Defining Hospitality

What do you remember most about a hotel experience? For some, it may be the furnishings or fabulous architecture. But for Bashar Wali, Founder & CEO of Practice Hospitality and This Assembly, it’s about the moments of real human interaction and connection that matter most. 
 
In this episode, Bashar Wali joins Dan Ryan to talk about what hospitality means to him, ways we can improve diversity throughout the industry, & the future of hospitality. Check out some takeaways from this episode below:
  • “Fundamentally the difference between the service industry, which is what you deliver, versus the hospitality industry is the following: hospitality is how you make people feel.”
  • Authenticity is more than just having an unapologetic point of view, it comes from a place of being yourself. 
  • Hospitality is not just about luxury, it comes from believing that you are there to make someone’s life better for more than just one moment in time.
  • The new definition of luxury is ultra personalization. Understand the wants and needs of the customer, and utilize available technology to serve those needs. 
  • You can’t train on culture & community, but you can build it by showing your employees that they treated as more than just part of the team
  • Don’t treat guests differently based on market segment or source of business - treat them as an opportunity to win over a new customer.
  • Diversity in hospitality is one sided - while the lowest levels have tremendous diversity, leadership has far less. To improve this, we can do a better job of encouraging & creating opportunities for underrepresented groups. It’s a lot more than just talk, and it can take generations to fix.
  • The future of hospitality is in sustainability & utilizing big data to optimize human experiences. As our society breaks down binary barriers, hospitality has an opportunity to be at the center of it all.
  • Don’t think of technology as cutting on cost, but to remove friction from human interactions
  • Every new customer, every new person you talk to, is an opportunity to see the world through their eyes & understand their wants and needs.
  • “Never turn down a meeting, because you’ll never know what you will learn.” - Bashar
 
Quote of the Show:
“People ask me why I got into this business. Where I grew up, there's a saying that goes, ‘When a stranger shows up at your door, feed him for three days before you ask him who he is, where he's from, where he's going to. Because by then, he'll either be strong enough to tell you, or you'll be such good friends it won't matter.’ That is hospitality.”  ~ Bashar Wali
 
Links: 
 
Shout Outs: 
10:24 - The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
11:36 - Danny Meyer - Union Square Hospitality Group - “The Hospitality Quotient”
26:09 - Bill Kimpton’s Core Principles
26:38 - Joie de Vivre / Chip Conley
38:27 - Damon Lawerence, Homage Suite 
41:03 - Independent Lodging Congress
51:32 - MaidBots
55:39 - Simon Sinek, Start With Why
 
Ways to Tune In: 

Creators & Guests

Host
Dan Ryan
Host of Defining Hospitality

What is Defining Hospitality?

Welcome to Defining Hospitality, the podcast focused on highlighting the most influential figures in the hospitality industry. In each episode we provide 1 on 1, in depth interviews with experts in the industry to learn what hospitality means to them. We feature expert advice on working in the industry, behind the scenes looks at some of your favorite brands, and in depth explorations of unique hospitality projects.

Defining Hospitality is hosted by Founder and CEO of Agency 967, Dan Ryan. With over 30 years of experience in hospitality, Dan brings his expertise and passion to each episode as he delves into the latest trends and challenges facing the industry.

Episodes are released every week on Wednesday mornings.

To listen to episodes, visit https://www.defininghospitality.live/ or subscribe to Defining Hospitality wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:00:00]
[00:00:24] Dan Ryan: Awesome. Hey welcome. Thank you everyone. Today's guest is a hotelier, a hotel fanatic keynote and TEDx speaker, avid traveler and jet setter, dealmaker, risk-taker passionate leader, founder and CEO of Practice Hospitality. And This Assembly, ladies and gentlemen, Bashar Wali,
[00:00:44] Bashar Wali: man, that sounds like someone I want to meet. God, don't believe everything you read on the internet, huh?
[00:00:50] Dan Ryan: Oh yeah, exactly. Well, you know, obviously Bashar your reputation precedes you and just to let the whole world out there know like we've known each other for a really long time. And [00:01:00] I think
[00:01:00] Bashar Wali: that you've always been there. I mean, it's been, yeah.
[00:01:04] We'll be pushing two decades. We're getting old, my friend,
[00:01:07] Dan Ryan: we really are, but I think more importantly than anything else, you've always been there as a leader in our industry and someone that like, I really look up to and aspire to be more like, and, you've been there as a confidant, um, your perspective on everything.
[00:01:23] Um, just always such a, such a leader in tremendous insights. So I just want to say thank you. And you know, that whole long list is not from nothing yet. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:01:31] Bashar Wali: You are very kind. I appreciate you .
[00:01:33] Dan Ryan: Awesome. Well, I guess like, so just to get into right into here, as far as defining hospitality, how do you define hospitality?
[00:01:41] Bashar Wali: You know, it's a really interesting topic that's near and dear and I get righteous on things that I strongly believe in. So forgive my righteousness and swearing along the way, please. So I'm going to give you a very long answer because it's really sort of the core of what we're talking about here.
[00:01:55] People often ask me what business I'm in and the analogy I use again. And again is [00:02:00] the following. I say, I am in the theater business. And the example I use is I say, I could go to time square by the best piece of land spent billions, literally billions building the most beautiful theater on the planet, dripping with gold platinum, hand-carved art, et cetera, you name it, have a mediocre story and mediocre actors.
[00:02:20] And no one will care. The New York times does not go to the theater to write about the building. They go to the theater to write about the play. So I say, it's, I'll go 10 blocks off of times square, have a good enough building. And good enough means comfortable. Cool. When it needs to be cool, warm, and it needs, won't be warm and just checks all the boxes in terms of comfort, focus, all my energy, money, and effort on a writing, an incredible story and authentic story.
[00:02:50] And I promise, I wouldn't say that word again because it's the most overused word in history and authentic story that has a reason for being. [00:03:00] Find, hire, train, and retain incredible talent. Design a set that's accretive to me telling my story and AK interior design, which by the way, it could be made out of garbage cans and found objects or golden platinum.
[00:03:16] If the story necessitates that setup. And the world will be lined up around the corner. So this idea that people go to hotels for the building is such a big fallacy. To me, of course, the building has to be again, comfortable, aesthetically pleasing. It has to be interesting, not just the box because not right.
[00:03:33] We're not buying a commodity. So if you take that analogy and distill it down to a couple of words, people say we're in the service industry. And I often call foul on that because I say, look, I get my oil change. That, that, that service company is in the service industry. My dentist is in the service industry.
[00:03:50] So tell yours, deliver a service, which you could argue can be, and is being delivered by robots. A robot can bring me a towel. A robot can check me. [00:04:00] But fundamentally the difference between the service industry, which is what you deliver versus the hospitality industry is the following hospitality is how you make people feel.
[00:04:11] And I think the clear distinction there is that until robots can be empathetic and emotionally intelligent and can feel, they're not going to be able to deliver you that feeling. So feeling generally comes from human accentuated, by the way, by the setting, right? If I'm in a beautiful space and this, the scent is beautiful and the lighting's beautiful and the flower and end, and then of course all is a creative, but you know, we've all been through hotels.
[00:04:39] And I often talk about these spectacular hotels that I walked into that are solar. And you think about the depth of that, that term "soulless." And soul, again comes from humans. So to me, hospitality at the very core of hospitality, our feelings and feelings, only for the time being, I'm trying to not be that, "okay, boomer", I'm not a boomer by the way, gen X, [00:05:00] thankfully as you and I are.
[00:05:01] Uh, but the idea is until such time that something or someone other than humans, you could argue by the way, dogs kind of give you that emotional feeling or animals that large, I suppose, cat people will send hate mail now. But the idea is you have to have humans at the center of hospitality. And I think we, as we, as an industry have strayed so far away from that, that it's become secondary to the things people are secondary things are first.
[00:05:29] I want to out art to you and out design you and out and out and out and out, but there are no people in the thick of it. So it kind of goes away. And I told you a long answer. People ask me why I got into this business. Where I grew up, there's a saying that goes, "When a stranger shows up at your door, feed him for three days before you ask him who he is, where he's from, where he's going to. Because by then, he'll either be strong enough to tell you, or you'll be such good friends it won't matter." That is hospitality.
