Bob van den Oord, Langham Hospitality Group

0:28Hello and welcome to the Monaco Weekly. little bit more about it.

0:36Yeah, thank you so much, Fernando. It's great to be here. I'm a great fan of Monaco and really lovely to have the time to chat with you and indeed your readers. Look, I've been with Langham now for 25 years and I started in Boston and then from Boston, I went to Hong Kong, did different roles, different positions, worked in different parts of the world, came to London to manage our Langham London here and indeed overseeing our hotels in the United States and the Middle East and Europe. And of course, now I've recently gone back to Hong Kong to take over the helm of the group. And it's a privilege to do so.

1:19So, Bob, you've mentioned before that you've used to work quite close to the Langham, right? Yeah, that's right. When I started my career, I think I was 20 years of age and I was working in this hotel across the street from us here, the St. George's Hotel. I was in charge of breakfast in those days and every morning I would look out of the window at this hotel. It was the Langham Hilton in those days and I always thought, gosh, if ever I can work at a hotel like that. So it's great that I've now come full circle and not only having worked at the Langham London, but now actually overseeing the whole Langham group.

1:57It's very exciting and it's a dream come true. How do you see hospitality now? I know the industry has been through very difficult years because of COVID, but I see a resurgence there. Yeah, great question. Looking at our numbers, it's going to be a record year for us. We're very encouraged with the trends that we're seeing. U.S. hotels are doing particularly well with record revenues, and indeed here in London. China and Hong Kong will take a little bit more time to get back at 2018 levels, which is before COVID and before the Hong Kong protests. And indeed, Australia is still in this near recession with high inflation, and I think people have less disposable income there, and we're hurting a little bit in Australia.

2:46But overall, as a group, we're seeing that more people are traveling. We're seeing that corporate, particularly regional travel, is very much back. Corporate events are back. And then the leisure end of the market, particularly out of the United States, is also back. So we're very happy where we are. And to indeed posting a record year after COVID, it's great to be seeing that. What about London? I know some markets are taking their time, a bit longer to recover, but what about the city we are at right now? This is where it all started for us. This is basically a flagship hotel. We've named our company after this hotel, the Langen Hotel, situated right here on Langen Place.

3:35and indeed it was opened in 1865. It was one of the very first grand hotels here in Europe with beautiful rooms but moving elevators, running water, air conditioning and really it set the tone in the luxury market in those days and I think we are still doing that today with what we're doing not just in this hotel but indeed around the world. We're doing very well with the Langham London here. Business here is also back. We're seeing a really good influx of American travelers, Europeans, and indeed the Middle East has come back as well. Of course, even, you know, an iconic hotel like the Langham has to update sometimes.

4:18And I know there's quite a lot of new highlights about the hotel. What can you tell us, Bob? Yeah, well, Fernando, we'd like to say that Langham as a brand is quite playful. We want people to have a good time here. We don't take ourselves too seriously. and I think within our restaurants and bars that's a really perfect way for us to offer our guests a way to have a good time with us so particularly in this hotel we're very proud of the overall restaurant and bar offering of course we have our award-winning artesian bar a couple of years ago we opened the Wickmore, a quintessentially English pub.

4:58I love the Wickmore. Yeah I'm super proud of that. It's turned into a very iconic neighborhood bar in a very short period of time and of course you can have a great cheese toastie there with a glass of wine or a pint of beer. All very affordably priced. If you're looking for great cocktails of course you can go to our artesian bar where we have a whole team of mixologists that can make you a classic martini or something a bit more exotic. And our artesian bar, of course, has been voted best bar in the world by Drinks International and the top 50 best bars for many years running. So we're very proud of that.

