Ladies and gentlemen in the audience and everyone watching at home, welcome to Pandox Hotel Market Day 2021.
Please welcome today's moderator, Jan Wifstrand.
Good music, isn't it? Fine. Welcome to this fascinating afternoon we're going to have. Afternoon local time. Yes, I know. We are doing the 26th edition of the Hotel Market Day at Pandox. Number 26. Isn't that amazing? That, friends, entitles me to say that this is a sustainable event to trust. I think so. We're about 600 people to attend this, most of them online, and we have a great crowd present live as well. We have lots of top-class speakers, but we're also going to activate you a little. I will come to that later on. That info will come. It's been a tough year. It's been a year with lots of difficulties to tackle, lots of hard things to experience. I ask you to start this event by sharing with me and us a tribute to Anders Nissen.
[Non-English content]
The first half of 2021 has been really challenging. We lost our cherished leader, Anders Nissen, to the COVID illness. Anders was a very inspiring person. I would say he was kind of a king of the hotel business. His attitude was always can do. If there was a headwind, he would say, "Let's force even more."
Every day try to find something that we can do better and try to improve yourself. Have fun. Go to the job with a smile in the morning. That leadership are super important.
As a person, Anders was very caring. He was fun, but he was very, very determined. He was bold, very competitive, but yet very people-centric. Everybody felt seen, everybody felt included.
You always can improve yourself, and if you have that appetite, things normally go well.
Let me leave the floor to the Chairman of the Board of Pandox, Christian Ringnes.
Dear friends, first of all, thank you for being here, be it in person, that's particularly nice of course, or on the camera. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank you all for all the warmth and all the support we had during the difficult days where we lost Anders. Many of you wrote to us, many of you phoned us. It was very important, and I'm very, very thankful. This was difficult on the personal level. I would also like to thank the Pandox organization for stepping up when it was most needed. I still remember sitting in Norway. Anders was ill. I get the phone from Liia Nõu saying, "The worst has happened." I knew immediately what the worst was. You think, Jesus Christ, this is really, really horrible.
You go completely into the basement, and then you start thinking, I lost one of my very best friends. But what is going to happen to the business? You have two thoughts in the head at the same time. It did not take long, the messages come in from the leaders of Pandox, and they say, "Mister Chairman, don't worry. We know exactly what to do. You need not be afraid sitting in Norway. We will continue in the Anders Nissen Pandox spirit. No worry." That was fantastic, and that is exactly what has happened. The last year, I was the star of a film that some of you saw where I was having a checkmate with the COVID virus.
Of course, being the chairman of Pandox, I won the match, and I won it in the year 2022, the year we are, or it was actually the year 2021, the year we are in now, and my weapon was, of course, the vaccine. We are winning the COVID fight. Of course, it's not a straight line. Every war that's being fought, you win some battles, you lose some battles. Right now, it's winter, the virus is getting a little bit stronger. Some people don't understand that it's actually quite smart to be vaccinated. You know, it's like if you're out in the forest with a lot of wolves, it's very smart to have something that keeps the wolves away, and the COVID is a real wolf's illness. We have some temporary close-downs and restrictions in Europe.
We still are not certain when the travel from the Far East is coming back. You know, you could be worried, but look at what has happened. The months we have behind us now, September, October, November, all the regional cities better than 2019 in Northern Europe. The capitals, we are at 85%-90%. It just shows you that once restrictions disappear, the business is back. The underlying growth is there. How long will it take before we're finished with COVID? I gave you an indication last year that the fight was starting, and we're winning. Now, the year 2022 will be the year where the COVID, for all practical purposes, will disappear. When I stand here 1 year from now, I will be in brighter circumstances.