[00:05:56] Dan Ryan: Oh, I love that. That's genius [00:06:00] and that
[00:06:02] Bashar Wali: honestly, it's so simple. It's not, there's nothing genius about it. W when you come to my house, I could have a catering company and a valet company, and I could pull out all the stops. But if we don't have a connection, you coming to my house, it's going to feel like a chore versus, you know, show up whenever you want doors open, always welcome.
[00:06:23] Making you feel at home will make you more, to more excited to come to my house.
[00:06:27] Dan Ryan: Right. And I, and I, again, just in the feeling of hospitality and delivering it, you know, I totally agree with you that it is the feeling and it's that space between all of us, you know, and the funny side is feed them for three days.
[00:06:40] There was also that pillow that people have in their vacation homes and say, guests are like fish. They stick after three days. Right? Move on. So,
[00:06:46] Bashar Wali: well, thankfully, thankfully in hotels we rarely reached the point of expiration dates. So our guests in hotels are perfect guests because they're in and out for a day and a half generally speaking.
[00:06:57] So it's easy.
[00:06:58] Dan Ryan: I totally agree. [00:07:00] And so on the authentic thing, I know it's such an annoying, um, an over overused and it's become inauthentic. One of the things that I've been hearing a lot is okay, is it consistency rather than authenticity or to be consistently authentic? And I think what you're driving at with that feeling, um, and that idea of feeling.
[00:07:24] Bashar Wali: You need up this authenticity. To me, the definition of authenticity, not, not the definition. My definition is having an unapologetic point of view. If you want to wear a pink shirt, wear a pink shirt and own it, and don't give a damn what anyone thinks, right? So fundamentally it really is about being yourself, arguably, and being yourself is doing what you want respectfully.
[00:07:48] I'd never want to be authentic to the detriment of others, right? I'd never want to be authentic to disrespect others. If, if my authentic me is not guy, then that's, you don't want me in society, arguably. Right? So [00:08:00] the point I make is be, be yourself because the minute you become yourself, you defacto become authentic.
[00:08:06] That is the definition of authenticity. If you don't pretend to be anything or do anything, or do it just for social credit or because that's what people deem to be cool. You become the cool guy by that. If you don't try to be cool. You're cool by definition, right? Yeah, so,
[00:08:20] Dan Ryan: and that comes down, I think, to the essence of just making
[00:08:23] people feel comfortable, right?
[00:08:25] Bashar Wali: Exactly. Feel comfortable enough to be themselves. You know what? You want to come into my hotel, you don't need to wear a suit. I don't give a shit what you are. Be yourself, be your self. Now this idea of consistency, however, consistency to me, consistency to me has a robotic sort of undertone to it. We're humans.
[00:08:44] We're imperfect. We can not be the same every single time. And that's where I sort of, I cried foul historically about the rigidity of luxury brands. And there ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen, and there, you have to say the guests three times and then it was prescribed and [00:09:00] the minute it's prescribed it's thing.
[00:09:02] And when it's inauthentic, it's not warm. So the idea is, look, what is the goal? We want you to make the guest feel welcome, do it your own way, do it your own authentic way, because it's going to be far more people use the word genuine a lot too same, same of sort of thing. We want genuine hospitality. Well, genuine hospitality.
[00:09:20] I can't tell you to be genuine, but tell you how to be genuine, being genuine to just sort of say what comes out of your mouth and your heart. So I was actually talking to someone in academia yesterday about the idea that should we, as an industry do far more pretesting before we hire to really hone in on, are you, at heart,
[00:09:41] are you built to be hospitable? Now I could argue. That's really a fallacy. I think, I think we all have it in us even introverts generally, because look, if you take it Darwinian. We're a species that need each other to survive. So we defacto want to be together and want to be part of a group [00:10:00] that's bigger than ourselves.
[00:10:01] But, but this idea about making sure that you really have that, you know, the languages of love book, right? I talk about that a lot. And mine is acts of service and gifts. I'll give you my address later for gifts, but acts of service comes naturally to me. I don't have to think about it, right? Like literally it comes naturally to me.
[00:10:18] So I would think that if I were hiring someone, I want that to be a strong suit for them is having that sort of spirit to serve desire, to serve. They don't feel, they don't think of it as a chore. They don't think of it as subservient, but they really want to make people's lives better. I think those are always going to be better candidates, but generally speaking, if you really take out a much broader sense and by the way, people always connect hospitality with luxury.
[00:10:43] You could be at a Day's Inn and be hospitable. There's no difference in my mind. It's really about how you approach someone. And if you really believe you are there to make their life for not one moment in time, transaction better, then it's easy. You can accomplish the little so [00:11:00] easily.
[00:11:00] Dan Ryan: What's interesting where you're saying to get to the other, obviously for any business and a hotel is a business, right?
[00:11:07] Bashar Wali: But
[00:11:08] Dan Ryan: there's this certain element of which is true in any business. It's all about the people that you have on the bus, so to speak. And I think, I think it was Danny Meyer from union square hospitality group. He has this thing, I think he calls it the hospitality quotient or the H potion, which kind of gets into almost being able to.
[00:11:27] Test and recruit people and score them based on how, on that level. I don't know if it's hard, but it really goes to the heart. Right. Are you familiar with that? And what are your feelings?
[00:11:36] Bashar Wali: I'm familiar with Denny's concept and I think again, our second summit in academia and hospitality yesterday at a, at a household name, school was really starting to think about it differently.
[00:11:47] I talk a lot about emotional intelligence a bit more because it's broader than just hospitality, right? If you're emotionally intelligent being, and I think you can test for that, perhaps not very scientifically, but you can test for it. And [00:12:00] emotionally intelligent being is going to behave and react to people based on their emotions and be accommodating to them generally speaking.
[00:12:08] Right. So if you show up and you're there with your wife and your kids and you're shuffling around and you're stood up, you know, you want to be talked to and you want to know all the details I sort of should read your emotions and be able to respond to you. Because in my view, then I think. The new definition of luxury is ultra personalization.
[00:12:25] And by the way, who gives a crap about the mint on the pillow? The example that we use forever do it for me, where it delights and surprises me, right? Like I like my room 64 degrees year round. You should know that about me and not thermostat should be at 64 when I walk in the room because it won't be lost on me because it's a subtle thing.
[00:12:44] Right? So the idea of ultra personalization to me at the very peak of it is to understand what I want and give me what I want, not what you think I want or what your corporation and things I want. Don't read me a list. Don't follow a checklist because I am not, I am. And if [00:13:00] you believe in Maslow's hierarchy of need, right?
[00:13:02] Self-actualization at the very top self-actualization to me is being recognized as the one. And only if you make me feel like I'm the one and only you've won me. And how do you make me feel like the one and only don't read the screen. Treat me like talk to me as an individual. And honestly, I've been, you know, exaggerating for effect here, but calling foul on the word "team," because if you're on my team, then that almost diminishes your contribution.
[00:13:30] You're one of many, there's a socialist element to it. I want to celebrate Dan for Dan for what Dan does for what Dan contributes, not Dan as a part of a team. So, so I think individualization at the end of the day is what will win the day. And I think that at the very lowest common denominator on the ground at the moments of truth, as, as they're called, when, when the night auditor at two o'clock in the morning is dealing with a guest.
[00:13:54] That moment of truth, emotional intelligence is what will win every time. So if we can hone in on [00:14:00] that skill set, I think that's where you win. Now you could potentially think, sorry, I'll close with this. You can actually think of the hospitality piece as maybe a little different, because you don't need to be all gooey,
[00:14:14] ooey, and gushy. Right? Cause that's what people think of hospitality. If you're emotionally intelligent enough to read me and understand what I want. When I check in, don't talk to me like don't tell me about the spa or whatever. I don't want to talk to you. I'll talk to you separately about, Hey, why'd you get into business.