5:42We recently partnered with Angelo Seto in artesian bar. He's got his own joint in Soho, Yakitori Cuisine. So you can have not just a cocktail, but you can pair it with Angelo's Yakitori dishes as well. So we've got these two great bars. Of course, we still have Michel Roux here as well, who's overseeing the entire restaurant and bars for us in the hotel. And recently, indeed, we announced a new partnership with Jean-Francois Piège. He currently runs his restaurant in Paris called Mimosa. it's a French Riviera kind of cuisine which he's going to bring here to London now it's all done in a very casual setting but really good food he's got two Michelin stars in Paris and I'm sure he's hopeful that he can bring that here to London as well and then of course finally we have our afternoon tea you know Fernando this was the first hotel in the United Kingdom to be serving afternoon tea and we're really proud of that.

6:52It's won many awards since and if you just go there any afternoon, it's not easy to get in. The pastries are very well thought through by Andrew Gravitt and his team. He's our head pastry chef but it's just a great experience, beautiful pastries, nice teas with our tea sommeliers and we're really proud of that. Oh, and I must also say we have a cooking school here too called Sauce. if you want to learn the tricks of the trade and want to hear it direct from Michel Roux you can actually book your seat in our cooking school and have an experience with Michel Roux as well I mean the location of the Langen is great wow yeah I think so too and you know I used to live just around the corner here in Malibu and I'd like to say that really we're at the center of four villages.

7:46You know, you've got Malibu, Fitzrovia, Mayfair, and indeed Soho. And all of that is within five minutes walking distance. So I can't think of a better hotel in a better location than we are. What about next year? Are there plans for new openings that are going to keep what you have and improve it? How do you see 2024 at the moment? Yeah, so right now we have 32 hotels around the world and over four continents and we have 12 hotels in the pipeline to be opening over the next couple of years. We've got a beautiful hotel coming up in Venice and it sits right on Murano Island on the lagoon and it used to be an old glass factory which we are taking down.

8:33It's a listed building, we're taking it down, storing it and then once we're done we rebuild it and that whole hotel overlooks the lagoon but also has a beautiful courtyard and with this amazing swimming pool and I think that hotel is going to do really well it's great location and the design is by Matteo Thun and we got Richmond involved and Martin Brzezinski so I think it's going to be really great combination of architects and designers to build a great Langham for us we also have other hotels coming up in San Francisco we're doing something in Roppongi Hills. Kengo Kuma is doing the architecture for us there.

9:11We have Seattle in the US that we hope to open in the next couple of years. We have Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. That's a really interesting project. It's part of the UNESCO Heritage Project where the Raya Gate is an area in Riyadh where we'll be opening our hotel in the new part of that, what they call right on the Champs -Élysées of Riyadh, next to the new National Opera House. So I think that's going to be a spectacular opening. And then we've got many other hotels in China that we're opening as well. And I just want to go by very quickly to Hong Kong. How are you seeing Hong Kong as well? Because I know there's been challenges, but there are a lot of glimpses of optimism now for next year, right?

9:57Especially when it comes to hospitality, tourism, retail. Yeah, so last time I was in Hong Kong was during COVID. And it was a very difficult place to live. And having come back there now, and I've been there for three months now for my new role. I've got to tell you, Fernando, it's a very relaxed kind of like atmosphere. People have really moved on from everything that's happened in the past. And I'm making the most of it. And I'm actually having a really good sense of Hong Kong right now. The government is coming up with lots of great new initiatives. They've introduced new night markets that are popping up all over Hong Kong.

10:40And indeed, there's some great festivals. We had the Wine and Dine Festival recently. We had the Clock and Flap Music Festival. And indeed, we had the Gay Games as well in the last couple of weeks. And all of these events were very well attended. And people had a really good time. And if I look at our numbers in our hotels, we're also seeing an upward trend there. We're not quite yet at 2018 levels, you know, pre-COVID and pre the protests that we had. But I'm confident that next year we can get much closer to those numbers. And of course, it helps that the border with China is open. And we're having lots of mainland Chinese coming to Hong Kong for their weekend breaks and indeed their holidays.

11:23It is still a very good place to come for shopping and good food and just to relax for the weekend or during the week.

11:35That was Bob Vandenwood, CEO of the Langen Hospitality Group. The Monaco Weekly was edited by Dominic Gozo and Mariella Bevan. Thank you very much.