Suite, suite music: How hotels can fine-tune atmosphere through sound and sensory branding

0:01Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:In April, Monocle hosts The Entrepreneurs Live in Shanghai, a one-day conference bringing together founders, investors and innovators shaping businesses across China and the wider region. Join us there and visit monocle.com slash conference for more.

0:38Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:Hello 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 show, we're looking a little differently at hospitality. First, we'll meet the founder of a business using sound to create distinct brand identities. Sound is the second most important human sense, and people are experiencing that branded environment through sound, whether a brand likes it or not. And later, we'll head to Paris to meet the manager of three hotel properties in the French capital to hear why she's passionate about developing the next generation of hoteliers.

1:16Rob Wood:Everyone with their cultures, with their languages, with their background, with their past experiences brings a little extra touch to please the guests.

1:23Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:This is The Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards.

1:36Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Rob Wood is the founder and creative director of Music Concierge, a specialist agency crafting soundtracks that shape how brands feel from luxury hotels to retail spaces. A lifelong music obsessive who started collecting records at just eight years old, Rob turned his passion for DJing and curating the perfect vibe into a truly global business. He popped by Midori House to discuss the power of music in shaping brand experiences, the art of reading a room, building a team with truly exceptional ears, and why, even in an age of AI, the human touch definitely still matters when it comes to sound.

2:16Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:Rob began by explaining how his DJing background evolved into the music concierge business. As a DJ, you're obviously selecting music for different audiences. So you're thinking about your audience, but you're also thinking about the environment. Is it a big room? Is it a beach bar? Is it a large London nightclub like Fabric? I've kind of played all those different environments, but you're also actually just learning how music affects people. But then I kind of took that thinking one step further. So if people aren't in a club environment, but they are in a wellness environment or a retail environment, how can you use music to change how they feel, for instance, amongst other things?

3:00Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:Well, when I was DJing, I was also actually a music journalist by day, sort of kind of selecting, again, music and artists and interviews for different audiences as a journalist, as a magazine editor, which I became, and then playing music at night. So again, it's about choosing music for different audiences and connecting with those audiences. And then organically, brands started approaching me in the early noughties. And I started working for brands asking, can you help us with our marketing communications or indeed our physical environments? And one of the first brands was Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the boutique hotel people.

3:40Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:and this was very much in their early days but James and Tam the founders always saw music and travel as natural bedfellows and they kind of came from a slightly kind of hedonistic 90s culture and they thought well hotels are like the kind of grown-up version of that in terms of boutique hotel culture they asked me to put together a CD series for LeBron which was very successful and I started DJing in boutique hotels and that was kind of a light bulb moment because I realized that what is a boutique hotel on a kind of human level it is basically something that's appealing to all the human senses obviously through vision through architecture interior design touch through textiles etc and obviously taste through wine and menus but sound was the missing part of that I I sort of realised that they were often doing it, music and sound, in a very poorly thought-through way.

4:39Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:It was either a dusty pianist playing in the corner with cobwebs, or it was Café del Buda Bar cliché. Why do you think it had been overlooked? Because as you mentioned, there was so much interest in, yeah, the tactility of surface and materials, the F &B sensorial side. Why had the audio ambience been overlooked, do you think? I think it's a hard thing for hospitality operators, but retailers and everyone in branded spaces because it's not a physical item. It's intangible. It's not taught at hotel school. And some people feel music much more strongly than other people. So, yeah, I think it's it's hard because ultimately what you're really talking about is atmosphere.

5:26Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:Again, that is something that's not just to do with sound. It's to do with temperature, it's to do with lighting, it's to do with service culture, it's to do with lots of different elements. But sound is a big part of that and sound is the second most important human sense. And people are experiencing that branded environment through sound, whether a brand likes it or not. My thinking was, well, why not control that as a brand? And why not get that absolutely aligned to a vision for the brand experience? I love that idea. And talk to me then about how the musical choice then shapes the environment.

