Belmond CEO Dan Ruff: LVMH told us to slow down and it worked

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0:38Hello and welcome to The Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. On today's programme, we speak to the boss of a luxury travel brand behind some of the world's most celebrated properties and a philosophy that probably runs counter to the rest of the industry. I'm probably the only CEO in hospitality that doesn't have a portfolio growth target. This is The Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards.

1:16You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Dan Ruff is the CEO of the LVMH-owned hospitality brand Belmond, a global collection of landmark hotels, trains and travel experiences built around the slow luxury philosophy. Dan joined the company in 2018, helping to steer its acquisition by LVMH and took over as CEO in 2023. Today, Belmond's portfolio includes more than 40 properties across over 20 countries and territories. Dan stopped by Midori House to speak with our Emma Nelson about the company's evolution, its latest openings, and the thinking behind its distinctive approach to luxury travel. Emma began by asking Dan about the start of his journey.

2:02I was lucky as a kid. I traveled the world with my parents. They really thought it was important for their kids to see the world from an early age. So in the summers when we could, we went to some beautiful places. And it wasn't luxury. It was really more adventure. From that, I kind of got the bug. I was fascinated by the world, fascinated by different languages and cultures. So that was the origin story.

2:26Dan Ruff:Tell me about the bug, because I think we all know that smell of airline fuel or a warm wooden balcony that makes us desire travel and being elsewhere. What in your memory stands out as little Dan goes on holiday and something thrills him like nothing else? I think, like you say, it's about the senses. And for me, it was about taste. I've always been a foodie. So I remember early travels. I still remember dishes that I had in Venice, the linguine vangole I had in Venice when I was 10 years old. Or I remember going to Epcot Center in Florida as a kid. And other kids wanted to go to Disney and ride the roller coasters.

3:09But I just wanted to go to the different restaurants and taste the different cuisines and understand the different cultures around the world. So I think it was really bad food in the beginning for me.

3:20Dan Ruff:So what is it that you then go and do at university? Obviously, it is a course that allows you to travel. But lots and lots of people when they go into hospitality, which is where we know we're making our way to now. and what you ended up doing and why you chose that course, is that hospitality is often something that you work from the ground up and you don't necessarily need any major qualifications. Some of the greatest managers on earth started polishing spoons. That's absolutely true. But you take the formal route, so explain that to us. So I went to Cornell University, which has one of the best hospitality schools in the world.

3:49I did not attend the hospitality part of the school. I was in arts and sciences. So I was looking at these hotelies and I was like, they're taking something called food and beverage while I'm taking some super intellectual history of the thing and the thing. And actually my focus in my program, I wrote a thesis on the influence of Louis XIV's court system on that of Peter the Great in Russia. So super esoteric, having nothing to do with anything, certainly not a career builder. But at the end, it was just this curiosity about cultures. And it continued on. So from that, I took the obvious step of becoming an investment banker, right?

4:34That's clearly direct from a weird, esoteric liberal arts education to become an investment banker. But to me, it was the means to the end. I didn't know exactly where my career would take me. But I knew I was fascinated with traveling the world. I knew I was fascinated with languages and cultures. And I also knew I didn't know anything about numbers. And I knew that to run a business...

5:03Dan Ruff:Bit of a tricky one for an investment banker, one would imagine. Well, but that's why I became an investment banker. Oh, right. Okay. Because it was my business school. It was, you know, really an education in the foundations of finance. and that has served me very well since then. Indeed. So how much is this, as we're going along, I mean, you've walked past the food and beverage department of Cornell in the middle of studying the influence of Luther XIV's court on Peter, the great St. Petersburg. How much at that point, is hospitality part of the business mind of Dan Ruff? How much is it actually playing a part in your game?

5:39Dan Ruff:I mean, you talk about travel, you talk about love of languages, but that is something that we can all do without actually deciding that we're going to go into hospitality so from the point of view of an entrepreneur when does this you know what's happening it was a personal passion so while i was studying these things and learning these things i was eating at every great restaurant that i could find i was traveling on every break i I could manage. I was going everywhere. I went to Argentina. I went to China. I explored everywhere. And I wasn't staying in luxury because I couldn't afford luxury.

