Future of luxury travel? This company wants you to feel like you're always flying private

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0:42Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. In the United States, airports are not places that people feel good in. They're crowded, there's lines, there isn't much to do or to enjoy. And so the opportunity to reimagine that here in the U.S. was just really intriguing and something I wanted to dive into.

1:17Welcome. I'm Michelle To, a journalist most recently with CNN. and this is Behind the Business, a show about the people behind top consumer brands, category creators, and emerging disruptors, and how they push through to make the most of both work and life each day. Today, I'm with Amina Baluizidad-Porter, the CEO of PS, the first operator of private airport terminals for commercial flyers in the U.S. Its mission? To make you feel like you're flying private, even when you're not. This means even of your flying, let's say, coach with Delta Airlines, you're getting valet service, massages, caviar and champagne, a chauffeur waiting to drive you to your plane.

1:59This is what P.S., the company formerly known as Private Suite, sees as the future of luxury travel. And it's betting many more people will see it that way too. In this episode, we actually go there. So you can see it for yourself. Head to Behind the Business on YouTube to check that out. With respect, there are some people who could look at P.S. and say, you know, this is an embarrassment of riches. What problem exactly is this solving? Now, P.S. was first born in Los Angeles as a haven for paparazzi-weary celebrities, helping high-profile people avoid traipsing through the airport. Now, the company's expanded to Atlanta, with more coming soon to Paris, Dallas, and Miami.

2:39It was recently acquired by Group ADP, the operator of dozens of airports around the world, including Paris' Charles de Gaulle. I just was acutely aware of the fact that airports in the U.S. are a security product and not a hospitality product. Versus, say, airport experiences in Singapore and Dubai and Paris and London. If you want to skip the airport and get your time back and have a relaxing experience, I think everyone raised their hand up for that. Amina, here we are in studio. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, Michelle. Let's start with some context. Sure. Can you walk us through, Amina, a bit about your background and, you know, where you grew up and what shaped your ambitions early on?

3:23Sure. So I'm Algerian. I was born in Algeria, maybe here in Sur Algerian. I grew up in Abu Dhabi, though, in the United Arab Emirates. Before Abu Dhabi was the Abu Dhabi we know it as today. You know, it wasn't really a global city then. It was certainly on its way there, but not as much of a cosmopolitan center of commerce and tourism as it is today. Grew up there, went to international school there. Very quickly knew that that part of the world was not where I wanted to be long term. I just had ambitions to kind of go west. And west I went. I went to college in Canada for undergrad. And then I spent six years living and working in China.

4:06Right. I studied Mandarin as a minor in undergrad, and that fooled me into thinking that I could speak Mandarin. I could not. But, you know, quickly solved that problem by living in China. And in China, I held various roles, all kind of touching the hospitality industry in finance, but also in development and operations. Moved to the U.S. a little over a decade ago now to go to business school. worked in private equity there and then one day a recruiter called me while I was working in finance overseeing investment deals for various real estate companies some with an operating component some without you know so office multi-family but also senior housing and and student housing things like that but a recruiter called me and said a private equity firm is looking to recruit the leadership team for a novel concept that was born within another portfolio companies of theirs.

5:11And it's essentially a startup. I mean, not essentially, it was very much a startup. And it's a private terminal for commercial flights. The second I read that, the job description, and really the description of the company, I can't explain it. I just felt like I was designed in a lab to build this. I guess the need was clear, not that I was a premium traveler at all. But I noticed that as someone with an international background, with not a US passport, frankly, with some, you know, some would say undesirable passports. I mean, you know, from Middle Eastern countries that are not, you know, that, you know, that get you through random screenings when you fly into the U.S.

5:58and things like that. I just was acutely aware of the fact that airports in the U.S. are a security product and not a hospitality product versus, say, airport experiences in Singapore and Dubai and Paris and London. Yes, of course, they have security and security is very important, but they haven't sacrificed on the hospitality, the retail, the entertainment part of the experience. Some of those airports around the world are really enjoyable, are places that people feel good in. And in the United States, airports are not places that people feel good in. They're crowded. Again, the security element is front and center.

6:44It's really the defining part of the experience. They're crowded. There's lines. there isn't much to do or to enjoy in the time that you dwell, which is usually a couple hours. And so the opportunity to reimagine that here in the U.S. was just really intriguing and something I wanted to dive into. Yeah, so much to unpack there. But I guess my first question on that would be, had you ever been in a similar concept type of terminal before? I had not actually. You know, I'd been in lounges and things like that. But lounges, you know, first of all, lounges only serve you on a departure. On arrival, you cannot access a lounge.