[00:14:28] I love talking to people that way, but don't give me the spiel. You want to win me over? You handed me my card and send me on my way. Don't tell me where the elevator is. I can hear it. So if you're smart enough to read me and give me that you've hit my goal versus Dan who wants to be talked to for an hour and someone might view the transaction that I have as not hospitable.
[00:14:47] Cause they rushed me off. It is very hospitable. It's what I want.
[00:14:53] Dan Ryan: Okay. So a couple of things there and I love the idea of ultra personalization. And it also gets a little bit creepy though, because for [00:15:00] me to know that you like your room at 67 degrees or any other thing, like maybe you do like the mint on the pillow.
[00:15:07] Maybe you like only taking a bath in Evian. How do we collect that information and be ultra personalized without like being paralyzed by analysis and also borderline creepy? Like how do
[00:15:19] Bashar Wali: we do that? Well, look, whatever I don't want you to know about me is in my control theoretically, right? If I'm putting things out in the world, whether it's an Instagram post or my Facebook profile or my LinkedIn posts or whatever medium I use, I'm putting that information out there.
[00:15:35] And some may not think about it that way. Look like I've gone to hotels or been had hotels where people will literally get pictures of your family off the web, frame it and put it on your nightstand. Okay. That might be a tiny bit creepy. But you have that picture out there. The entire world can see it.
[00:15:52] If you didn't want anyone to see it, you should've made it private, but that kind of maybe potentially crosses the line. But to me, the, the, the temperature example, in my [00:16:00] case, if I'm a repeat customer and I'm not that guy, cause I'd never stayed at the same place twice. As you know, like if you, if like use me as an example again, for a minute, if you Google my name, like you'll very quickly find some speech that I made or something that talks about that, what an incredible way for you to win me.
[00:16:15] And why do you win me back to my initial comment? Cause you make me feel like I'm one of a kind you sending to me in an amenity because your arrival lists check, check the box that I'm VIP. And there's a protocol that says when a VIP check-in sends them Package A: VIP amenities. That loses its effect on me, because honestly, I don't have, Nick needs your wine and your champion and your whatever.
[00:16:37] But if you make me feel like I'm the one and only it's going to go far further in my opinion than whatever you might do for me. So the question, your question about creepiness, there is a line and the burden is on you to find out more about me. And I think there's technology out there now that has simplified that process.
[00:16:54] And I sort of say, if you have a 200 room hotel and you have 150 check-ins on any given day, you don't have to do it for every single [00:17:00] one of the 150 people do it to a decent enough percentage. And over time, that becomes your thing because logistically speaking, it's not that easy, unless by the way, you're Marriott, right?
[00:17:10] And you have a system and you have a reward system that should know me. And by the way, they still don't do it. Even though they know me, right? Like I stay and you have my profile and you know what I do. And I think technology will further enable that, right. Because theoretically, if you stay in my room, I should know, after you left.
[00:17:27] What the temperature was, what channels you watch, et cetera, and only use that information to serve you well and things for you. And you know, like we talk a lot about privacy. Uh I'm I'm on the opposite. End of that spectrum find out whatever you want to find out about me. I don't really care. Right. I don't have any secrets essentially.
[00:17:43] So do I care? The Amazon serves me things that are relevant to me. No, I'm happy about it. They know what I want and what I like. So don't show me junk. I don't care about, so I kind of think about it from that lens, but if you're ultra concerned about your privacy, well, that's somewhat in your control, right?
[00:17:59] Don't put any [00:18:00] information out there that you don't want.
[00:18:02] Dan Ryan: Okay. That's good to know. And then, you know, going back to making yourself. Comfortable like windy, like, okay. So you've given me all these instances of how they can connect with you and like how they could wow. You by doing a little work and, and showing that they care about you as an individual, but when you're out there never staying at the same hotel and wanting to have all these different experiences, because you're in the, you're in the business of delivering experiences to people and making them feel like special individuals.
[00:18:29] When do you feel the most comfortable?
[00:18:32] Bashar Wali: I generally say it's funny. You asked that question because I think ultimately the burden is on you to win my loyalty. Right. And you know, you, you know, so the stories is never stayed in any hotel more than once or one night, uh, three nights in Manhattan. I moved three times.
[00:18:43] My current count in Manhattan is 2 0 6. Different hotels and people say, well, what do you remember? Right. Like, I, I literally could not tell you what kind of flooring material is at the baccarat. I can't tell you what kind of art is that, uh, at the Ludlow. I don't remember any of those things. So my generic answer to this question [00:19:00] that I was given is that I only remember once someone goes out of their way and genuinely underscore gives a shit, the bar is so low, but ultimately the only thing that sticks is when someone does something for me, not because they were told to, because they chose to this idea of using the guest's name three times at the check in not impressive.
[00:19:20] My name is in front of you. Well, you're not impressing me cause you're reading it. You want to impress me when I walk in and out a couple of times on my way back in, remember my name without looking down, that'll impress me, but the idea of look, not every problem can be fixed. Right. But when I have a problem, convince me, you care about solving it for me and that's, what's going to make me remember.
[00:19:41] So I love.
[00:19:43] Dan Ryan: Yeah. And I love how you, you brought up the backer up because one of my favorite matter I stayed there, uh, living in New York city, we went on a staycation for an anniversary or something. And I think my wife and I were just in the lobby, which is upstairs kind of looking around. And I don't remember what it was a poster of a photo of a guy's [00:20:00] hand.
[00:20:00] I remember we were just staring, just standing there, looking at it for a little bit. And someone came up. I think they could have been a waiter. I don't remember who they were actually, but they basically said, oh, that's a great photo of that. The hand of the man . Who was like working with all the Bacharach Christians, it's a French . Guy and it just showed the leather airiness of his hand.
[00:20:19] And he, he had this whole story and he, it wasn't prescriptive. He wasn't, it wasn't a script. He just really, they educated their whole team to know. And then going back to, okay, so you have all these handbooks and manuals of how to operate and deliver hospitality. Okay. That's like the baseline, but it's like, how do you find those right.
[00:20:38] People with the emotional intelligence to deliver on that, to take that and make it something individualized.
[00:20:44] Bashar Wali: You just, you just use the perfect example. People would think that the baccarat, you would be oohing and aahing about the beautiful crystal and the blah, blah, blah, blah. You probably don't remember any of it.
[00:20:55] Right. And it's such a unique example because it's like a very specific kinds of [00:21:00] assets that you would remember things from the only thing you remembered was this person. Who made you feel it was unscripted, even if it were scripted, he did not make you feel that way. This guy cared about you and your wife standing there looking at that piece of art enough to come and tell you about it, to engage with you in the beautiful act of human conversation.
[00:21:18] Right? So that's what I remember. I totally agree with you. Now you ask a very good question is how do you do that with people? And I honestly think that's the most nebulous question and answer I can give you is there isn't it. If there was a easy prescribed way to do it, everyone would do it, right? Why wouldn't they?
[00:21:36] I think fundamentally in my view, I can train you on tasks. But the way I make you go above and beyond, and the way I make you inclined to walk up to this couple and tell them about that painting, even though it's not your job is to create a culture that celebrates that right. Culture creation, people often confused with training.
[00:21:55] You can't train on culture, you can build culture and build community. [00:22:00] And that comes from, you know, in scale matters. It's harder to do it when you have a thousand hotels. Obviously it's a lot easier to do when you have less, because if you truly believe in it and you're doing it for love, not for money, this idea of, I love, you know, I love hosting strangers in my house and making them feel good.
[00:22:16] And if you believe in that and live it and demonstrate it to your phone, Day in and day out. Not one time. This is not a mock training, right? It's it's day in and day out. I think ultimately that's how you weed, the ones that don't fit in that system out and the ones that love and appreciate it stay. And, you know, we talk a lot about how do you keep employees engaged?
[00:22:35] Long-term sure you got to pay, right. And you've got to give them benefits and you've got to do it all up, but I always say how you treat them and how they treat each other and your expectations of how they treat each other is up or down or sideways or up the organizational ladder or down. And I use the simple analogy and I say, think about the message you send.
