 of our pay and then the other 10 get to stay. Once that philosophy starts kicking in, then everyone is, is behind you. And so we rode that wave and by the time we sort of really started getting to the point end, we were really fortunate to get a hotel that um, went into miq, which is the um, you know, the government funded quarantine program.

Speaker A: Yep. Hm.

Speaker B: And the money we got from that, it didn't go into the coffers of the owners, um, or a core at the time. It helped to prop up the other three hotels. So a lot of massaging the business for the welfare of all. But we all got hurt. But we all got hurt in such a way that no one got hugely hurt. And I think that was, that was probably one of the best outcomes of that whole process, that no one lost their jobs, but we all did take a knock. But we came out on the right side of it as a consequence.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's a good outcome. That's a good outcome. I just want to ask about technology, obviously. Well, actually I was thinking about your role as a cashier because I spent time in hotels in a similar era and it was a cash register and full time cashier. My wife I met at hotel, she was a part time cashier and then I did time on night audit as well. So I know things were, we had computers so to speak, but they weren't really computers back then, were they? There was still a lot of manual process. So you've seen a lot of change and you've spent a lot of time in China. Is there a particular technology that you saw introduced that you thought, you know, this is fantastic, it's a good positive change I suppose, both from, from a team point of view and maybe from a guest point of view.

Speaker B: Yeah, look, I, I, I think the biggest thing I, I learned in China is, is I had to have a cultural shift in my thinking obviously because it's a completely different culture. But the golden rule about um, living and working in China for eight years is you leave your values at the door. You're up there following the money and as a consequence you have to sacrifice some of your thinking and some of your ethos, um, and and one of the big, um, changes that you have to come to terms with is the recognition of personal privacy. Uh, there, you know, you leave the values that we have in, in Western society in Australia and New Zealand about personal privacy at the door. There's not the same standard of personal privacy, uh, in China. And, and a good example is this is going back 14 years ago when I first got, um up there. But they PMS systems and all hotels talk to the national police system.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Everybody that checks into your hotel, the police know about.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, and, and the upside of that is if anybody's going to cause trouble in your hotel, they'll be walked out by the police before they make trouble for you, because the police already know them. Right. Now there is a subsequent issue around that because, uh, the key driver for that, uh, at the time was that I was up, there was, um, there was a need for, or the government felt there was a need to understand where the Xinjiang population was. There's a population of people that they wanted to understand. And so you'd be in a hotel and, um, people from Xinjiang could move around China. But when they checked into a hotel, their national ID was picked up by the national police system. And within 30 minutes a, uh, policeman would come into the hotel, come and ask what room this person was in. We give it to them. They go up to the room, they'd knock on the door and they'd simply say to this person, we know you're here, and then walk away. Now, that kind of liberty in, in Australia and New Zealand would be unacceptable. We would just never, never allow that compromise and liberty. But when you get to an environment where it's just a matter of course, it just happens, it's a sequence of events, um, that change is a technology and a process and a workflow that is very unique. And it, obviously, it risks the personal freedoms that we see in Australia, New Zealand and in the Western world. But it does have, uh, some benefits if you're prepared to sort of accept that. And the benefits, ah, are that you don't have the same challenges that you would have, um, in running hotels around crime. It does mean that the hotel environment is safer. Um, it also means that when people come back to check in, you can use facial recognition to check them in. You don't need them to sign pieces of paper, you don't need them to, to fill out registration cards. It means that if they don't pay their bills, the collectability is, uh, more solid and the police have more insight into individuals and you can Very few, um, bad deets arise in that kind of environment. But you have to give something up. Another good example about that is food safety. So this is going back 10 years ago. Any restaurant, um, food outlet in China legislatively had to mandate putting cameras on the kitchen so that the customers can see. So you'd sit down in the restaurant and there'd be a TV, maybe two TVs on the wall and it's literally showing you live people cooking in the kitchen behind you.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Now the purpose of that is so that as for food safety, so that the chefs and the stewards do their job and the, the live control is the consumer.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Even now I was there six months ago and you go into um, the airport and at the airport when you go to the carousel to get your bag, there's a TV's showing the baggage handler taking the bag from the trolley and putting it onto the, the carousel on the other side.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you're watching your bag be placed on the carousel. So they can't throw it.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: They can't make trouble for you for your luggage. Yeah, but of course, you know, I don't, I don't know how well that would go with the, the unions, etc would be acceptable. Right.