To quote or paraphrase rather, Winston Churchill, you remember, his words, but I will just say them slightly differently, "This is not the end of the beginning, but it is the beginning of the end." That is good because people live to live, not to avoid dying. It will be good for us in 2022, and I will stand here on this very day, and I will say, "I have then seen revenues increase. I have seen the valuation of those revenues increase, double confetti. I will be happy. I will feel rich. The Pandox share price will be well above NAV. My friend George will have bought hotels for us. I will take out my sunglasses and say, 'Now, fall 2022, the future is so bright, I need to wear glasses.'" Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Christian. I've got one single question to you, because we're looking forward, just as you did now. How can you manage to transfer and develop the Nissen spirit into something new to lift this company to new heights?
I think Anders' spirit was so strong in Pandox, and I don't know if it was only Anders or if it was the interaction with Anders that made this fantastic Pandox spirit. As I just told you, the Pandox spirit lives on, and it started to live on and get stronger from the day that Anders disappeared. It's strange, and it must be the ultimate testimony to his genius that it actually continued and is becoming even stronger. I always called Anders Mr. President. He called me Mr. Chairman, but he was Mr. President. Now, we have Liia as the new leader. You know what I call her? I call her Mutti.
Christian.
The reason I call her Mutti is because the mothers are the wise ones. They keep the family, in this case, the extended family of Pandox together, and they know how to embody the spirit of Pandox. They will do it in a different way than Anders did. I look very much with brightness on the future.
I can say thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You can.
Thank you a lot.
Mr. Journalist.
Thanks a lot. Some of you out there and here already wonder, who is this? This is Gunn Lundemo. She's a professional DJ. She's touring all over the world, aren't you?
Mm-hmm.
Like where? Three, four continents?
Yeah.
Everywhere. Not so much Asia. I did Israel, but not like Asia. Yeah, everywhere.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Today you're not only a DJ, you are sidekicking me as a moderator.
Mm-hmm.
You are used to produce stuff, not only music, but events as well.
Yes.
You are, for example, the producer of Stockholm Pride Festival.
Yeah. It's the biggest pride festival in Scandinavia. It's wonderful.
That's not bad.
No. It's a good
We do enjoy that you're here.
Thank you.
Gunn. We will hear a lot from Gunn later on. Please give her a hand.
Thank you.
We're still looking back a little. We attack the future. Let's take a check on a little bit of moving images, a year in review.
If year 2020 was the year of the ultimate stress test for Pandox and the hotel industry, then 2021 is so far a year of repair and some very promising signs of market recovery.
2021 has been characterized by a lot of travel and social distancing restrictions. Obviously, for a hotel owner, it's been very poor numbers.
The main learning point from the pandemic is that our business model works and that we have a great team at Pandox. Without the people at Pandox, we would have been in big trouble.
As of second half of 2021, we see hotels filling up again. When people are allowed to travel and to live in hotels, they will travel and live in hotels.
Hopefully, 2022 will see a continued market recovery with more segments coming back, especially business and international travel.
Time to introduce the real host for this event, the CEO of Pandox.
Please welcome the CEO of Pandox, Liia Nõu.
Thank you. Thank you so much and welcome everyone. Also, a warm welcome to everyone who's following us on the web. It's a great honor and a great privilege to be standing here today and talk about hotel market. I can't wait to listen to our fabulous speakers who will be here after me. This is Pandox. We are one of Europe's largest hotel property owners. We are founded in 1995. We have 156 magnificent hotel properties with more than 35,000 rooms. We are in 15 countries, in more than 90 destinations, and we work together with more than 30 business partners and brands. We have a total property market value of more than SEK 61 billion. We are organized into two business segments.
Property management, where we own and lease out our properties to strong well-known operators, and many of you are here today, like Scandic, Jurys Inn, Leonardo, NH, the list goes on, under long-term revenue-based leases, often with a minimum guarantee rent. The other business segment is operating activities. Here we own and operate hotel properties ourselves. We have around 20, which we operate ourselves. Under different operating models, it can be a franchise, it can be a management contract or our own developed brands. The day this nasty bug entered our lives, everything changed. From an all-time high to an all-time low in 19 days. All through the pandemic, we've been working with a game plan, with three pillars. We call them respond, restart, and reinvent. Respond.