[00:22:53] When you say the bathroom in the lobby must be immaculate. You must be able to eat off the phone. But the [00:23:00] employee bathroom can be a pigsty. I don't really care. Think about the message you send there. So I think a lot of things you do, a lot of actions you do that are generally about mutual respect and setting leading by example, and then appreciating individuals for their individual accomplishments is what ultimately builds culture, not a manual, not an outside company to do that training
[00:23:23] Dan Ryan: and cultures.
[00:23:25] Bashar Wali: Most of them hire, by the way you mentioned Danny Meyer. It's not because of his manuals and SOP is it's because of him. He is the driving force and the energy behind that, the ideal of service that his company was built upon because he's passionate about it. And I
[00:23:42] Dan Ryan: think that passion and who he is, is because he was able to.
[00:23:47] By the way he does things to get his values or these core values out. And then not, they're not just platitudes hanging on a wall. I think that he really, from everything that I've seen and every successful business [00:24:00] I've experienced and built that has, um, great people and a thriving culture, it's all
[00:24:05] Bashar Wali: based on values and practicing what you preach and being true to your values and selecting the values because they're meaningful to you.
[00:24:13] Not because they're the buzzy thing going on in the world today. And again, all the way back to what does that mean? The authentic to your true self, because anything else you try will fade over time
[00:24:25] Dan Ryan: truly. And, and with those values, I also see that, okay. A lexicon and a language has developed in those companies and organizations around those, you know, four to six different values that people are praising each other on.
[00:24:40] They're giving critical feedback on, but they're always talking about it and using those as guideposts to create a language. Who do you think like in our industry has done an exemplary job of defining those values and also living by them, making them really come to life where they're not just platitudes [00:25:00]
[00:25:00] Bashar Wali: really interesting question.
[00:25:01] I mean, it's hard to generalize because to me ultimately, it's about the team on the ground, right? Not a brand necessarily. Cause I can tell you I've been to some fabulous Brand X hotels and some terrible Brand X hotels. So, so to me fundamentally, it's about the team and I'm trying to think like, like Kimpton, I think for a long while truly lived by the Bill Kimpton's core principles that he put out. And even after his passing his team, you know, with Nikki, Leanne Dockus, they really saw that through and deliver it through on it. And even as they got to scale, it continued to be the Kimpton of old. And you got what you expected from them. That was so unique and different because every hotel was unique and different, but those core values shine through, I think, similarly withJoie de Vivre and Chip, right.
[00:25:53] And Chip's soul permeated through every look, some hotels were perfect. Some hotels were not perfect. Someone tells us we're [00:26:00] pretty, someone tells her we're not so pretty, but you could feel that ship soul and touch through them all. So I think those are the ones that we point to often, again and again, there's a lot of fantastic individual hotels out there or single offerings from big companies.
[00:26:14] But I think Kimpton is probably the most recent example. I can point to that. I've done it. Not with that. Look at me. I'm cool. But with that true sense of, yeah. We are good to our guests. We're good to our employees. We're good to each other. We're all in this together before that sentence was a buzzy sentence, like it is now, I think Kip had always sort of had that feeling that we're all in this together, staying on
[00:26:36] GMT20210623-180350_Recording_640x360: the
[00:26:36] Dan Ryan: Kenton side.
[00:26:37] And, um, because I, a couple of years ago, after the acquisition, by IHG of Kimpton, I was at some industry event and he, this guy was sitting next to, he was talking about how he creates all the procedures and, and just all the standards of all the brands for IHG. I said, and I've always done a lot of work with Kimpton living in San Francisco.
[00:26:58] And they actually actually gave me [00:27:00] my first shot, um, out there. But I remember saying, oh, when are you going to do that with Kimpton to kind of standardize them and get them into the whole it thing. I hope never we'd really fucked that up, right? Because they saw look, IHG is incredible at doing all that stuff through, through their delivery of service.
[00:27:17] But like Kimpton does have a very special thing in there. I think that they've really done a great job of staying true to that as they, even as they scale and go internationally.
[00:27:26] Bashar Wali: I agree. And I think, look, it becomes harder. It's just the nature of the beast. Obviously you can control it when you have 20-30, when you have a hundred, it's, it's a different conversation.
[00:27:35] It's not much harder task to do, but I think so far they've managed to really maintain their core values and not deviate from the much not withstanding their acquisition. I agree.
[00:27:47] Dan Ryan: So, okay. So we've been talking about the good stuff of how do you get comfortable? How do you get your, to your true self and hiring people with that emotional intelligence that can live and breathe by core values and recruit the right people to do it?
[00:27:59] So that's [00:28:00] on the good side. So we, I also find that in my life I've learned so much by, oh, that was a horrible experience. Right. So if you were to go through, that was like a horrible hospitality experience, that kind of changed the arc of how you deliver hospitality in your businesses in life. Um, tell me about that.
[00:28:19] I'd love to hear about that
[00:28:20] Bashar Wali: just like an example. You mean, look, there, there's an it's, it's kind of a, an easy one. It seems like we, as an industry, decided that if you book through a third party, you are a second class citizen. We will treat you like a second class citizen. We will look down upon you as you check in, we'll give you our worst.
[00:28:39] And, and it became to me when I experienced it myself, right? Like the one time I booked that in, on hotel tonight or something, I'm looking at it and I'm saying, look, why, if you don't want it, if you don't want this channel, why are you on this channel? And you're so stupid for taking someone who's come to you wherever they've come to you through whatever channel they've [00:29:00] come to you through and wanting to do business with you find albeit on price, I picked you on price, but you have an opportunity to turn me around to make me a loyal customer.
[00:29:11] So, so when I experienced it myself for the first time, it really changed my perspective on this idea. Again, back to emotional intelligence, if you hate to Expedia and you don't want to be on Expedia, don't be on Expedia. But how dare you treat a guest walking through your door, who is the same as the next person who walked through their door, your door differently because they booked somewhere where you put your inventory.
[00:29:32] So that really changed my perspective about we kind of almost were racist. And our guests profiling as to their source of business. And I'm like, well, that's, you're, you're being racist against the group who did something together. So you can't be, you have to be welcoming to all, and the choice is yours.
[00:29:48] So I, myself, I've experienced a ton of horrible experiences over the years. Right. And I've seen a ton of failures where people could have easily turned the situation around in a failed miserably. I [00:30:00] tend to be more tolerant, right. So I don't necessarily write you off because I always say, you know, imperfect.
[00:30:05] So I'm more, I'm more forgiving of our industry, but I think this idea of classifying guests and saying, well, if he's from business travel BT, we've got to treat them different than transient or. It's such a fallacy. They're all, they're all equal humans in my mind, regardless of what channel they came through, obviously.
[00:30:22] And ultimately they're all potential lifetime customers. Why are you missing the opportunity on keeping them or trying to keep them at least? So I think this idea of segregating customers by market segment or by buying source of business and treating them differently is one of . The worst things we've done as an industry, not withstanding by the way, our inherent biases, which I've been obviously very preachy about this idea of inclusion and diversity and all of that.
[00:30:45] That's a different conversation. But I think that particular segmentation of customers is a terrible thing that we, as an industry continue to do to this day, which is fascinating to me.
[00:30:55] Dan Ryan: Well, I want it. Okay. So you have been tremendously passionate and really leading [00:31:00] one of the big leaders within our industry on diversity and inclusion, which also.
[00:31:05] Is so important to what we are all trying to do because just from raising awareness A and B delivering, giving opportunity, um, I know that you used an example there of, you know, someone coming from an OTA and doing that, but like there are larger structural issues within our industry.
[00:31:22] Bashar Wali: You're going to get me started on that.
[00:31:24] Dan Ryan: No, I want to, because, because to me there are some huge challenges that we've, that we're having.
[00:31:33] Bashar Wali: And I w yeah, righteous about this and, and, you know, righteous through the point of, you know, I've, I've probably alienated a bunch of people, but you know, again, authenticity, right. I believe so strongly in this. I don't give a shit what you'd think it's, it's up to you, how you take it.