7:31Also, lounges kind of reward you after, you know, elbowed your way through the roughest parts of the airport, the most painful parts. at the end there's a pot of gold at the end the rainbow which is ah you got to the lounge and so just when I was learning about this concept and obviously I dove deep into it and researched the fact that similar concepts similar private terminals for commercial flights yes do exist in places like London and Dubai and things like that and it just made so much sense that there would be something that fills this very vast gap between private and commercial travel because the gap is so wide from an experience point of view but it's also so wide from a price point of view and so it's not hard to imagine that there is a large cohort of customers that would pay more than the airport which is free and less than commercial private flights who have something in between it just made so much sense.

8:36Yeah. You felt like it filled that white space that you didn't even realize. That's right. That's right. That wasn't for me. I wasn't the target market, but I could quickly see through all my travels and my experiences that the white space was so vast and that this is a clear solution that I hadn't thought of, but that there's probably many solutions actually in that space. And I guess growing up, did you always have an itch to do something entrepreneurial do something different I would put it as you know be the architect of my own destiny um in whatever form that took um but I wasn't really satisfied with just sitting at a corporate job and having my destiny be in the hands of politics or rank and file or other things I was just I was really aware of that maybe it's because my dad always held corporate jobs and I would always hear you know I got didn't get promoted because this gentleman you know knows this person or you know and it just felt really unfair I had that drive to put myself in situations where it was purely you know the outcome of my work was purely based on my own inputs and not on externalities yeah like say politics or you know things like that so that was something I grew up with that I was very I was very clear on that yeah and I guess entrepreneurship is a manifestation a kind of of that desire yeah absolutely well fast forward to college though um you've shared that you moved to North America was it days before 9-11 yeah that's right and um I think it was three days before 9-11 wow yeah which you know um first of all I went to college in Canada so it wasn't in the United States.

10:26But still, you know, I think there was there's always been a solidarity between Canada and the US in that sense. And being from that part of the world, coming from the Middle East, and then overnight having this stigma, I would say, against people in the Middle East was just really jarring. It was really formative now now people were very kind and i wasn't subject to any prejudice or anything like that but there was almost like um a cloud a little bit over not just me but all of the foreign students from that part of the world as that culture was uh broadly tainted as evil of course there were very evil players but i think um it just got demonized a little bit and and it was just a weird time totally i can understand that how did that shape how you represent yourself and your community do you think i think the way it's shaped me it's a very deep question michelle but i think i think the way it's shaped me is that i'm not someone who assigns a lot of value good or bad to where you're from because i think that those definitions have changed so much over time it used to be and they will continue to change it used to be about your nuclear family and it was about the bigger family and then it was about the tribe and then it was about the village and then it was about the country and now it's about a region and like I'm hoping that eventually it'll just be about like we're all humans on planet earth and these lines are so arbitrary sometimes they're drawn on costs you know geographic lines sometimes by colonists sometimes by regional wars, sometimes by religion.

12:17I just don't think they're that important. And that 9-11 incident, I think, illuminated that for me, where I'm like, just because those people are from there doesn't mean the evil players, the evil actors, doesn't mean I have anything in common with them. And so to bucket me or anyone into that is pretty asinine. And I think I've carried that with me, or it's like I truly don't care where people are from in the sense that like it doesn't mean anything to me. Sure, obviously it's part of their circumstance and affects them, but I don't assign any value or I don't have any preconceived notions about it.

13:00Do you feel like that maybe just reinforced your belief that you kind of just see things across borders, right? Yeah. Just really made you lean more into that international side of things and the fact that people are really cross-cultural these days. Yeah, it sounds like that. I mean, I look at like, so I have a three-year-old and a seven-month-old, and I look at my three-year-old's preschool class, and everybody is like a quarter of this, a half that, whatever. It's like, what does it even mean anymore? Yeah, and increasingly so, right? Yeah, everybody almost is like mixed in terms of, you know, ethnicity, religion, if you even care to like assign those things.

13:39So it's like, I think it is hopefully becoming more and more meaningless to kind of assign the past. Now, by the way, I'm a big proponent of tradition and culture and all that, but that's such a personal definition, I think. Yeah, absolutely. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer.