It's all about managing the acute crisis, focusing on financial survival, limiting losses, preserving cash, protecting the assets. Equally important has been to stay positive and open in mind, but also open, the actual hotels open. Showing active leadership in all fronts, dare to be optimistic. Also, dare to have some fun, even in the darkest of moments. The second pillar we called restart. It's all about planning for the recovery. What could it look like? What segments will drive demand? At what pace? This, very early on, we started working with this, led to a framework which is still valid. It has six steps. Starts with countries opening up, hotels opening up, domestic leisure returning, domestic business returning, followed by international business and meetings, then finally groups coming back.
As we all know by now, when restrictions ease, demands come back quickly. By the way, thank you all for your part as leisure travelers. We should now agree to also do our part as business travelers to get this going. The third pillar we call reinvent. It's the most difficult one, but it's yet, in many ways, the most important ones. How will the hotel market change? Surprise, surprise, that's today's topic of the Hotel Market Day. Our bet, my bet, is that we talk about evolution rather than revolution. Pandox was founded during the big banking crisis in the mid-1990s, 1995. Our business model has been tested by market disruptions many times, even though this is probably the mother of all crisis. Every time, the hotel market has bounced back, and so have Pandox.
People are an important explanation for this, both as a positive economic force in the world, but also as a strong driver for the value that Pandox creates. People made the Pandox of today, and people, together with some lovely dogs, we call them Pan dogs, haha, will make the Pandox of the future. You always get a dog in there. You always get a dog. The intrinsic value of Pandox has never been higher. We have proven our business model, that it performs in good days, and it protects in bad times. We have the best people, we have the best partners, the best networks. Together, we are a very strong ecosystem with a common objective. These 18 months have been a big, big, big test for Pandox, for the hospitality industry, professionally, and personally for all of us.
Now is the time to look and move forward, and I'm pretty sure when I look back in this in 10 years' time, when we all look back at this in 10 years' time, it will be absolutely from a stronger position. I'm sure it will be with mixed emotions, but I'm also sure it will be just a blip in an Excel sheet. Somebody calculated something wrong. It can't be that bad. Thank you for coming to the Hotel Market Day. We call it the Pandox Annual MBA, and we shouldn't waste too much time, actually, but let's start learning from our fantastic speakers. Thank you.
Thank you, Liia Nõu. I promised some activity. This is a message for you online only. You have access to the QR code to today's three questions, which you are supposed to answer during the afternoon. Please check the QR code that you have perhaps already seen or will see on the screen, and don't be unhappy. It will come up during the break after this first part of the afternoon. Please answer the questions. We will give you the answers of the poll later on. Okay. It's time to introduce our keynote speaker. He recently released a book. He's written many, but the last one is called Rescue, and that is what it's all about. He will talk about a theme that I guess everybody loves. He will talk about how to create a better world.
Please welcome the Professor of Globalization and Development at the University of Oxford, Ian Goldin.
Thank you very much. It's really wonderful to be here, but I do want to begin with a tribute to Anders. It was Anders that called me up and invited me to be here. An absolutely inspirational person, and I've worked with many inspirational people around the world. But I know that you all miss him as I do. It's just wonderful to hear from the chairman, from the new CEO, how what he wanted to happen was to take Pandox to a greater height, to work for a better world, is being implemented even after his terribly tragic and untimely death. Can we create a better world out of this terrible pandemic? Is it possible that out of all this suffering, we can see more rapid progress? I believe it is.