6:19I was young and without the means to do it. But I was exploring. And I fell in love with the experiences that people were creating for me. And I thought, wow.

6:32Dan Ruff:Can you remember some of them? I mean, everything from, you know, the first time I spent a few months in Buenos Aires right after the devaluation in Argentina. And I remember going in with my dollars to the best steakhouse in Buenos Aires. And I remember this impeccable service, this unbelievable food. And being able to afford that was just magic for me. and the incredible waiters who come on and they put on a show as they serve you the meal and they're so genuine in their passion for what they're doing. This stuff is contagious. It really is. Something has to change though, doesn't it? So you are consuming hospitality, but you're not working in it.

7:19Dan Ruff:What changes? So the beginning of my career was on the business side of hospitality. I was in the mergers and acquisitions group of a very big hotel company. This was kind of the continuation of my investment banking journey. I kind of went in-house. And I began acquiring brands for Starwood Hotels. And that's what brought me to Europe for the first time. So I was in my early 20s. We acquired a brand called Le Meridien. It was based here in London. And I moved. I was young. I was mobile. I said, let's go. So I moved to London. And I helped the operators integrate the business that we just acquired.

8:01I thought that this was going to be a six-month thing, and I'd be back to my home in New York, and life would go on. But actually, at the end of the six months, someone who later became my mentor, Roland Voss, he was in charge of Europe, Middle East, Africa for Starwood. And he said to me, hey, do you like it here? And I said, I love it here. He said, do you want to stay? I said, yeah, I'd love to stay. And he said, great, so you'll start in Brussels in a few weeks' time. I said, Brussels? I thought you meant London and Brussels. He said, yeah, we're based in Brussels, so you come to Brussels.

8:37I was like, okay, fine. So I went to Brussels for a year, and 10 years later, I'm still in Brussels. I'm married to my Belgian wife. I have a little Belgian baby. That was the next step.

8:49Dan Ruff:And how is business going at that point? Because you've gone to obviously renovate, working with Starwood and Le Meridien. And then you end up in Brussels. And at that point, just explain to us where luxury is at that point. So I'm across all parts of hospitality at that point. What was great with Roland, he took me from the finance guy, the M &A guy, and he got me closer and closer into the operations of the world. So I was the bridge between the owners who owned the assets and the brand. I was able to, at that point, speak both languages. I spoke finance and I spoke operations. And in those roles I had over those years, I really started to love the logistics, the magic behind creating the magic.

9:37understanding how the operations work, seeing how hard and diligent and passionately the teams work to deliver these experiences that I had always had as a consumer, but not as the deliverer. It convinced me that I wanted to touch every aspect of the business.

9:54Dan Ruff:And so explain to me a little bit more about, I mean, what lessons we can learn now, because everything that you're telling us now is going to have to sort of formulate your story to where you and Belmond are in 2026. the idea of being the bridge between assets and brand. It is an enormous gap, isn't it? It's enormous. How do you go about bridging it? So it's an enormous gap, and it's one of the biggest challenges in our industry today. At Belmond, we are very fortunate and pretty unique in that we own almost all of the assets that we operate. So amongst the luxury hospitality brands that have scale, I think we're probably the only player that does that.

10:35It is a unique opportunity to be able to play both sides of that, to be very focused on the real estate value, to be very focused on the profitability, and at the same time be completely targeted and passionate about delivering incredible guest experience and building brands. Because normally there's a natural and healthy conflict between the owner and the brand. We are all of it. How do you do that?

11:05Dan Ruff:Come on, secret sauce time, please. Secret sauce. How do we do it? Healthy conflict within our business, honestly. We always have to wear multiple hats. We always have to challenge to make sure that we're making the right decisions for our real estate as well as for our brand and for our guest journey. But what we believe is that when we deliver exceptional guest experiences that are truly Belmond, and we can talk about what that means, we know that the financials will follow and that the real estate value will grow. We know this. Okay, let's go back a little bit to Brussels. Yeah. And then suddenly, where does Belmond come along?