[00:31:47] Our industry historically has been falsely perceived as diverse because in fact at the bottom, we're very diverse, right? We're an industry of immigrants and all [00:32:00] walks of life. But as you start climbing up that ladder very quickly, it gets wider and wider and wider and wider and male dominated.
[00:32:09] Uh, you think about the ALIS conference in LA or the NYU conference in New York. And I sort of say, I stand on the balcony of Alice on the mezzanine and I looked down and it is a sea of blue suits, white rice, middle-aged men, men in blue suits. And over the last few years, there's been sort of the token women that have been given the opportunity to show up and got to see it and tiny percentage.
[00:32:34] I can't even imagine what the percentage is. So when you look at up housekeeper population, White folks are far few. They're the minority. You go up to the top, all white. So clearly something in the system is broken. That's not allowing these people to climb up the ladder to get, we're not, we're not letting them as an industry, make it to the top and something along this journey that I've learned and, you know, learn every day and really was, [00:33:00] was, that was a pretty pivotal moment for me in this conversation was the idea of little black kid going to school, goes home to his mom and dad and says, look, I want to go into the hospitality industry and mom, and dad's immediate reaction is what the hell are you thinking?
[00:33:19] We've been fighting for 400 years to quit serving the white man. And you want to go serve them. That's what you want to do because in their mind, they view the service industry to use that term for a moment as servitude. And think about the clear distinction between those two words. So little Johnny who wants to go be in the hospitality industry, the parents say, yeah, you want to go be a Houseman or a bellman or a housekeeper or a server or a dishwasher.
[00:33:46] Hell no, we don't want you to do that. That's not a good path for you. And the reason they say that is they look up at the top and they don't see anyone that looks like there are no black CEOs. There are no, you know, C-suites far and few in between far and [00:34:00] few in between obviously. So, so this idea of service versus servitude is real.
[00:34:04] And I think the only way we can fix it is to encourage African-American children. I'm focusing on that group for now, but that's a broad term, obviously broad term in terms of, you know, the diversity. It's not exclusive to that group, but I think it's probably the least represented, I would say, in our industry.
[00:34:19] So we've got to do a better job in opening the doors, stepping aside from the ladder and letting them climb up. And it's funny because I've said this about women, by the way, in a piece I wrote is that women don't need us to help them. All they need us to do is get the hell out of their way. Right. But we continue to stand in their way.
[00:34:36] We continue to create systems to oppress them. And that's what we do also with, with sort of minorities. We create systems that oppress them really interesting. Again, I told you, I'm going to get me on a tangent here. We talk about AI, right? Like you think about resume filtering AI filtering resumes. The only reliable information that program has to has to rely on is the past, right?
[00:34:58] and they say, okay, out of the 10,000 [00:35:00] applicants that applied for this job, what are the common denominators? So they say, okay, any person whose . Name was not common, Chantelle or DeVonn or whatever. Those people were not hiring. At the same frequency as James are Bob or Debbie were hired.
[00:35:17] So the system inevitably says those aren't good candidates to present. So now when a resume comes through and the name Davon is on it, the system is going to say, well, this person should go low on the, on the totem pole because historically they have not been hired at the same rate as Bob or Debbie or Joe.
[00:35:32] Right? So you start thinking about the systems we're creating that are inherently becoming racist and then by themselves, because the fact that the data they rely on is inherently racist, right? So this is such a deep issue that I think will take a lot of effort and talking and preaching and being righteous about to correct.
[00:35:51] And it's not going to take, you know, a night or a month or a month. It's going to take decades, maybe generations to fix. But in our industry specifically, again, our problem is we're very [00:36:00] diverse at the bottom, not diverse enough at the top. And the burden is on us to make that, to make that difference, to make that change.
[00:36:05] Dan Ryan: So on this, on any of these kinds of structural, like very difficult issues, I always say, and I don't know where I got it from, but like a waterfall starts with one drop of water and I feel like there's a shower or a starting of a sprinkling of water within our industry right now. So as far as kind of keeping that torch, going and having as many drops of water happening, like, I know you're passionate, you're outspoken on it, but like, how can we as an industry change those AI algorithms?
[00:36:33] How can we bring opportunity? Because I also believe, and I get this from a lot of organizations that I work with, but it's, you know, talent is uniformly distributed, but opportunity is not. So how do we change that structure?
[00:36:46] Bashar Wali: Well, so, so we have to act right ourselves individually, and I think it's going to take a ton of effort.
[00:36:53] And I think this is past a hashtag or a black post on your Instagram account. This has to be [00:37:00] actionable, tangible. Everyday things we can all do. So when I usually finish a talk or a clubhouse or something, I say, look, everyone here can do something. Here's what you can do. Find someone who's pushing and doing their thing.
[00:37:12] Like, you know, Damon Lawerence, a dear friend who started Homage, a black owned hotel brand to celebrate sprout black culture. I say, listen, if you don't have the means, don't have the resources. Don't don't, don't, don't, you're unemployed. You're sitting at home, find Damon, find his email, send them an email and say, I'm rooting for you.
[00:37:30] I'm here for you. Like literally it's that simple. And then from there, obviously make a connection, open a door, offer a service, write a check to a cause, go out and protest in, in protests, write your senator. Every person has a thousand things they can do if they choose to do them and they have to do them every single day, you didn't do it just once and check the boxes, say "I'm done for the year.
[00:37:52] I've delivered what I need to deliver." So fundamentally those are the simple things you can do, but there are other things you can do. Dan, you get invited to sit on a [00:38:00] panel, right? You look at the panel, it's all, middle-aged white men. You should say, I'm not comfortable sitting on this panel because if you raise it right now, whoever organized it is going to say either, we'll say, Aw, that schmuck, who cares, we'll find someone else.
[00:38:14] Or they're going to say, if they hear it from three people that say, damn, we're doing something wrong here. We can't get the right people because we're not doing the right thing. Right? Similarly, you walk into a boardroom full of middle-aged white men walk out. So we have to become a. Righteous about it.
[00:38:30] Again, I love that word because if we don't it's lip service, it's totally lip service. And by the way, we've been talking about it for a hundred years. And the amount of talking versus the amount of progress we made are so disparate. Like there's not even a comparison. So clearly the talking sure it's working, but we've got to do a lot more don't stop just because it's ROI is not as good as it should be.
[00:38:53] You can't stop because then there's no ROI, but I think we need to exponentially increase our efforts. And by the way, you know, this, you [00:39:00] have children of your own, our children literally do not see color. We make them see color, right? So we also have to think about how we live our lives as, as parents and what example we're setting for the next generation.
[00:39:11] But for our industry, make your voice heard, walk out of a meeting, turn down a panel. That's how we'll make it heard. Especially from us sort of experts in the field as it were. If we continue to. Coalesce and say yes, nothing will change.
[00:39:28] Dan Ryan: And I think that's all also really important. Like as I'm getting this podcast up off the ground, that's a huge part of me and my selection criteria is like, I want to have a, literally a diverse group of opinions. And you know, where I think I learned that the most from it was from ILC and Independent Lodging Congress, and then making this concerted effort to like, really think about how can we change the makeup of our advisory board?
[00:39:55] How can we, uh, present as many diverse opinions as possible? And [00:40:00] I think that you being a leader in that, me being a leader in there and Andrew and everyone else, I, I really think. We're leading by example. And I think we just need to keep that wind in all of our sales
[00:40:13] Bashar Wali: and beyond the photo op right. Cause you know, a lot of people do it for the photo op and you see through that very quickly to your point.
[00:40:19] It's not only be there, but have a voice and be heard.
[00:40:24] Dan Ryan: So that's all really heavy. And I really think that we are going to make this happen and progress is slow, but it is coming. Um, and I'm committed to help that I know you are. And I know that people, we associate our, so let's keep that going. So aside from like that actually excites me about the future.
[00:40:39] A lot of people get down on the future, but like what excites you about the future of our industry and where we're going?
[00:40:44] Bashar Wali: Again, really great questions. And I'm glad we didn't prepare it cause I would have been overthinking them. So this freeform is my favorite freeform. I've often said and continue to believe that our industry has been disrupted twice since its [00:41:00] inception and its inception goes back thousands of years.