I believe this is the wake-up call that will take us from sleepwalking into disasters to create a more sustainable, a better world, not only for ourselves and everyone we care about, but for generations to come everywhere. People talk about bouncing back or bouncing forward. I don't like those words because it implies we are heading on the same tracks that we were before. We're back on the same road. I think we need to do things differently because that is the road that was leading us over the precipice. That is the road that brought us. This pandemic, the failure to manage these systemic risks, which were inevitable. Rising climate change and other unsustainable tensions. Even the word reset disturbs me because when we reset our computers, we go back to the operating system which was already there. No, we need to do things differently now.
We need to take from this and the suffering a resolution to do things in a way that will not allow us to get back to this place again, that this will never happen again. Is this possible? I compare the First and Second World War, and you're all familiar with your histories. During the midst of the Second World War, and it was interesting to hear the chairman citing Churchill. During the midst of that war, while the bombs were literally dropping on the buildings of Whitehall where he was working, when they were fighting on five fronts, when there was an existential crisis, a real threat, as you can see if you go around England, where Dad's Army was building blockhouses, a real threat of a German invasion.
At that time, Roosevelt, Churchill, the leaders resolved to never let this happen again, to create a better world, to create the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, the Marshall Plan, the welfare state, the seeds of Europe that we see today having flowered so beautifully. It wasn't after, it wasn't years later, it was in that spirit. Because they, and particularly the individuals like Roosevelt and Churchill that had experienced the First World War, that had seen the tensions that arose after it led to growing nationalism and protectionism in Germany, the reparations, the inequality, the unemployment, the consumption-fueled boom of 100 years ago, the Roaring '20s, the Gatsbys, had built resentment. They saw all that, and they decided never again. It's interesting, too, that Churchill, six weeks after the war, lost power.
He was taken out of government by a complete unknown, Clement Attlee, because he wouldn't walk the talk that he'd been advocating. It wasn't part of the Conservative Party manifesto. Came back a few years later when they put it in. People were hungry for change. The citizens wanted different things, and the same thing happened in the U.S., the same thing happened across Europe. We saw tax rates of 70% in the U.S., followed by Europe. We saw redistribution, we saw health services, education services, and a new world. Now we're at a different time. We're at a time where there has been the rise of individualism in societies. There's been the rise of business, a much healthier balance between business and government, and the rise, of course, of civil society. It's not only businesses that set the agenda or governments.
An individual standing outside their school, like Greta Thunberg, or sending a tweet creating the Me Too movement, can create global change. People are empowered in new ways, and we have an understanding which is much more profound about the world. We understand what's going on with climate change, and unless we move to net zero urgently over the next 30 years, the outcome will be catastrophic. We know why this pandemic came. Yes, we can debate whether it was from a lab or from a wet market in Wuhan, but we know it's inevitable. I predicted the pandemic as the big next catastrophe because our interdependent systems, more people with more animals near more airports, means the probability rises exponentially.
Our hyper-connected systems which bring all the goods of globalization, including our wonderful digital connectivity that allows us to have this online meeting, as well as physical, also can spread cyber viruses. Our financial systems can spread financial crises. Our airports spread pandemics. The great challenge of our world as more and more people develop wealth and connectivity is how do we live together more effectively? Part of that is seeing this pandemic as the defining moment, as seeing it as an ability to understand that governments can do things that were simply unimaginable in January 2020. If a government had told me in January 2020 I couldn't fly or I couldn't go to a restaurant, I couldn't leave my home, I couldn't do certain things, I would have thought I lived in an authoritarian state.
Now I recognize it's in my own self-interest when these lockdowns happen. My behavior has changed in radical ways since January 2020, doing things I would never have dreamt of doing before. We of course understand too that science has just been miraculous, creating a vaccine or series of vaccines in nine months that would have taken 10 years to do before, through global collaboration. We recognize that change is possible in ways that were just unimaginable in January 2020. Things have happened. The evidence is there. If governments had created $20 trillion of stimulus in January 2020, we would have thought they were extreme communist left-wingers, and even they wouldn't have dreamt of it. Now we're wondering whether it's enough. This change happens very quickly when circumstances change, and they are changing. It's important that we take from that things that we value.