6:04Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:Is that about, if you're talking about, I don't know, Cathay Pacific Premium Aviation or, you know, it could be in hospitality, a Rosewood or something like that. What do you do? You have to bring the same specificity you talked about in DJing, venue by venue, geography by geography. What is the actual process? What are the nuts and bolts of it, Rob? I find it really interesting. So we always begin with a consultative approach. We want to get under the bonnet of the brand and the building itself and then the different zones within that property, but then the different concepts within those zones.

6:37Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:So to give you an example, the Rosewood, the Chancery opened in Mayfair in London last summer. And the brief there to ask was we want to reimagine Mayfair five-star hotels. We don't want to do what's gone before. But you obviously you're talking about an amazing mid-century piece of American architecture, which used to house the U.S. embassy. And it's a very, very large building. So we're thinking about, OK, what are all the points of the guest journey? It's the obviously the arrival experience into that amazing lobby. It is the different F &B outlets, the restaurants and bars is their wellness, but it's also other public areas.

7:18Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:there might be libraries and fitness etc firstly the music needs to be aligned to the brand dna the brand pillars but then it needs to be articulated across those different touch points and it needs to be consistent with what rosewood's about but ultimately if you go into you know the eagle bar on the roof there so that's a rooftop bar with incredible views that needs to be unique to that bar experience and it needs to be compelling in terms of driving their business so yeah we're thinking about the different areas but also very much the time of day but everything from the design ethos to the brand all comes into our thinking it's so interesting but tell me about as you said you've alluded to this already music is so personal and what it is to one person is so different to another presumably and you're working at scale with some of these brands globally as well you have to delegate lots of that decision making and that instinctive response to an environment to your colleagues as well right or to other people how do you do that or do you is it a question of finding people who i don't know not think like you listen like you maybe rob how does how does that work because you can't be in all those environments you can't personally hear every moment how does that work so it's a really good question and that is definitely a challenge to our business there's no university courses in this stuff yet yet firstly we've developed an amazingly sophisticated music library so that's part of originally came from my collection but it's been developed by me and multiple members of our team over the years and you know we maintain well over 250 300 different styles of music that might be like 30 40 types of different jazz music alone let alone traditional arabic music or cutting edge arabic music or you know the the bleeding edge sound of berlin right through to music that falls between the cracks of different genres so that's a key part of our essence of what our service is but the people like you're saying is essential so we We actually are a team of 60.

9:29Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:Not all of those are part of the creative team, but a big chunk are. And it is a hard thing to recruit for. So originally, I made lots of mistakes in the early days, getting people in. All the best entrepreneurs do, Rob. Yeah, we literally had like BBC radio producers I'd hired. Oh, yeah, they're going to nail this. And they just couldn't do it. And what we actually learned was it's not really to do with your experience or even knowledge of music, although that is helpful for sure. it's just to do whether you've got the right ears. So I ended up working out, okay, one way of recruiting these, I ended up putting a very cryptic small ad into Music Week, an industry newspaper, and it just said, do you know your Oscar Peterson to your Chidi Gonzalez?

10:18Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:If so, go to this website. And I just knew train spotters like me would latch on to that. This is how they used to recruit people for the espionage services. I really, I couldn't actually know that. No, it would be like, still waiting for Godot, question mark? You know, this kind of idea. Maybe you've had some people who've got booted out of an espionage school instead. Not yet. I absolutely love that. And so what? And then that would, you would find like-minded people. Well, it wasn't just that. What we did actually, we'd ask them to send a letter and CV in, and we didn't even read them. But they would just immediately get this multiple choice question that was to do with, we're looking for this kind of feeling.

10:56Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:here's five tracks identified a correct track type questions and anyone who scored under 17 out of 20 was just in the bin yeah but anyone who scored above we looked at the cv and then went to like first interview and the ones we thought okay we could work with them we'd go to the second test which was the really hard one and that and tested your ears again but it can you write you know can you take a client brief analyze it and come up with a coherent client facing concept just things like that. It's stressing me out, Rob. How would I do this? But it worked because by the time we got down to the last five people, it was just like, okay, Rob, go and choose the person you like.