Speaker A: Y.

Speaker B: But, but there's benefits to the consumer experience. There's benefits to, to the health and safety of people engaged in hotels. In any business actually it's expensive in terms of your value system.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: You know, the ethos and what you have to give up. So I think technology around, around safety, security and, and I don't want to say privacy because it's the opposite, isn't it? But around law and legislation and maintaining legislation, that's probably a big difference and something that we could learn from. And that's why, you know, in China and Japan, um, there's a cultural. You can't, you can have vending machines that sell beer 24 hours a day.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: No 17 year old's going to go and sit there and take out 10 cans of beer and drink themselves into a stupid.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because in China if you are 17 and you do that, you don't go to a good school, your family name is burnt. Probably you'll be arrested and your family name will be put across the train station.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: In the village.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: They will humiliate you.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: They have a saying called the chicken scare the monkey.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: So, uh, it's a big part of the culture. Um, we call it Lee by example, but the other way.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know, I like that.

Speaker B: Kill the chicken skier the monkey charge, it didn't hurt.

Speaker A: Uh, there you go.

Speaker B: But it's a pretty dark way to sort of you know, run over an environment, run a country. But it works for me.

Speaker A: Yep. If we look ahead. So I always like to say, you know like maybe it's 2036. What do you think a five star hotel room might look like by then? Are we going to see? You know we talked about it. I remember giving presentations in 1999 that rooms would almost be space age. Well we're not there yet are we?

Speaker B: Um, well actually I think we are. Six years ago I was in Hangzhou and Hangzhou is the home of Alibaba. So Alibaba has this huge campus. Um, Jack Ma, he sort of lives near, I think he was our neighbor actually he bought some houses or something next to um Shiku Westlake. Uh but the big campus out there, they built their own hotel. They had this kind of Alibaba, uh high tech hotel, had robots, had facial recognition chicken. You went to the room, your phone connected to the room so you played music, it came speakers. And the walls, the lighting system could be controlled by your phone. When somebody called you on the phone you didn't have to answer the phone, you just had to say answer and you started talking to the, to the walls like you were in the phone. So that technology was there. Robots, you ordered room service, it came up and um, delivered uh room service and uh, um so all of that technology was there six years ago and I have no doubt that it has expanded in terms of its application in, in China. So I know that technology exists now. Anything, we're behind the anything New Zealand, Australia. Technologically we, there's, there's advances that are already engaged in countries like China and India that we should be adopting to eventually. Yes, but they're already there so that's. Yes, I understand that technology is going to change and change um the look and feel and experience but what I'm really grateful um working with Swiss Bell hotels for is I've got this re engagement with mid scale and upscale brands and product propositions and it's reminded me in the last 17 months that these ah are that the customer can be niched into um, solutions that suit a particular profile of consumer. So I don't think we're ever going to get a standardized hotel product. There is no answer to say what will a hotel look like in the future? It will look like as it does now, incredibly fractured, um, many, many different branded solutions focusing on a specific customer profile, um, wellness customer profiles around um, corporate, uh, around, um, low maintenance, um, high speed experiences, just get me in, get me out. Limited service experiences, ah, very detailed personal experiences. At the other end of the spectrum, um, where there's a price point and a premium that people pay for those very personalized experiences. I think hotels in the future will always be fractured. Um, and I think that brand, um, Differentiation, um, is probably going to grow rather than contract. Uh, and so I think hotels in the future there'll be more, more specific consumer focused products. But every hotel, it's going to need clean rooms. Every hotel needs a decent sleep.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Every hotel needs hot water. Every hotel, if they offer it, wants hot food delivered on time. And right now the only major evolution is every hotel needs excellent WI fi. They are the absolute. When you stick the word hotel on the front of a building, you have to deliver those things.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: You have to.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: You know, you don't have to if you don't have to promise carrying people's bags to their rooms if they don't pay for it. You don't have to um, promise them free to wear TV if they don't pay for it. But you do have to promise certain things. You know, you can, for example, free to wear versus everyone's got this um, what they call a streaming. So you offer streaming and, and maybe you just decide, um, the impulse cost for free to wear is such that I'll take that off the room price. And now you bring your own tv. I'll just give you a big uh, monitor, allow you to Chromecast or whatever to the monitor and you look at your own TVs. But I'm not going to provide you with an entertainment solution. Just the way that you can see it and experience it in the ring, those solutions. And that's interesting, isn't it, that now we've literally got a choice to take away tv. We can do that. It's gone the other way. Um, we, we can sort of in a product say we're not going to give you uh, tv, but we're going to give you a, a channel to show your own tv. To take your phone and put it onto the wall, not put on a tv. But we've taken away an offer that would have been considered standardized 20 years ago. Yeah, technology has allowed us to do that.