[00:41:03] Right? This idea of hosting a stranger in a strange town isn't they were disrupted with the internet. Our industry is disrupted with the internet, which disrupted the whole world. And then Airbnb beyond that, you think about our industry, it's all on the margins, all simple little things that are inevitably progress.
[00:41:22] Cause disruption, people throw that word around too. I'm sick of it. It's become meaningless. Disruption to me is like something seismic, right? Not just, oh, you know, we have a new kind of linen that repels bugs. Okay, great. So what, right. So, so what I'm excited about is really watching generationally what's happening, particularly this up-and-coming generation who have really grown.
[00:41:46] At a very different sort of setup than we did at a much faster pace than we did. There's so much more smarter and knowledgeable and forget that their faces are buried in Snapchat and Tik TOK. Fine. I've come to accept that [00:42:00] as that human evolution, right. We used to grock to communicate and we started talking maybe in the future.
[00:42:05] We communicate through devices. I don't know. I don't want to, I don't want to be that again. Okay. Boomer, who says it's going to go away. It's not going away and maybe it does become part of the human evolution for better or for worse. I don't know, but I'm excited to see what happens in terms of.
[00:42:19] Fundamentally our industry is about, you know, I need shelter. Shelter is such a basic need, right. I need a warm, safe place to lay my head because I need to sleep and I need to shower in the morning and go on my way. It's really very, very, very, very amazing, right. Very basic. So how do we make it better?
[00:42:35] How do we change it? How do we change the narrative? Like I'm excited, for example, on the sustainability front to see the conversation, obviously having been derailed meaningfully because of the pandemic, but coming back to the front and center, but beyond what we, you and I are not that smart thinking about, oh, you know, sustainability is recycling so much more than that.
[00:42:56] Right. So much more than that. How does our food get produced? [00:43:00] Where does it come from? What are building like people underestimate building materials and they say the most sustainable hotel is one that doesn't get built. Right. Like, think about what goes into building a hotel, but how, how do we really take this conversation?
[00:43:13] That is to me. Probably as important as the diversity conversation because its implications are global, right. We're going to lose this one planet we have there. Isn't another that we know of just yet. So, so I'm excited to see what happens with sustainability from the next generation that we'll look at it past the idea of recycling and you know, I'm also unhappy with the notion that we are saying, yeah, our kids we'll worry about it and we'll take care of it.
[00:43:36] I'm not suggesting we're kicking the can down the road. We have to do our parts and continue to do our part, but I'm excited to see how they exponentially move that ball forward, move that problem forward that we've created for them. So sustainability, front and center. And the other thing that I'm really, really passionate about is big data, particularly in the human behavior, observation field, like [00:44:00] how do we humans interact?
[00:44:02] How do we live? How do we interact with spaces? How do we use our computer? How do we shower and how do we turn the light on really take in big data. To remove friction out of all these processes and creating human centric design. Again, once again, an overused term that's become meaningless, but really I am a keen observer of human behavior.
[00:44:23] And I think using big data back to them, sort of privacy issue to create ways to make experiences more efficient, more pleasant, removing the friction and allowing us to enjoy the reduced time from . Friction in interacting with each other, sitting next to you. If it doesn't take me 10 minutes to check in because they want my credit card and my ID and all that stuff that could be done electronically, I want to say, Hey Dan, tell me about you.
[00:44:50] Where are you from? Why are you here? What brings you some of your hopes, dreams, and aspirations, right? Because now we both have the time to do it rather than being stuck at a desk for 10 minutes, checking in. So [00:45:00]
[00:45:00] Dan Ryan: I think from a sustainability, diverse, uh, diversity, and also this kind of frictionless.
[00:45:06] Society. If you think about what a hotel is, it's the absolute perfect laboratory to mix all those things together because people are actually living and breathing and showering and interacting in that. So it's an opportunity. We have all these crucibles, thousands of crucibles of hotels, where we can experiment with this.
[00:45:28] And I didn't hearing
[00:45:30] Bashar Wali: you say that it gets me sick designers, right? Like I always say, why do designers love designing hotels? Exactly that point. If you design a hotel, if you're a designer, it needs a hotel. You're designing that apartment. You're designing a restaurant, you're designing an office, you're designing a spa, you're designing a lobby.
[00:45:49] You get to touch everything. A human interacts with sort of on a daily basis, rather than being a home designer. It was just as long as our office was just just offices. But to your point, I think [00:46:00] hotels can and should become the sort of testing ground. Like we've seen it done with retail, right? Like you see these retail companies entering into the space and you know, when West Elm sort of got into it, part of the conversation I had with them was look, how much do I really experience a couch in your store?
[00:46:16] Sure. I'll sit on it. I'll come visit a couple of times, but I'm going to sit around and cumulatively 10 minutes, 15 minutes. But now if you have a hotel and it has your products in it, and that couch is in the lobby, I'm going to go sit on that couch for an hour and work and have a drink and chat with a friend.
[00:46:31] And now all of a sudden, my experience with retail is so different and intimate, right? Like I'm living, I'm using your fork and knife to eat in the restaurant. I'm using your shower, head, shower, I'm using your towel to dry myself, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a really interesting angle for again, retail to experience with, and, you know, retail wants to be experiential.
[00:46:50] Well, what better way than in the construct of a hotel, because how could you be experiential at the end of the day and in a store versus in a hotel. Similarly, I know your [00:47:00] house, for example, right? Josh Wyatt brilliant sort of this idea of, you know, what there are galleries and their office spaces. So you go to the gallery and you pass through it a for an hour, and then you come to the office, like, why don't we make offices gallery? So all these people that are entering these offices are seeing about art again and again. And you know, art, like you look at it today. It says something to you, you look at it tomorrow, it says something else to you. So I think the convergence of spaces and this idea of, and this is a very big idea.
[00:47:27] There is no binary in our world anymore. There is no right or wrong. There is no gay or straight. There is no white or black. It's all getting sort of jumbled in the middle. And that's how our kids want to live their lives. They don't want to be bound by binaries. So why is an office, just an office? Why is a gallery is just the gallery.
[00:47:42] Why is it an apartment building? Just an apartment building. So now you're seeing the confluence and the convergence of all these places coming together. And I think that is the future. I mean, you're seeing a lot of this whole idea of apartments is going to go away. And the American dream of buying a home is going away because you have these subscription-based places now where I subscribed to X, Y, Z [00:48:00] company.
[00:48:00] They have a place in Seattle. I live in Seattle. I want to go to New York. I moved to New York and I'm part of this club like, and I just move around and I think we'll see a lot more of that is this very strict and structured society is becoming more. Blended together in a good way. Right? I think it's an, a good way in a more creative way.
[00:48:17] And I think hotels are at the epicenter of that because they touch all those pieces of your sort of, you know, daily journey from waking to sleeping and everything in between,
[00:48:27] Dan Ryan: I think, um, from those big structural pieces and to being this laboratory, these hotel laboratories that we're talking about, like, as you see the retail, the, the regular people, the investors with, uh, EFA, ESG investing, becoming so important to them and what they're doing, you can literally follow the money now.
[00:48:44] So what I, 10 years ago, very active in sustainability, and I always say this, it was like, okay, we used to watch TV. Then we watch HDTV. Now we're watching TV again. Um, I feel like that happened with sustainability supply chains, change, everything happened. Like you [00:49:00] couldn't even find some of these materials before now they're readily available.
[00:49:04] But we're not talking about anymore, but one thing that I'm finding, I'm having more and more conversations about it through the pandemic, through all this rise of ESG money, where all the big private equity and big banks, like they, they're making sure that whoever they're working with whoever's raising money or they're raising money for it.
[00:49:21] They can check those boxes because it's really important to show just everyone that there, that all of this really matters to them.
[00:49:29] Bashar Wali: Exactly. And doing it. And by the way, some are doing it because they have to, because of the public pressure, which is fine, I'm happy about it, right? Because ultimately it becomes the norm.