11:37Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:I knew they could all do it. I absolutely love that. It's fascinating. Rob, you've already mentioned some of your clients and there must have been lots of these kind of pinch yourself moments where you're like, wow, this is great. I'm getting to apply all of that knowledge and passion to this incredible project. Listen, I'm sure you will say, all your clients are dream clients is there a kind of a place i don't know it's a bit abstract or something where if someone were to come to you and say well we want you to provide the soundtrack for i don't know x a sporting venue i don't know is there is there a thing that would be the fantasy location i mean it's been so many incredible briefs and environments and brands over the years so it's hard to pick out a few but we've literally done like music at the top of the Burj Khalifa right through to underwater nightclubs in the Indian Ocean.

12:24Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:More recently, we've been working on some very interesting luxury train experiences for Belmond. And we're developing a whole super yacht project at the moment for a different luxury brand. So they're all just very interesting and they come with, you know, unique challenges. So creatively, they're very stimulating. Yeah, in terms of like personally, I mean, I'm sure you'll be the same. You've stayed in some hotels and it's like, oh, that one's my favourite. So I've got some like that. You don't have to reveal your favourites. It wouldn't be fair to ask. Well, there's one you mentioned, Rosewood.

12:58Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:There is a Rosewood in Tuscany called Castigliano de Bosco, which was actually a depopulated village on top of a Tuscan hillside, a part of a wine estate. and Salvatore Ferragamo bought it and he wanted to like turn it into a place where him and his friends would hang out but they ended up turning it into a hotel and wine estate and it's very very unique and special but also very carefully in tune with its environment and authenticity and there's just lots of lovely touches like for instance they took me into the wine cellars and say I can't remember how many years they did I think it's something like for 40 years, we've been playing the same piece of music to our wine.

13:45Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:It was a piece of Mozart. And they said, yes, this is integral to our process, which obviously I love that idea. Amazing. What is it about this gloomy morning in London that's taking you to some Tuscan hillside? Who could imagine? I've got to ask you, there's so much narrative generally in any creative industry about the challenge of AI and the fact that these, I mean, listen to that. Who could possibly tell you what that room, what that cellar smelled like? To my mind, that only has meaning for me because you're, as a human, telling me it. But I imagine people are saying, oh, well, Rob, you know, AI will be able to do this soon.

14:23Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:They'll have a bigger bank of records than you have and they'll have more touch points. Tell me why, business sounds great, but tell me why you tackle and look to the future with confidence. AI can't do what you do. Yeah, I mean, we firmly believe in human curation and there's no AI involved in that part of our business at all. I think, you know, if you are working with world leading brands, especially at the top end, but also modern wellness or lifestyle brands, you have to understand what is the essence of that brand. You have to understand their design ethos. You have to understand what those different concepts are.

15:03Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:Whether it's a retail experience or a unique F &B experience. But you also need to understand the physical environment. How big is that room? How tall is that ceiling? What are the materials in there? So tying all those things back to music, which is really what our skill set is, is quite challenging, quite hard. It's a pretty unique skill to be able to do that. But then you've also got the cultural references. That piece of music actually signifies joy from the glamorous era of Italy in the 1950s, for instance. I don't think AI is up to that quite yet, at least. No, I don't either. I'm still just thinking about those casks or bottles listening to notes.

15:44Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:I can't get that image out of my head. Very quickly, what's next? What are you most excited about, Rob? Well, we just opened with the amazing new Boutique Oton Fitzrovie, the Newman. I don't know if you've been, but that has been a real pleasure because not only were we given the brief of curating the whole sound of the property, but we also actually designed and installed the whole sound system as well, which is an area we've been more involved in. So we've really been able to control everything in that environment. And the Gambit bar there is quite something. So, yeah, that's been great. We're working on a lot of projects which won't be opening until 2027.

16:21Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:Some in Mordives, some very interesting things in Vietnam. Yeah, so all over. That was Rob Wood, the founder and creative director of Music Concierge. You can find out more by heading to musicconcierge.co.uk.