11:44Sure. So I was in Brussels. I moved to London. And then Roland calls again. And Roland, at this point, is the CEO of Belmond. And he says, okay, what do you think? You want to come? You want to run operations for this beautiful luxury brand that I've started working for? And he'd been in the job a couple of years. And I said, wow, of course. Because my career at that point, I had spanned every aspect of hospitality. I had done luxury to economy. I had done owned assets to franchise. So really, everything that exists in hospitality, I had messed around with. But Belmond was the epitome of, you know, it was the dream to be on the own side and the luxury side, not just the luxury side, the apex of luxury.

12:40That, I mean, there's nothing that beats that. It is incredible. So I jumped at the opportunity.

12:46Dan Ruff:First day on the job, what was that like? First day on the job. So the first few months on the job was intimidating. I didn't know what to expect. I walked into a company not as, you know, because I had worked in the industry for a long time, I wasn't the traditional luxury only person. And I was very worried coming in that Belmond was going to be snobby. It wasn't at all. What I think makes Belmond special and always, it always has been as kind of the genuine down to earth nature of the people. And that translates to the guest experience. It's not overdone. It's not all formal and white tablecloths.

13:29It's really genuine. We actually proactively empower our people to be versions of themselves.

13:37Dan Ruff:What does that mean? We know our guests, they live really nice lives. what they want when they are on holiday, when they're taking the time to disconnect from their day-to-day lives, they want to be treated humanly. They want to be treated like people. So we ask our teams to just be themselves, not necessarily the way they would talk to their best friends or their family, a slightly more refined way, because I certainly talk to my friends and family differently than I would a guest, but to be themselves, to not lose their personality in the refinement or the formality of it all. We've been renovating our portfolio over the last couple of years.

14:26And what I find amazing is when we reopen a beautifully renovated hotel or train or boat where we've invested a ton of money, if we look at the guest feedback, it's always about the people. And that's because our people are just real and genuine and passionate, and it creates amazing experiences for our guests.

14:50Dan Ruff:Where do you recruit them from? And more importantly, how do you retain them? Because that is the big challenge, has been for a couple of years. And it's a challenge that's not going away. I mean, be honest with me, is it harder to keep the right people who sound like themselves, but who know how to step up, how to present themselves as well? Of course it's a challenge. Our industry certainly has a talent challenge because working in hospitality is hard work. Not only does our business operate every day of the year, it operates nights, weekends, and holidays. So it's a major commitment when you want to work in hospitality.

15:25But I think we have something special that is an advantage for us, or a few things. One is we want people to be themselves. So when they come to work, they're comfortable because they're not putting on a show. They are really being versions of themselves. And that makes people feel happy. The second thing is the way we've structured our brand and our portfolio is very local. Belmond is a promise of something. It's a promise of slow luxury. Each of our brands, each of our properties, our trains, our boats, our hotels, our lodges, they have their own brand as well. And that brand identity is something that our teams are exceptionally proud of.

16:11If you are a local in Rio de Janeiro and you work for the Copacabana Palace, that is something that means so much to you. It means so much to your family. It's something you're really proud about and your family is prideful of. And that coupled with the atmosphere that we try to create for our teams, trying to give them a little bit of this slow luxury in their own lives. I think that has enabled us to retain staff as well as we can in this really competitive environment.

16:45Dan Ruff:Actually, I think this is probably the good moment to say, look, we're mentioning things like the slow luxury philosophy and the identity behind Belmont. But just outline for us just the scope and the breadth and indeed the depth of your brand, because you are literally playing strains in automobiles, or maybe not automobiles. But that idea that there is a philosophy behind it, that you can shape when it comes to water, when you shape when it comes to a railway, and you shape when it comes to a building. Can you put your finger on what it is? We have to be quite careful here because anybody who ever works in luxury or in hospitality will say the words authentic, and they will say elevate.