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14:57Well, you kind of touched on this as well, but you had quite a range of different experiences around the world in various industries before moving to the role that you're in now. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Because you mentioned that you were in China. Your Mandarin is surely better than mine. I think you're a polyglot as well, aren't you? I read that you speak five languages. Yeah, four and a half these days. My Spanish is really rusty, which is really ironic given I live in L.A. and Spanish is obviously pretty prevalent here. I just don't have the opportunity to practice it, unfortunately, or I don't find it.

15:32But I speak English, hopefully. I speak French. I'm Algerian, and, you know, most Algerians speak French. I speak Arabic. Now, Arabic is a weird one because Arabic is a very dialect-based language. So depending on where you're from in the Arab world, which last time I checked is, you know, 20-plus countries, you actually have different dialects that at times can't even understand each other so uh it's one of those like uh a little bit of not a useless but like if you speak a certain dialect of arabic you can only speak to other people that understand that dialect spanish i studied and frankly spanish is quite under easy to understand once you speak french you know they're uh i think romance languages um and in mandarin yes mandarin you know it's really hard to live and work in china for six years and not speak land not end up speaking Mandarin fluently.

16:28Yeah. You know, you sort of have to. So I don't really pat myself on the back for that one too much. It was kind of an output of my time in China. And you were in Shanghai specifically, right? I was in Beijing for a year and Shanghai for five. Yeah. What were you doing there? You mentioned it was hospitality. Yeah, it was various angles of hospitality. You know, my first job wasn't hospitality at all, but it touched hotels where I was an analyst for hotel investment fund. So it was a finance job. But you know, the numbers on the spreadsheet were about hotels. And then my second job was for a global hotel interior design firm, kind of building out their business development practice in China and then more broadly kind of Asia.

17:16And then my third job was I joined two friends who had just raised some capital to build the first boutique hotel in Shanghai. And that was a really fun entrepreneurial experience because there was no real job description. It was like one second it was development and one second it was overseeing strategy. One second it was helping out with operations. One second it was like trying to sign more leases and and do partnerships with big chinese developers so it was very cowboy i guess but you'll learn a lot in those experiences when when you don't have again any preconceived notions about the way things should be so you're just figuring it out yeah and i always say that when i went to business school i learned the fancy words and the terms to apply to the things that had already learned.

18:08Right. I see a through line emerging here, by the way. Oh, do you? Yeah. Because obviously, you know, there's like so much to do with the hotel world, right? And the travel business, even just like peripherally. So it sounds like you were always somewhat drawn to the hospitality space, which makes sense today, doesn't it? Yeah, I guess so. And I can't tell how much of it was by design or by accident, but it was definitely a consistent theme. Right. Okay. Fast forward to today, because you obviously now have been CEO of PS since 2017, 2018. We have now been to tour the PS terminal at LAX, which is part of this episode.

18:47So thank you for having us. It's such a haven. But what strikes me the most is, you know, when you walk around, you get the sense of comfort and luxury and pampering. Though I learned recently that PS actually started out as part of a security and logistics business. Tell us a bit more about that origin story, which I think not that many people know. Yeah. And it's, I know it's, it's so critical to our DNA that I do love telling the story. So there is a very highly esteemed, very established protective services, which is a way of saying security or maybe even bodyguard. If I were to reduce it to that it's a lot more than that company called gdba gavin to background associates that's the top of its field the founder of that business his name is galvin's namesake is his business um observed that is high profile clients when they flew commercial because yes even they to fly commercial at times, would utilize services like what is now PS, where they existed, which is outside the US, so in places like London and Dubai, et cetera.

20:06When they flew commercial, they would use these private terminals for commercial flights. And so he pitched his investors, which at the time were a private equity firm, on developing this concept here. And he got it going. And, you know, we credit a lot of we have to. I mean, he got kind of a lot of the hard part going in terms of trailblazing from a regulatory perspective, especially an operational perspective, the way that we can operate, which is as a private building, to act as a essentially de facto airport, have our own TSA agents, have our own customs and border protection agents. These are not easy things to do.

20:47He also secured the first lease, which was here in Los Angeles. Because you lease the building from the airport. Yeah, all buildings on airport land are for lease only. Our landlord is essentially the airport. But more than that, so of course got it going with his, yes, know-how, but also credibility and reputation, but also infuse what is now PS with an undeniable sort of cultural imprint around precision and excellence that that is 100 percent necessary in the security space. for obvious reasons. You have people's lives in your hands, right? So you have to be foolproof and there is a zero tolerance for error.