16:46Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:Leticia Beru is the hotel manager at Hotel Bedford, Hotel Duque Voltaire and L 'Hotel La Cadre, three Paris properties that are proudly independent, family-run, and rooted in more than a century of hands-on hotel-keeping. Born into a Swiss family that's been in the business since 1905, Letitia grew up treading the corridors of their flagship, the Bedford. But rather than simply inheriting the keys, she set out to truly earn them, training at the world's first hotel school, École Hôtelière de Lausanne, before working across the globe and learning multiple languages along the way. She met her husband while working in the United States, and together they decided to head back to Paris, drawn by family and by the pull of the business.

17:31Laetitia Brandariz-Berrut:Now the first woman to lead the group, she's looking after the three properties and keeping an eye out for expansion opportunities. Leticia popped by Monocle's Paris bureau to tell our Laura Kramer about a life spent in hotels and why personal service still matters.

17:46Rob Wood:I wanted to work in this business, not necessarily to take over the family business, but to travel, to speak languages, to experience new cultures. We came back to Paris just to settle a little bit and see what was going on in Europe. I found a position at the Four Seasons Hotel Georgia 5 in Paris, which was back then the number one with an incredible team and still has a wonderful reputation nowadays. I worked there for three years. And then my father called me. he said, come around the hotel and come to Bedford and we'll have a chat. And it was actually a disguised interview to make me come and work with him.

18:24Rob Wood:So of course, I couldn't say no. And the family opportunity started right after I had my son. So it was a project. I had my son and then the same year I started to work for the family. So 2007 was a big year for me. And when you look back on that time, I'm very curious because especially maybe if anything has changed from them. But what did you notice that was different in the way that hospitality was approached in the North American sense versus how you learned on the continent at the Lausanne Hospitality School in France when you were growing up? What were the big factors that you kind of took away and thought there's a difference in mentality here?

19:02Rob Wood:Well, I think the difference mentality is this especially in in the work ethics you know in the states you work a lot you have very little vacation here in france we have five weeks plus the holidays so it's a lot of holidays it's a lot of free time compared to what i had in the states and i you know in the states it was very um the human part of the of the business was uh taken into consideration but it was very business oriented and i'm not saying that in France or in Europe, we don't, of course, when you run a business, you're supposed to make money, but it's more about, like in Paris, it's more about the Parisian experience, the French cliches, whereas in the States, especially in Florida, I don't know if I would speak differently if I worked in New York or in a big city, but that's what I would say.

19:54Rob Wood:And how do you then find that talent then? What are the things that you look for when you spot somebody and you think this is somebody who gets us because this is such a business that's so incredibly reliant on that first impression. They are the first line of defense, so to speak. And how do you know that somebody has it? I really handpicked them and everyone who is hired in one of our hotels, I meet the person before and I, you know, I do my speech, the family run hotel. It is not done for everyone. You know, if you like to monotask or, you know, you need to be a multi-task oriented person you need to be the human side that is very the respect is respect is such an incredible value for us it's the base for everything during an interview I hardly speak about their skills sometimes we speak about sports and different things and travels and I just want to feel their motivation and how they would interact with guests of course there's a drug description, but usually they have it beforehand.

20:57Rob Wood:So for me, it's really the feeling that you have somebody in front of me who is motivated, who is willing to go over and beyond for our guests, especially in a big city like Paris. Paris is a beautiful city, but it's very, when you don't know it, you don't speak French, it can be complicated. So at least if you have someone at the hotel who you can rely on, who you can ask advice, I want everyone in my team to bring their little contribution to the global effort, you know, because, you know, we work hand in hand together to satisfy our guests. And everyone with their cultures, with their languages, with their background, with their past experiences brings a little extra touch.

21:36Rob Wood:So they have a kind of freedom, you know, to be able to please the guests. I think this is such an important conversation because we're seeing that fewer people are going into hospitality as a career. They don't see it as a vocation per se. And of course, for you, it's got to be frustrating, especially for hoteliers, because so many people go to pick from those hospitality schools because who doesn't want people trained in Lausanne for all the positions that they have, not just for hotels. And so I wonder, how are you navigating that challenge? Because fewer people are seeing this as a vocation.