We've all had an opportunity, loss of people we love, importance of friendships, not going to the places we do, not having the opportunities to reevaluate and recalibrate what we do and how we do it, what's important. Out of this, I believe, will come a great regeneration, a healthier world. We saw in COP in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago, this acceleration of commitments to zero carbon. Of course, not enough in not enough places, but massive progress, not least by the business sector, which was out in front of many governments. We see every day in people's choices this great reshuffling of jobs that's going on, what in the U.S. is called the Great Resignation, people changing jobs to take on jobs they prefer. Of course, we see it in other great changes. What the pandemic has done is accelerate time.
It's compressed into the period of 18 months, events that would have taken 10, 20 years to unfold, whether it's the shift of economic gravity to the East, whether it's the transformation of our economies to more digital, whether it's us entering remote work. Old equilibriums have been broken, and new equilibriums are not established. I'm incredibly optimistic about cities and work and about the prospects for a group like Pandox. That's because quality matters. That's because experience matters. The tangible, whether it's being with people, eating a meal, going to the theater, this is what we will value more and more.
As technology increasingly does more and more jobs that people used to do, automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, people will specialize in what we are uniquely able to do, which is be creative, be empathetic, care for people, create in ways that machines won't be doing, I think, in my lifetime. That is gonna create a sweet spot for people to come together in more structured ways, in quality environments, in cities, in rural areas, to experience things, whether it's beautiful places, experiences with people, theater, movies, whatever. We'll value these things more, and we'll pay a greater share of our incomes for them. When you think forward about what this means for cities, there's a huge but different, I think, in the way it organizes, not least for offices and how offices and commuters relate. Change is coming.
It's that which we need to embrace. When we think about the pandemic, I believe we'll be seeing this as a great turning point, a turning point where we had an opportunity to go back to our old ways, or a turning point where we decided to walk a different road, to walk a road which embraces the urgency of what creating a sustainable, inclusive world means. This incredible country of Sweden is way ahead of the country that I'm in many respects on this. But it's by learning from each other, by sharing this experience and coming together on a day like this, that I believe one can really leapfrog into this. I really appreciate this opportunity.
The vision that Anders had of Pandox Hotel Market Day, the coming together of people, and I hope it really does contribute to the creation of a better Pandox and a better world. Thank you.
Ian, please join me for some Q&A here.
Yeah.
Some follow-up questions. I've studied a lot about what you've said before and what you've written, and the basic message from you is optimism. When I listen to you, I get a bit pessimistic, honestly, and that is that the change you are looking for requires leadership in the world. Well, we have none. Or what do you think?
Well, I can understand why if you look at some of these politicians and governments, you might feel a bit pessimistic. What I think we need to appreciate is that day where governments determine our future, that we kick upstairs all the problems to political leaders who will resolve them, is a day that's past.
The people in this room, individuals, schoolgirls, others, set the agenda for change, and governments follow. My view is that the big challenge is the fake news challenge, is the contesting of ideas. When good people stay silent, when they stay on the sidelines, when they don't contest ideas, extremists and bad ideas flourish, and that's why we need to engage. Yes, there's an absence of what you might think of as global political leaders, but there's no absence of leaders in every other sphere. That's what
We actually push our governments.
Absolutely
In front of us.
Yeah.
To-
Yeah, we can't use our governments as.
Create the change you're talking about.
Yeah, we can't use government failure or the failure of the UN, the gridlock in the system as an excuse. If you do that, then there's a good reason to be pessimistic.
In your last book, Rescue, you write a lot about the problem with inequality, and you can surely say that inequality has grown during the pandemic, right? I discussed this a little with Gunn. I think she's got a question around that, the divide t hat has been deepened really. What about that, Gun?
Yeah. I mean, us in the younger generations, we are kind of the losers in the pandemic. What do you think needs to happen for us to become the winners in the future?