Speaker A: You know, one of the big selling points as you drove along the highway was, you know, tv.

Speaker B: Yeah. Foxtel or Sky Sport.

Speaker A: Yeah, they were the differentiations, uh, that motels used to put out there. I think you're right about the. We're probably going to see even more fragmentation because as we see with the lifestyle hotels now, we're in a world where personalization is becoming more prominent. You know, people want things tailored specifically to them. I was at a skull lunch yesterday actually here in North Sydney and there was a lady, uh, she was on a panel, Lisa Bogato. She runs a very, very niche travel company that goes to destinations png, Middle, uh, East, um, Kazakhstan, you know, places that only, you know, and small groups, a dozen people. And um, as she said, it's, it's people that, that just want to experience the culture. And that's something that's very different from a few years ago. You know, like I think we've gone from package tours, still exist, but people now want, they want to see something different, you know, rather than the same. And that's when they stay in hotels. You know, we've now got a whole genre of lifestyle hotels where people want to experience what it's like to be in a hotel in a particular area of a city rather than being in that traditional, you know, box hotel where if you didn't open the curtains you could be anywhere in the world, you know, because they look the same. So.

Speaker B: But there's this accommodation. There's been a maturity in accommodation. I remember, you know, you'd watch American TV shows in the 80s and you'd see people going into hotels and you go wow, that's so, uh, or flying regularly and you'd go wow. To fly every week. Wow, that's amazing. You know, what a, what a rich and um, evolved environment, uh, that must be. Actually we all jumped on board with that now, right? We all evolved into that sort of environment where travel is a commodity and to some degree accommodation is a commodity. It's a means to an end. And so what I really like about mid scale properties is that you're providing a product that is a solution to something else that is, is necessary or that is um, the guest's sort of purpose. So people that are coming for a wedding because the wedding is close by, but they need accommodation to go to the wedding. People are coming for work or for a conference because the conference is close by, but they have to stay somewhere. So it's a commodity. And you can tailor a product based on that understanding, based on that solution. So they understand it's a commodity. They don't want all the rings and bells, but they want, they want a safe room, they want a clean room, they want a good night's sleep and they're happy to pay for it. But they also understand that at a price point, they're giving up people carrying my bags, you know, the hours of operation for a restaurant, mini bars and rooms, um, maybe even the standard of um, the uh, bathroom amenities. Lots of people travel with their own bathroom amenities. And they'll, they'll. They'll see the discount in the room rate and accept that or, um, the offer that. That's in the, in the product, in the hotel product. So I think there's a really big space for that and there's just more and more use of it, um, in terms of the maturity of the market using hotels. This isn't just for rich people. Anybody, uh, from any background is using hotels as a commodity for a purpose that may not be related to the hotel itself.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And we need product for that.