22:14Rob Wood:Yeah, but there's still some people left who want to work for us and with us. No, it's true. Like I'm very much in contact with the Lausanne Hotel School, you know, since I'm part of the alumni network and I go to the events very often. And I think it's very important to maintain this network and get involved, especially if you keep criticizing the young generations who, you know, you say, oh, they're not like us anymore. They don't make them like us anymore. But if we don't make an effort also to train them and motivate them, what are we here for then? Transmission is an important part also of the point where I am right now.

22:55Rob Wood:I validated my career as a hotelier, but I think it's nice to share it and to train the new generation to make sure that, you know, the business keeps being what it is and adapting to the time we are in. But transmission is very important for me. But it's true that, for example, in Lausanne, a lot of students go to the jewelry, I mean, luxury business overall, but jewelry banks because they teach us, they teach them now, the customer service and the customer approach, which is very valuable in any business now. It makes a difference in any business. But still, you know, the situation is not as desperate and we still find wonderful people to work with.

23:34Rob Wood:Well, I'm happy you're so positive about it. Walk us through maybe, I'm very aware that there's no such thing as a typical day for you. Because there never is when you're working with customers, especially. I know for a fact you stop into all three properties every single day. Yes, I try to go every day and I'm lucky because my way to work to the Bedford, I actually use my bike to go to work and I just stop in front of Quezvoltaire and I just make sure every morning everything is all set. And it's very important for me to be on the field and to see my team members, because if you do everything by phone, it's impossible.

24:12Rob Wood:I have to say I have a routine every day, but sometimes I'm not able to have it all. But, you know, I do a morning briefing every morning, especially at the Bedford where we have, you know, we have 150 rooms. So we do a briefing with the front desk manager, the housekeeping manager, and depending on who's there, a few more people. But we review all the guests on arrival to make sure that they have the proper amenity in the room and if they have special requests. So I want to stay in touch with the guests because I spoke a lot about the team members, but the most important is the guests, of course.

24:51Rob Wood:So I want to make sure I check every day who arrives, who leaves, who's there. I save some time, you know, in my calendar, in my agenda, just to make sure I also spend some time with the guests because it makes such a big difference for me and for them as well. Also to show the team how to interact with guests. and I'm not saying I have the most perfect way to do it, but it's our way and it's our DNA. So I try to give them a little bit of that too. And how have you seen the guests changing too in recent years? Well, we were speaking about the COVID effect on staff, but it had an effect on guests as well.

25:30Rob Wood:At the Bedford, we have, I told you, a lot of repeat guests. So a lot of them actually book their rooms in advance, But the new guests, they book very last minute. So it's very hard to project ourselves. But, you know, we've learned that COVID is not far away, but not that close anymore. So we learned how to deal with that. But, you know, they expect things to go a little faster. They still want that authenticity of, you know, with the service, with the welcoming. But they want things to go faster. You know, now with the social networks, we have to, you know, everything at every second, everything that happens, you know, right away.

26:11Rob Wood:But it's a bit the same for us. A check-in has to be quite fast, efficient. So this is the main changes I saw with our clientele. And in terms of Providence, how important is it for you when you see that French flag outside? There's also Swiss flags at the Bedford, especially, of course. We're very, you know, we're half Swiss. We still have Swiss. We have both passports and we're very attached to the Swiss mentality, I would say, you know, being on time and making things, you know, very, very square, very, you know, we are family. It's a family run business, but it's very professional. And there's also, you know, the Swiss hotel business has a history.

26:50Rob Wood:It's really a stamp of quality. And for us, it's very important. And do you think that makes you stand out from, let's say, other hotels in France? Absolutely. The Swiss hospitality business was also a label, a quality label, you know, since the 19th century, you know, when it all started. And there were a lot of Swiss hoteliers in Paris and Mr. Ritz was one of them. And now the last one. So we're the survivors, the Swiss survivors in the hotel business in Paris. What are you most looking forward to this year and maybe even the next five years? Are you looking to expand? Yes, definitely. But we still need to absorb a little bit of the Que Votel because the opening was very recent.