Yeah. I think it's right. I have a chapter on inequality, and I have a chapter on young and old in Rescue, and both show very clearly that the pandemic has exacerbated the inequalities within countries, because some people have been able to carry on work. People that have tech stocks have done incredibly well. There've been some sectors that have thrived, and others, not least in hospitality, and people working in hospitality, which is often not only young people, but also women, have done much worse. We see this widening gulf, and it's also of course true in the mortality statistics. In the U.K., Black, Asian, and minority ethnic people are four times as likely to have died from COVID-19 as people, white, middle-aged people like me.
It's reflected across the board, and of course, it's even greater between countries. The World Bank estimates that 150 million more people are being pushed into absolute poverty by the pandemic, about the same amount of people suffering from extreme malnutrition, and the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, completely derailed by the pandemic, so that is certainly true. The young and old thing is equally true in multiple ways. Both jobs that young people have had a high incidence of job losses, but also huge loss of education from social experience, and massive problem.
Of loneliness and isolation, as well, which the data shows very clearly. Not least in Stockholm, where I was surprised to see the evidence from Stockholm on how many people live alone, young people live alone, in Stockholm. What to do about it, I think first recognize the issue. Within countries, I do believe that we need to reinforce education, health, welfare state, public transport. I think that's inevitable. I think there needs to be deliberate catch-up programs from people that have lost education, and I think it's part of this big debate, which I know Pandox is involved in, of when do you reopen hotels, when do you open hospitality, how do you get people back into work, and do you pay them a living wage?
The global inequality needs to be addressed by massive transfers, I think, of aid, and also the writing down of a lot of debt. In sharp contrast to the 2008 and 2009 crisis, where there was this solidarity, this time round aid's actually been cut. You know, the U.K. cut its aid by a third during the pandemic. Not only the U.K., many countries have cut aid, and that is just a remarkable failure, I think, on the global scene. It's like international solidarity has disappeared during the pandemic. We see it also in vaccines, of course.
Less than 8% of Africans double vaccinated. This national retreat is something which is of great concern. Again, I think it's not gonna be solved by politicians. It needs to be solved by all of us, shouting loudly about it.
Ian, you underline that you dislike the expression business as usual. That has been part of the problem. Now, isn't that exactly what is going on now? We're going back to business as usual.
I don't think so. I mean, some businesses are, but I think they are not going to be the businesses of the future. What we saw in Glasgow was a massive commitment to zero carbon, which is gonna become increasingly serious, so that's one very positive sign. I think we're seeing businesses across the board taking a lead often on the environment, work environment, and safety of their people and their guests in their work environment, often ahead of governments in this respect, which is a very positive sign. I think we're seeing the glaring light of transparency thrown on companies. The scandals that have emerged on accounting and on other areas I think are creating a new transparency. Shareholders are increasingly demanding. They're demanding to know what their leaders are doing.
Private, in private equity, I think it's easier to do things that you can't do on listed markets, but there too. I mean, I'm part of various investment committees, and I'm amazed how much time we're spending on these investment committees on ESG. You know, what had been an afterthought five years ago is now the main item, after returns, on the agenda. This is different. In the book, I cite statistics on demands for ESG reporting have increased fivefold in the last three years. So these firms that are doing the work behind this are in a very good business. I think there's lots of very positive signs on this, which give one hope.
The big issue that's coming, and it's sort of gonna be a long tail out of Glasgow, is if some countries don't transform. Like, let's say China and India stay on coal, and we decide that we wanna go to zero carbon, are we gonna change our supply chains? That's, and I think in Europe at least, we're gonna see very high carbon taxes and we're gonna see carbon border adjustments, and I think we'll see a redirection of globalization based on ESG considerations.
Now, Ian, you may think that this is a question beside the point, but it's not, because personal background is always interesting. You've been Vice President of the World Bank some years ago. You've also belonged to the few who have worked closely with Nelson Mandela. I think you should share with us a little about that.