Speaker A: That's true. That's very true. Raymond, you've been a champion for indigenous welfare and cultural awareness in Queensland. What is your ultimate hope for our industry? How, ah, can we better integrate and celebrate local culture in the years to

Speaker B: uh. M. So my mountain is the mountain of Manga, uh, mountain of um, Manganui. I come from the oceans and seas of Tauranga, uh, on my father's side. My tribe is Ngaitarangi. My sub tribe is my Tukarangi. And the Fino where I come from is a place called Teongo Toro Marae. That's the, The. The land that my family genealogy comes from. Um, why do I know this? I know this because, um, I don't speak fluent Mori, but I was privileged to go back to New Zealand for four and a half years, um, in 2020-24. And um, through a core and they work my work your way program and the very courteous leadership of one Gillian Miller, I was allowed to go to night school and attend, um, on Fridays, um, what is called. What. What is a university? A Mori language, um, university, um, and learn about myself and learn the language and learn about the culture. And it was incredibly enriching for me because, you know, I always. I spent 20 years overseas outside of New Zealand. And every year there seemed to be a calling back to the lead to the place. I'd go home twice a year back to New Zealand. But it just got stronger and stronger and stronger. And that's what happens with, um, indigenous people. You have this, and I can't explain it, it's inherent. It's inside you. You have this desire to go back, to be close to your. Your Whnau, your family, your. Your harpuri, your community, to be on the land, the fino that your family came from, that your father stood on and your mother stood on. And so, uh, you know, I, I have a very strong empathy for indigenous culture because of that experience. And I had it before that experience, but it was enriched by the four years that I did back in New Zealand. And I stay really well connected with it now. I continue to learn and repeat the things that I've known. I continue to role model it in public speaking and engagements where I can. I celebrate it by speaking what I can and showing who I am, uh, when I can.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think that's, that's part of it, that, that's the first part. You must respect and be proud of your indigenous heritage if you come from an indigenous background.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: But more particularly for Australia, and I guess I'll speak quite candidly here, I think Australia has the richest, it definitely has the oldest, but certainly it has one of the richest indigenous cultures in the world. And it is the greatest marketing opportunity for tourism, for hotels, accommodation, for, um, selling this country's identity. The greatest marketing opportunity. Um, you talk to anybody in China and UK and the US and you speak about experiences that they want to have in Australia. Yes, they will talk about the Harbour Bridge and um, Uluru and they will talk about Bondi beach and they'll talk about Melbourne and the culture of Melbourne. But 100% they will look to engage with, um, Aboriginal experiences, indigenous experiences. I think there's so much upside to embracing this, um, from a tourism perspective, from an individual hotel perspective. Um, and if you do it now, you'll be ahead of the curve and that's where the money is. If you do it now, if you start celebrating it in such a unique way, you'll be able to harness that desire that's in the open macro market. And they'll start coming to you before they come to other people. Eventually people will crack onto this and if they're smart, all hotels will sort of start engaging in, um, Aboriginal culture and indigenous culture at a guest experience, front of house, guest experience level, while they sort of learn and adapt. If you're first off the rank, you've got a huge competitive advantage. So I think there's a commercial value to it, but, uh, the subsequent, um, value is that it brings forward mori te ao mori culture, Aboriginal indigenous culture. It brings it forward into a business. And the more that people engage with it, the less afraid they are. Uh, the unknown is what creates uncertainty. But the more people engage with it on a daily basis, on a regular basis, the less Concern they would have with engaging it.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: So it's frequency the more we do and New Zealand's a great example about how you know, in the, in the 80s, um, um, it's a terrible story. I think we're the culture my age, we're the ones that nearly killed it. We're the ones that said oh God, this is not helping me to be mori. I need to forget it. I need to sort of embrace you know, the European sort of way of thinking otherwise I'm just going to be left behind, I'm m not going to help me. And we nearly killed it. And since the last 20 years in New Zealand has come so far where it's so ingratiated into the daily life of people, all signs, you know most signs there are dual language. Um, people speak mori on TV with the news, um, most sort of uh, representations in schools etc have um, a very strong representation around. That's a really, they really role model the value of bring it forward and it connects people, it connects the community and I think it's got the potential to do that in Australia. Absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think you're 100 correct. Yeah. It's got me thinking. The very last question I always like to uh, ask, um, obviously from a young commerce graduate looking at hospitality industry today, what advice would you give somebody who's just starting their career to um, you know, make sure it's as diverse and as impactful as yours has been?