21:45Now, if we came at our business with just a hospitality angle, of course, hospitality companies, especially luxury ones, strive for excellence and precision. But you get someone's coffee wrong, it's not the end of the world, right? But we come at it with that same focus on zero tolerance for error. And I think that's allowed us to really thrive. Because some of what we do, there is zero tolerance, you know, we're driving cars on the airfield past taxiing aircraft, you know, we are putting people through security and we could not I mean of course we wouldn't do that but like you know we were custodians of this really important relationship with TSA Customs and Border Protection so you know we hold immigration services and things like that so having a zero tolerance approach is really important and I think we've inherited that from kind of that origin story so it's funny how even as companies evolve and as the people completely switch out the some pieces of culture remain And that's a good one.

22:53I know that you've mentioned some of the regulatory hoops that obviously the business had to jump through in order to even provide this service, right? Did you mention that you guys had to lobby Congress for several years? Because obviously not only do you stringently follow TSA protocol, but also, you know, I imagine there's other clearances that you have to make sure you get since it's the first of its kind. It's unprecedented in the U.S. That's right. It's a privilege, not a right, which comes back to that like zero tolerance for error, because we have to make sure that we abide by all these rules and essentially promises that we made in order to have this relationship.

23:31And as a result, it's an ongoing, I wouldn't call it lobby, but, you know, assurance that we have to give Department of Homeland Security, and rightfully so, to ensure that we have this long-term exception of a relationship. How long did it take All In to get that approval in order to run the facility? I want to say, a few years, I want to say it was probably two or three years. Yeah. Well, it's really interesting because I've also seen you make an important point about airport congestion. You've said that the service improves security and congestion for all of, let's say, LAX's passengers, right?

24:10Sure. Because it's fully funded by those who create the most congestion issues, which are high risk travelers. That's right. Can you expand a bit on that? Sure, sure. I mean, it used to be that before PS opened at LAX in Los Angeles. It used to be that, first of all, there was 100 plus, this is a fact, 100 plus paparazzi incidents. Not paparazzi showing up, but actual incidents where someone's getting hurt, something's going on at LAX every year. Because if a high profile public figure walked through the airport, people are distracted, people are taking photos, people are taking autographs. in extreme case there's like you know crowds of people it creates a security issue for everybody tsa agents are distracted people are overwhelmed it's not good for anyone not just the public figure even kind of the public at large that's at the airport and ever since we opened the number of those incidents has gone down to zero so from a security point of view the airport is now safer for everyone, not just the high-risk travelers, which is usually public figures.

25:28It's just a smoother experience for everyone. And there's less congestion because, again, those public figures create congestion where they go. I mean, we know. When they walk into a restaurant, it's like a big crowd and, you know. Frenzy. Yeah, frenzy, right? And so that now that calm, that we've left a trail of calm at LAX because we, you know, those people are choosing to come to PS instead. And that creates a better, better, much better experience for everybody. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm glad you shared that, Amina, because with respect, there are some people who could look at PS and say, you know, this is an embarrassment of riches.

26:06What problem exactly is this solving? Right. But you're here to say, listen, there's a serious concern that we're clearing up here. And we're very deliberate about that. Yeah. I mean, there's that. There's also the, you know, the honest answer, which is there are and always has been and always will be kind of many tiers to travel. Right. And so this is just like squeezing one in in between a few. But like, you know, you can make the argument, the embarrassment of riches about private jet travel or any luxury or any luxury. or paying for a lounge super yacht yeah or a super yacht or paying for first class and not economy like we didn't invent the fact that there are many tiers to travel yeah that has existed right we just slotted kind of one in along the spectrum yeah to make it easier well contrary to what some may think ps is not just a private members club right um it also allows folks to come use the space on an a la carte basis although you can get memberships yeah um can you tell us a bit just broadly without naming names what does your typical customer look like I think most people view us as a you know public figure or celebrity terminal and that is a minority of our business it's it's 15 or less 10 to 15 percent of our business only is that the rest is non-public figures it is a premium traveler or an occasional premium traveler and what I mean by that it's It is, of course, someone that, you know, probably travels at the front of the plane and, you know, is a luxury traveler, quite a bit of business travel as well.