Yeah. Thank you, Jan. He was the most amazing person I've ever worked with, and I've worked with many, many leaders, and others.
In what way?
You know, there's a number of things. Firstly, he was an optimist, huh? He always said, "It's always impossible until it's done."
Okay
He spent 27 years in prison, he never lost hope, and he transformed the country. He was one of the most humble people I've ever met. I mean, lots of little incidents I could tell you, like when, you know, when we're in Buckingham Palace or something, he wants to go into the kitchen to say thank you to the chef. Not because he wants to do a PR stunt, but because he really wanted, he felt it. Always saying thank you to the drivers, the cleaners, everyone. Interest in everything. He was an incredible listener. He had to deal with some very difficult decisions, like for example, when we got into government, whether to nationalize the mines or the banks, which is what the left wing of the party were saying, or not to. He didn't understand economics.
He worked through it because he was an incredible lawyer, by just listening to the arguments and questioning them, making sure everyone had their say, and then making up his mind and sticking to it. He also, which is not something I think you can necessarily learn, he had a photographic memory, which was incredible because he'd remember every argument he'd ever heard about anything, and be able to retain it and pull it out. Which was terrifying for me because he'd ask me why something was important or, you know. I sort of worked on some economic theory with him, why savings were important or-
I see.
He'd say, "But last time, two years ago, you said this." Which is,
That's tough.
... which is a tough boss to have.
Yeah.
Absolutely extraordinary. He knew everyone's first names. My kids, for example, we went out back to South Africa when my kids were very small, and my wife. You know, he'd never, ever start a meeting without saying, "How are they doing? How was their school?
Are they settling in?" Personal. No, never because of a show, but because he genuinely cared about it. A most remarkable man, and there's just I could go on for a long time, but
Yeah, I see.
If we picked up a little bit from him.
Yeah.
We'd all be better for it.
Thanks a lot. Ian, we will very soon talk about cities here. After that, I will call on you again.
Yep.
You just get the little thank you now, and you get the big thank you later.
Thank you.
Ian Goldin. The theme is cities. We all like to discuss cities, don't we? The future of them, the big cities, how will they develop, and so on. Our next speaker will talk about that online from London. I hope we have the connection now.
Please welcome Partner and Disruption Lead at PwC United Kingdom, Leo Johnson.
Hi, everybody. I just wanna check. I can see you. Can you see me?
Yes. We can see you, and we hope you hear us. Everything's okay.
Yeah. Fantastic. Jan, great to hear you, and I so wish I was with you, Jan, with Ian. Great to hear you again and with the Pandox family. I have such wonderful memory of my last trip-
Great
... to the event. You know, I commemorate Anders with you all.
It's good to have you here this way as well, Leo. I'll give you around 10 minutes, a little more, to speak uninterruptedly, and then we talk. Okay?
It's a deal.
It's a deal.
Great.
Look, I love to hear those stories about Nelson Mandela. Can I throw out another possible hero for me, of a completely different one? She just, like, planted this one idea in my head around optimism, which is this. She's not really a political philosopher, she's not a politician, but it's Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe once gave this great quote, which for me is, like, the sort of landmark quote about the future, and it's this: "Sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall into place." For me, what we're at is the ultimate Marilyn moment.
You know, I think we've had the city of Henry Ford that most of us grew up in, the city of fossil fuel-driven mass production, the city shaped by the car, where we're cut off by the hard boundaries of the street, where we got into these moving boxes of our cars or the tube or the bus and got into another stationary box of the office. We kind of accommodated ourselves to the machines of mass production, and we lived these lives anchored around efficiency. That's what kind of generated the returns. I think there is an existential threat to that old city, to that city of Henry Ford. I think we are now at this point where, as Marilyn said, it's starting to fall apart, and it's falling apart under the pressures that Ian just went through with us.