[00:49:38] What is appeared to be now, you know, done by pressure becomes the norm. And ultimately it accomplishes the goal. So I'm not complaining about why they do it. I'd rather it be done from an authentic, authentic place rather than have to, but I'll take it either way, by the way, another thing that's becoming really exciting sort of robotics.
[00:49:53] I actually talked to someone the other day from YPO. Uh, MaidBots is the name of his company. And his premise is I am creating the Jetsons [00:50:00] Rosie for hotels. And I said, okay, tell me what that means. And he says, look at its core. Yeah, sure. It said it's a commercial grade Roomba. But think about what more you could do with it.
[00:50:09] All of a sudden you have a camera on top, so it's security. You have a moisture sensor in it. So now it tells you if there's any depth in, you know, uh, water penetration issues. It has that Wi-Fi enhancer in it. So now your wifi signal is better. It has that blah, blah, blah, read the temperature adjusted. So all of a sudden robotics are having a place.
[00:50:28] But again, I worry that many out of necessity for now. So I'll cut them. Some slack are thinking about those automation thing as a cut humans out of the equation and thus cut costs. And I continue to say my, my, my preach is use technology to remove friction from the human interaction, not the human from the human interaction and the premises.
[00:50:49] Look, I don't need to check in, I can do it on my app. So if normally you needed three people to check to man a desk, have two. Cut one out fine, but then pay the other two more. [00:51:00] So they stay with you longer and they're more adept and, and, and inclined to spend more time with you and engage with your guests at a different level, at a higher level of call it at a higher call.
[00:51:09] Right? So I think there's a way to balance bottom line, obviously important. Like you said, a hotel is a business. It's not charity. We've got to make money. We, we go to extremes, right? We either want all zero humans are all humans. And I think there's a lot of places in the middle that you can accomplish the best of both worlds.
[00:51:28] Dan Ryan: Awesome. So I, we've learned so much from you on this, like where we are, where we're going, but now like shifting gears to just talk about you Bashar. So, okay. You're traveling. You're you're New York city. You're at 206 hotels. You're getting up on the road again, like when you really think of when you're gone and you're really homesick and you're on a long trip.
[00:51:47] Like what food do you crave the most?
[00:51:50] Bashar Wali: Food. Okay. Uh, funny enough, my beloved wife Eileen uh, we celebrated 25 years this year. Congratulations. She thank you. She happens to be a very conscious [00:52:00] and healthy eater. So there is no food. I crave a home because it's salt-free and blah, blah, blah. And I I'm very well fed as you know, on road.
[00:52:10] Uh, so not food really, obviously, you know, I have kids at home now, one in college. Uh, my wife obviously has been a Saint through my journey, sort of the rock that has kept, allowed me to do what I do and worry about what happens at home. Cause she was the CEO of the house and her job is a lot harder than yours and mine is, you know, from your experience.
[00:52:29] Um, so I sort of, the pandemic has allowed me to, right myself included to see there's more, there's more to life than just. Bragging rights about how many miles do you have and how many nights at home the war not right. So, so, and I think the pandemic has created sort of a, a burning desire for intimacy being with other people intimacy and sort of the human sense.
[00:52:51] And. People now know their neighbors and they know what school their kids go to. So I think there's now a balance between hydro a lot of energy [00:53:00] from traveling and for me, engaging with strangers and from being in different places, like being at a strange place, sometimes it's debilitating to some it's, it's what, what I thrive upon.
[00:53:09] I have this sort of race against time to go to every country and have replaced and, you know, essentially FOMO galore. So on the road, I draw energy from the fact that I love what I do. It's not work. Right. So meet me, going to do my job is not, is not a job. So it in it by itself is an attraction clearly being grounded at home and wanting to be with the family is probably the only thing that tugs at me, not necessarily the food.
[00:53:34] Dan Ryan: Eileen congratulations and happy anniversary. So, uh, all right. Now thinking about like the, I always say like, what I do is inconsequential why I do what I do. I think you just went into that pretty
[00:53:44] Bashar Wali: wonderfully, but like, well, let, let, let me talk on that for a second. I am a huge believer in and fan of Simon Sinek.
[00:53:50] Right? Discover your why. And I actually had done it with my team before, and you're exactly right. Don't tell me what you do. Don't tell me how you do it. Don't talk to me. Where are you doing? Tell me [00:54:00] why do you do what you do? And I think, again, some of us have an innate desire to serve. Like, look, I'll go to a party that I'm not the host of.
[00:54:10] And again, I lean hates going with me to parties. Because what I ended up doing is I ended up being like the host of the party. I feel the burden to go to make sure everyone at the party is engaged and not standing in the corner awkwardly by themselves. They have a drink and I start introducing people.
[00:54:25] And he's like, what the hell? Like I'm standing in the corner by myself now, why are you leaving out of it? And she says, look, what if you're going to go work the room? And I don't work it for selfish reasons, I'm not selling you anything. I'm not doing anything, but it truly is an innate thing in me that I have to be that the host of the soiree as a war.
[00:54:41] And that's really sort of what I say. My job description is I'm the host of the soiree. So, so to me, creating those connections is my why. And you get to do that in a hotel like every, every second of every day, right? You're meeting new employees, you're introducing guests, employees, employees, to guests, guest, each other, engaging with guys you're meeting new people, [00:55:00] energy galore, like that is literally I'm nervous.
[00:55:03] Dan Ryan: So going, okay. So that is your why now to just briefly talk about the, what, or you don't have to be briefly, but as far as with practice in this assembly, talk about the what there, and then, but really elaborate on the why of each of those.
[00:55:19] Bashar Wali: Sure. So, so look very simply I tell people I'm a hotel guy I'm in the hotel ownership and management business.
[00:55:25] So we'll talk about practice for a minute. Practice. Hospitality is a management company. Does the world need another management company? Hal. Now there's plenty of, 'em a lot of great ones, lots of friends that do an incredible job. The reason why I decided to do it. Cause I said, look, there's this notion about the word management, you and your wife, have your beautiful children.
[00:55:48] When you look for someone to attend to your children, you don't find someone to manage them. You find someone to love them, to care for them to nurture them, to protect them like their own. [00:56:00] You know what goes into creating a home. It is your baby. You lose forget your money and the effort that all of that you sleepless nights, you agonize agonize for weeks over what shape the donut should be.
[00:56:15] And when you're all done, we want to give your baby to someone to manage. So we felt that there was a disconnect with this idea of management management to me is checking people in and checking people out, making sure the P and L blah, blah, blah, making sure the expenses are in track lab, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:56:31] But there's the soft skill, which this idea of care that we are, you're handing your baby and I'm going to do all that because I have to, that's what gets me in the game, but I want to do a lot more than that. I want to make sure your baby is the most noticed the most adored, the most, uh, repeated business with, you know, versus all the other babies out there.
[00:56:51] And I think that's a skill that's somewhat lost because it's more art than it is science. It's a balance between the two. You can't have the artists, right. Your budget and your schedule and [00:57:00] your financial needs are inconsequential. Let me do what I do nor the boring suits that are all machines, right?
[00:57:06] And that's why I think this idea of binary. And that's why I sort of abandoned the notion of independent, good brand bad. Cause that's very binary. There's a place where a brand is the ideal choice and a place where independence is. The ideal is the ideal chosen then the in between. So the premise behind practice is, and we were trying to get cute by the way, early on with the name to say, we're a hotel care company where a hotel nurture company obviously fails because people are like, what, what does that mean?
[00:57:30] So we stuck with the traditional path, but the idea is if you want someone to manage your baby, plenty of good managers out there, you want someone to love and nurture and care for your baby and make it be in your mind at least, but in others, the best it can be maximize its potential. We are in a lot harder to do with a hundred, a lot easier to do small.
[00:57:49] So our approach was to say, we want to do this small scale. We honestly want to turn down deals and we have, and you know, it's painful to turn on deals when you're a startup and a [00:58:00] pandemic and that Nan, but ultimately we want it to stay true and authentic to it. So at its very basic or a hotel management company, but really at the deep part of it is we are trying to do it with more emotion than just science and emotion goes to the employees, to the guests, the way you deal with your partner.
