20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:
I told myself I'm going to be a hotelier. Okay so how do I become a hotelier? Well, no hotel owner in their right mind will ask me to run their hotel. So I guess I need to be a hotel owner myself.
In my thirties I was kind of a Parisian nightlife kingpin and had a lot of fun, a lot of fun. I probably had a little bit of a delayed teenage crisis and threw my career out the window and decided to go into nightlife.
Money came and then went even faster, but I definitely checked a lot of marks in the bucket list and so I enjoyed myself greatly. I decided maybe it was time to get a grip and do something more serious with my life.
I'm the son of an architect, I love good design, I love hanging out with people, I love creating things that last;
I am about to develop the most beautiful hotel of the Italian riviera, the Grand Miramare Castiglioncello.
Seeing my kids grow and being able to impact them and the way they're going to impact the world is something that I derive a lot of happiness from.
ON TOPIC: HOSPITALITY, HOTELS, LUXURY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
My project for the hotel is to make it the Italian Riviera's most beautiful hotel.
The hotel industry: there's an underlying real estate element that makes it easier to finance
A checklist for what an asset should look like - location, location, location, architecturally interesting, a straightforward storytelling, etc.
Of course, you need to have a good bed, and it needs to be great design, etc., but very difficult to compete on that, because everybody knows how to buy a good bed and hire a good interior designer. It's not that complicated and you see there's a proliferation of luxury hotels.
Exceptional service is difficult to achieve. I think it's about making people feel welcomed.
You don't go to a luxury hotel to feel at home. You go for something exceptional, you want to feel exceptional. You want to feel like you've been expected to that place for all of your life and when you leave you can’t wait to come back.
70% repeat rate on clients - when you can achieve that, that I think is true luxury. That you can give people such an experience, that they feel amazing, that everything around makes them feel good and makes them feel exceptional. So much so, that they love to talk about it and word of mouth is the best.
ON TOPIC: ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Reinventing yourself permanently is pretty difficult and it is challenging.
You have to be a little bit full of yourself and believe that you're made for being a successful entrepreneur and that if you failed before it's not your fault and you've learned from that and that you have to try again.
The reason why I love being an entrepreneur is being able to have an impact.
it's the journey more than the goal that matters and then you just do it.
I like to put problems in a box and open them when I have to.
You can't be good at everything and you should keep a focus on what you are good at.
You need to hire people who are smarter than you and better than you.
ON GIVING BACK
Education is probably the best way to help the world become a more civilized place and to lift people from poverty.
There's some material success of course, but the yield curve on material happiness flattens very quickly.
References, mentions:
modern luxury, magazine Monocle, How to spend it, Hotel Il Pelicano, Orient Express, Belmond group, humane management, Dead Poets Society, Dino Buzzati, Space invaders, Pirandello, Toscanini, Mastroiani, Visconti, Rossellini, Churchill, Tuscany, Corsica, Elba, Florence, Pisa, San Gimignano, Bolghera, Italian riviera, “wine concierge”, truffle hunting, Relais et Chateaux