27:48But also it is occasional in the sense that it's your honeymoon and you're going to splurge once. Or it's your anniversary and you're going to splurge once. So we do have that as well. Almost all of our client base here in Los Angeles, at sorry for the PSLA X terminal resides in LA almost all of our client base at our PS Atlanta terminal resides in Atlanta we suspect they'll be the same in Dallas and Miami when we open next because you know it's it's it's best used as your home airport right and as it relates to membership to go back to your question Michelle so PS is you don't have to be a member to use PS As I said, it's your honeymoon.

28:35You can use this once and never again. And so you pay per experience. However, if you plan to use this many times, there are membership packages, which are just more interesting, both from an economic point of view. It ends up being more attractive. But also you have other benefits like priority reservations and complimentary valet and things like that. Yeah, absolutely. Plan B is a backup birth control option that's there for you when things don't go according to plan. It specifically works after unprotected sex and before pregnancy occurs by temporarily delaying ovulation. Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash.

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30:02You kind of touched on this earlier with regard to how P.S. approached you. But tell us a bit more about the day you were called for this role, because it's not every day, right? You get called to be CEO of a company. What was the first thought that ran through your mind? Yeah, I mean, it was exactly what I said when I read the job description. I was like, this is it. This is the thing I didn't know existed that I didn't know I wanted to do. But here it is. and um you know the courtship with the private equity firm at the time that owns it was quite long as I guess is not unusual for for roles like this you know it's it's really important to find the right fit so there are many calls many working sessions many in-person meetings but But for me, the vision was very clear on what to do here.

30:55And I was not shy to share it because I also felt that that's how you get to yes. Well, to high quality yes is to say, this is essentially the business plan as I see it. Not because I was trying to impress them, but because like, if I'm going to do this, this is what I'd want to do. And so you have to be on board for this to be successful. And if you disagree, that's OK. That doesn't mean I'm not saying I'm right. But then you're looking for someone else, not me. Right. So it was really thorough in that sense. In many ways, we executed almost, not exactly, but almost to a T, the business plan that I wrote before I even joined.

31:41And by the way, that is it's not because I'm a genius. I'm definitely not. it's I think because of that rare moment that maybe happens once in a career if you're lucky and I'm lucky it happened hopefully it happens more where again it was the opportunity met my timing my sort of vision for it it was just kind of perfect in that way right place right time that's right yeah um was it an executive search firm that I called you it was yes right um I I should say, by the way, in regard to that business plan, you are a Wharton grad. I am. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, no surprise there, I think. But, you know, when you first took over, what was your biggest priority, I suppose, for the firm's growth?

32:25Yeah. And how has the company evolved since then? Yeah. The biggest priority, and this is, again, in that business plan, because I had visited the terminal. So I'd done all the diligence. You know, obviously, you think you know everything about a business. You certainly don't from the outside. But I worked with what I had. The first course of action was to pivot the positioning. And when I say positioning, that's a very charged word. That's the brand, the offering, the pricing, the experience, truly everything, to pivot the business from a security offering to a hospitality offering. And that was essentially the crux of the business plan, was to say, hello board in my opinion if you want this to have a larger audience and to be able to scale outside of los angeles would you know it's a p back business of course they wanted to have a larger audience and scale if it wasn't p back then it was just you know a you know single yeah scrapper or single owner then you have a fine business plan as is like because by the way these things involve money capex right and capital and marketing right but if you do want those things which generally private equity firms do yeah then i felt really strongly that the initial positioning as a security offering wasn't going to cut it because first of all, not many people need privacy and security.

34:01Public figures do. But, you know, the successful businessman. Right. Who's already going to first class lounge, maybe. Yeah. Does not need security and privacy. Or at least they don't think that doesn't relate to them. Right. And I think that obviously market that needs that is very much over indexed in Los Angeles because of Hollywood being obviously the prime industry. And so like you could never go to Dallas or Miami or, you know, Chicago or even San Francisco with that security and privacy offering because most people, yes, who could afford it, yes, who want to skip the airport, that wouldn't resonate with them.

34:45They'd be like, okay, but I don't need security. Right, so we shifted it to a luxury hospitality experience, really saying if you want to skip the airport and get your time back and have a relaxing experience have a calm experience and have a bespoke luxury hospitality offering with no lines and no crowds you know I think everyone raised their hand up for that right um so broaden the appeal in that way so what did that entail specifically because it sounds like you were trying to shift the vibe right you were trying to ensure that this feels luxurious this feels like you're taking care of yeah um you know was that interior design was that a bit of everything it was the the soft product and the hard product the hard products is the easiest part right the hard product is the branding, the interior design, the food, the, you know, drinks, the, you know, amenities.