17:26Dan Ruff:They have become such loosely, sloppily used words nowadays. it's so you probably would be the best person to try and define this i'll try to give you an authentically elevated answer to that you do that and the interview finishes now that's absolutely fine then go for it so so uh you know what i think makes belmont special is we are very much focused on time. From the beginning, Belmont has been delivering slow luxury to our guests. What does slow luxury mean? Our guests around the world are extraordinarily connected. They are busy. They are on their phones. They are working. They are thinking constantly, and they need an opportunity to disconnect from their daily lives and reconnect to the things that matter to them most.

18:22So what is our job? Our job is to create environments that allow them to do that. We say that at Belmond, your time is invested, not spent. And I love that.

18:38Dan Ruff:What does that mean? I leave it to everybody to understand what that means for themselves. But for me, what that means is when I am experiencing a Belmont journey or a Belmont hotel or Belmont lodge or whatever it is, my time doesn't pass without value being created. And I'm not talking financial value. And I'm not being high and mighty and saying that we're changing lives either. But when you're on a trip, value is created through the experiences that you have, the time you spend with your family, the art that you see, the tastes that you have of delicious food. It's whatever excites you. Whatever you need to connect with, we are there to help provide that.

19:27And we've been doing that forever. And the places in which we operate have been doing that forever. So Splendido Hotel in Portofino. It was built 500 years ago as a monastery. This was the original slow luxury, right? It was a place, at that point, a religious place, but a place for people to come and disconnect and reconnect with what mattered to them most. Then, that building later on became kind of the birthplace of Villegiatura. Villegiatura was this idea when the Italians, the wealthy Italians at the time, would decamp for the summer for months. They would pack up their luggage and they would move somewhere that was absolutely beautiful out of the city to slow down, to discover a new pace of travel, as we like to say.

20:15So Splendido became Portofino and Portofino was this place of Villa Jatorra. And today it's the contemporary version of that. It's people from all around the world who are traveling there for a taste of that. the ability to disconnect, the ability to reconnect with some incredible food, with the people who were there, the communities that are built there, are amazing staff who really are, as I said earlier, they're local versions of themselves, they're personalities. They are not there to bow down. They're there to engage.

20:53Dan Ruff:And how do you then take the, let's take the concept of villagiatura and put it on a railway. How do you then make sure that what is happening on the Amalfi Coast is happening on the trains and it is happening absolutely everywhere? So a different version of it will happen wherever you go around the world. Slow luxury is slow luxury, but if you're on the Venice Simpline Orient Express or the Royal Scotsman or the Britannic Explorer, the Andean Explorer, all trains we have around the world, Eastern Orient Express out of Singapore, the experiences, each one will be different. But each one will give you this feeling of slow luxury, this feeling of disconnection.

21:31And there's something magical that happens on a train, and I'm very bad at articulating it. It's something about being in this space. It's something about looking through these windows that the beautiful landscapes go by. It's something about the sound that the train makes as it goes over the tracks. It's something about the pace at which we deliver the service, the experiences throughout your journey. It becomes a time warp. When you're on the VSOE, the Venice and Plenarian Express, these were carriages that were built from the 1930s. And you're not sure if you're in the 1930s or the 2030s. It is this timeless experience.

22:14You never board, but your pace is different. and I know this is not as clear as it could be but that's why people need to experience it because it's unlike anything else that I've experienced.

22:28Dan Ruff:From the business point of view that idea of defining that sense of placing yourself out of time can actually sort of slightly go against the idea that business always needs to be moving fast. How do you reconcile that? So I think a guest experience in our language or a customer experience, the magic of that is that the pace of that can run very counter to the business itself. What we've seen is that as we've gotten better at delivering these experiences, we become more and more desirable. So more and more desirable as a brand drives good speed in the business. And when you're renovating, we'll come to the enormous projects that you have on your shoulders at the moment.