[00:58:18] And I sort of felt you call me to manage your own thoughts. That's how you, Dan, you have a problem. You will. You will have my number, my wife's cell number, my kids' cell number. If you want me, you will find me. I'm not going to show up to sell you on my services. And I can hand you some surrogate, three, three levels down.
[00:58:33] So it's more of the old fashioned way. You know, hand-to-hand combat, has it worked relationship building chip Connolly way, right? He knew every owner. He took them out to the games. He knew their kids. He had dinner at their houses. That's the kind of management comp management company for lack of a better term on the assembly side, similar, it's just sort of more real estate centric.
[00:58:55] And it was set up to take advantage of. The idea that we know how [00:59:00] to find them. We know how to do them, just drive without going over our skis. Cause you know, ultimately if you do it for yourself wrong, because now it's ego. I want to do it for the customers, right? So three and a half star is what that deal needs.
[00:59:13] And what's ideal for it. I don't care. I'll go stay at five star if I walk to, but I don't want to induce you invest our partner to make a hotel five-star star. It shouldn't be kind of thing. So that's sort of the real estate vehicle. The other one is the management vehicle and we're potentially contemplating the creation of a brand under the real estate umbrella.
[00:59:30] That would also accomplish the goal of not just another brand. And I think we're tinkering with some white space that we've found that we think is underserved and fundamentally at the core of everything. And our core values is do well by doing good. If being successful means crushing everyone along the way.
[00:59:46] I'm not interested in being successful. I love
[00:59:49] Dan Ryan: how that whole idea of the emotion. Came up again in both of those, right. And that whole idea of that hospitality quotient, or just getting into the heart and [01:00:00] opening the heart and just filling because that heart between all of us is really what connects us.
[01:00:05] And that
[01:00:06] Bashar Wali: I'll tell you how full of shit I am. Someone called me out on it. Cause it was in one of the articles and I actually won it, won this deal to be announced on this premise. I sort of say, Dan, when I come to you to manage your hotel, you're calling me to pitch you management. I lied to you is then to the world, you may be one person, but to one person, you may be the world.
[01:00:28] That's how your hotel will be there. Because I don't have a thousand. Your hotel will be number one for me as your manager versus, oh yeah. You're in one of 50 and I'll get to you when I get to. So the sort of idea, and you know, this, the analogy I gave you is you say to a child, right? So the world is, you're just the person you're, your kid is just one person to the world is a statistic.
[01:00:51] But to you, he is he or she are your world. Right? So you think about that in a hotel construct and that's a very nebulous, emotional thing. What does that really mean at the end of the day? And you [01:01:00] can't say that with a thousand hotels, it's impossible, right? Because ultimately you only have so many hours in the day and you want to divide your time and your energy towards what you can divided by and, you know, statistically just, you can't do it for 50 hotels.
[01:01:16] Yeah. I
[01:01:17] Dan Ryan: think. That whole idea, like Mike talking about random people when you meet them and talking to them and being the life of the party, like my kids love and hate that about me because I love talking to random
[01:01:29] Bashar Wali: people.
[01:01:30] Dan Ryan: I know, but it's interesting where you saying that, like on the whole hotel side, that hope I look at every person I'm talking to as my gateway to the world, because it's through the filter of them and all of their connections and their life experience that I think you and I are both really curious people and every opportunity that I'm in front of someone, I want to learn something.
[01:01:49] I want to see the world through them. And I think that's the emotional, the emotion.
[01:01:55] Bashar Wali: It's funny. I'm standing on a street corner with my son a couple of years ago. He's 17 at the time. [01:02:00] And we're talking about talking to people. He says, you're always like, you're always full of it basically saying, what, what do you say to people?
[01:02:06] Like, what are you talking about? Like, dude, listen, you've lived a privileged life. You've traveled the world. You have so much to talk about, but I don't know where to start. I said, watch this. I literally walk up to a guy standing at the light, waiting to cross. On the west coast. So a little friendlier, arguably, I go up to the guy and 45 minutes later, I'm still talking to this guy 45 minutes.
[01:02:26] And my son is awestruck. It's so simple. And you know what? It is my secret formula. *wink wink*, they love talking about themselves, they love talking about themselves. You get someone going and talking about themselves. They will not stop.
[01:02:40] Dan Ryan: And I love hearing about the world through anyone. So there's stories.
[01:02:46] Yes. I love the stories and, and it's just like a wave that I get to ride on and it is freaking awesome. And people are rad and businesses are rad when they're done correctly. Hotels are at, so I always say like, what I do is inconsequential, but [01:03:00] why I do what I do is I get to shorten people's journeys.
[01:03:02] Right? So that's through connections or introductions or finding the right manufacturer or helping someone get a job. Like, I love all that stuff. So I'm getting to you on the journey. Shortner right now, let's just pretend you met. Your 25 year old self right now. And you're you are you right now.
[01:03:20] You're going to give yourself a piece of advice to shorten your journey in life. What do you tell yourself?
[01:03:26] Bashar Wali: Wow. Um, I would tell myself, never turned down a meeting because you never know what you will learn. And I say that to a lot of my folks, you know, you get, we get bombarded with calls and requests for, and sometimes their vendors and it's salesy all the way and find your, write those off.
[01:03:46] But I never turned an attorney down to meet someone or get to learn about someone, even if I have to sacrifice through some painful sales pitch of the process, I tolerate it. But ultimately that's what I would tell myself because I didn't think I did enough of that early [01:04:00] on. I was a sort of an older and wiser.
[01:04:02] Is meet as many people as you can talk to as many people, as you can learn from as many people as you can. And this isn't for only up, this is down the scale too. Right? So I talked, I talked to 15 year olds that I learned a lot from, you know, and I talked to 70 year olds that I learned from successful.
[01:04:16] What is the definition of success? Right? I mean, that's interesting. Like my wife has a teacher and she says, she makes virtually no money. And she says, I'm very successful. How do you, how do you divide the defined success? Right. People define it with what your business card says and what your bank account says.
[01:04:28] And at the end of the day, that's such a shallow way to be successful. I think we're successful by the amount of humanity we observed during this short journey. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's
[01:04:38] Dan Ryan: that absorption and also the impact. And also each of those meetings you're talking about, it's a crucible. Like our hotels are crucibles.
[01:04:44] You put things in a crucible, you turn the heat up and cool things come out and you just don't know. So we're really by denying ourselves those experiences. We're we're denying ourselves and you're reducing impact in the world. So this was [01:05:00] so awesome. I told you,
[01:05:01] Bashar Wali: you and I are full of shit. We could talk for hours.
[01:05:03] Dan Ryan: Oh my God. I want to keep going. So, um, but as we were just kind of wrapping up, like tell us where can people find you and learn more about you? Oh God,
[01:05:10] Bashar Wali: I am everywhere. And I've learned by the way, along the way that for SEO purposes, you always want to use your full name. So every, every social handle is my full name, but I use this website to hotelier.
[01:05:21] And it has all my stuff on it. So you can find me there. Uh, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Tik TOK. Blah-blah-blah I haven't run there. They're literally everywhere. In fact, my teenage daughter gets on something. She's like, dad, why are you on house party? I'm like, why shouldn't I be? So I'm there before them often. I love engaging with people as you know, clubhouse.
[01:05:40] I've been spending a lot of time on clubhouse, preaching the gospel of again, diversity and all these things. And that has given me a great platform, but yeah, hotelier.life
[01:05:48] Dan Ryan: tell you about life. Great. And we'll put that up there as well. Um, so I just want to say thank you. And if people wanted to learn more specifically hotel your.life, or they can go to practice hospitality.com
[01:05:59] Bashar Wali: to this December.[01:06:00]
[01:06:00] Has all the links on it. Okay. Great.
[01:06:03] Dan Ryan: All right. Cool. Well, Hey, thank you everyone
[01:06:05] Bashar Wali: Nice chatting with you. I
[01:06:08] Dan Ryan: hope you all learned something and laughter you know, tell someone about the podcast and thank you everyone. And thank you. Bashar you were amazing and we'll see you next time.
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