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a difficult um. Look, I understand um, the thinking. I've raised three kids and it's really funny now they're all adults and even they turn around now and say oh, it's really difficult dealing with the younger generation. These are people in their mid-30s going oh we were, you know, we got trouble with the social thinking of people in their, in their kind of twenties. Um, so we're dealing with this. So there's that kind of um, thinking that generationally the expectation is changing. Right. So my kids are saying there's not the fortitude or resilience in a younger generation and we were saying the same thing about them. So I kind of think that just with age and maturity and experiences there's going to be this evolution of individuals. Um, and certainly I've seen it with my own kids. For example, the way that they think, think now is not the way they thought when they were 18 and 19 and 20. I think when they were 19 and 20, um, they thought um, they were not left leaning but they understood um, that there was a need to look after um, the community and engage in a more socialist sort of thinking. But as you move through life you sort of understand at the end of the day paying taxes, being a good corporate citizen, being a good citizen and following the law that is also supporting the wider community. Roads and buses and um, trains and airports, they're built through tax. And how can I help that I can just live a good life, pay my taxes, raise my family and my kids, pay all my bills the way I should. That is a, that is a contribution in and of itself. But they learn that over time and they may not have that thinking to add to at, when they're 20 or 21. So give, give them time. Don't be um, embittered by their thinking today.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because over time, by experience and sometimes it's hard learned experience but they will eventually find their way to understand that their contributions can be aligned with the contributions of, of older people. So give them time. And the other thing is um, you have to move, you have to, you have to travel, you have to change jobs and it is a huge sacrifice. But if you want to move ahead in any role, you need to consider moving location, um, moving companies within reason. Right. I don't think it's smart to stay to move companies within a year, but I don't think you're doing yourself any favors if you stay at the same company for 30 years. Yes, I had a great leader. His name was um, David. Actually I've had a number of great leaders. David Brown, um, Greg Cox, they were significant mentors to me and I was really lucky with David Brown as my regional GM when I was here in Brisbane because you know, I said to him at that time I had young kids and I needed to um, stay grounded. My oldest son at the time when um, I started this hotel in Brisbane, he was nine. He'd been to six schools as a nine year old. And my, my wife had said look, we can't do this with the other two. And so we had this conversation with David and David said to me, look Raymond, you can stay as I stay here as long as you want, but I don't want you to stay here for uh, eight years and do eight of the same years. Yes, to do eight different years. So I can bring somebody else in to be different or you can be different. So the thinking is don't be tied into your um, regimented um, process of thinking. Always be open to change. Always be open to new ideas and new ways of working. Yeah, constantly, constantly challenge yourself and the way that you do Things and your own thinking, constantly challenge yourselves. But move, move, move over time, move companies, move locations, um, move environments. You know, I think that's. It's difficult, it's a difficult conversation to have with certain people at certain stages of their lives. But um, I found that that's probably been uh, the most rewarding in terms of commercial outcomes for me and my family was, um, you know, the most help I got, uh, in terms of um, making money and the welfare of my family was because I moved. And you know, there's no way I can think around that. You have to make those sacrifices maybe, uh, in the short to medium term for the long term gains. And certainly I'm in a really great place right now. I'm incredibly grateful for everything that 40 years in hotels has given me. I've got a really, uh, great environment and lifestyle and role. But that uh, came because of choice and sacrifice and because I moved. But it also became because of George Lee and David Brown and Greg Cox and a whole lot of other people that really helped me, um, at critical times.

Speaker A: That's lovely. I like that. Raymond, thank you so much for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you.

Speaker B: Thank you. I'm really grateful for the time of my. To anybody that's listening, my very best wishes for your investment in hotels and technology. Look after your family. If you look after the people around you, they will look after that, will look after everything else. If you look after your family and make decisions around the community that you're in, then your actual returns from your career and your life will be much greater. So that's my parting message. Thank you so much, Brendan, for the opportunity.

Speaker A: Thank you, Raymond. It's been an absolute pleasure.