It's this collection of mega trends that are colliding, and it's climate change, and it's environmental scarcity. We're seeing this interdependency between them, where, you know, as the climate threatens fragile states, you have the pressures for migration. The pressures for migration then increasing the risk of populism. The populism then exacerbating protectionist trends that reduce economic growth. That same reduction in economic growth and blocked supply chains, driven by supply chain, of course starts to push up prices and give us the risk of inflation, which makes the economic conditions for the many worse, amplifying the threats of protectionism. The risk, finally, that what we start to see is a civil society that feels that government is just failing to deliver on the needs of the many. That the combination of aging populations, adult social care costs, ballooning deficits.
Here in the U.K., just with the very small increases in inflation that we've had and interest rates, the government had to pay GBP 84 billion more pounds last year in interest payments than it did the year before. At this moment of peak personal household, corporate and national debt, some of these margins are extremely tight, and you've got a system that could start to be failing to deliver on the needs of the many very, very rapidly. We've got this precarious model, this instability of inequality that Ian just talked us through. If I think about where we're headed, I think you've got the potential that we can go two ways, because the elephant in the room, of course, is technology.
What's technology and the new generation of exponential technologies that we've got going to start to do to the ability to deal with these threats? I was in Singapore the other day. I sometimes do this radio program for BBC Radio 4 called FutureProofing, and it's about what's coming down the track. It's by the way, generally on at the same time as this other TV show called Bake Off. Actually no one listens to this program. It gives me an insight into what's coming down the track. I was in Singapore, and I got into their smart car, their driverless car, which was great for about 250 m, then it immediately went onto the wrong side of the road in front of a dumpster truck.
The guy pulled us back to safety and said, "Okay, that didn't go that well." You've got to understand, this driverless car is not your usual driverless car. It's a do-it-yourself one, which any of us could make. Off-the-shelf supermarket technology. You could retrofit it onto your own Volvo, onto your own Škoda, whatever you've got. It basically worked for the rest of the day. We went back to the Ministry of Transport, and he basically talked me through the city of the future. This is the Singapore plan for what a city should look like. That step one is driverless cars, which will then be followed by vertical take-off and landing craft. Step two is to fully automate the economy. Step three is to put all citizens on universal basic incomes.
Step four, with northern Jakarta going underwater down the road from climate change, is to use blockchain-based facial recognition technologies to close off the city gates to migration, because they said it will be, quote, "Too socially complex." What you've got is Singapore, which had been this engine of Southeast Asian inclusive economic growth. The city is the umbilical cord that pumps nutrients through into the broader economy and the outlying regions. It suddenly becomes this closed community. It becomes like Sandton in South Africa, for example, Ian. It becomes this barrio cerrado, this gated community. You see a straight line from the technological into the social into the political. That's one city of the future. In the hotel space, of course, it's the VR substitutes, it's the AI hotels, you name it.
I think the really interesting thing is to look at a different deployment of technology. There's this great quote from Kentaro Toyama, who says, "Technology is not the answer. It's the amplifier of intent." When Ian talks about the turning point, this, I think, is exactly what we need to turn. What we need to turn is the intent with which we are deploying technology. That is the pivot that needs to be made. If we go back, and I just did a program on this, which really opened my eyes to the fundamentals. Go back to 2008. Go back to when the wheels really started to come off. What was going on there?
That was a model of capitalism that had a vision, which was its intent to take a look at the urban and suburban affluent billion, the people inside the cities, by and large, and to figure out a way to deliver mass-produced goods into that market. Then as those markets got saturated, to find new ways, deliver new goods with built-in obsolescence, you name it.
As they again found those markets saturate, to find new financial products, including cheap debt, including NINJA loans to people with no income, no jobs, no assets, to increase the penetration into these communities with products based on a consumer capitalist model that ultimately in the form of the subprime crisis was a model of growth that was a bit like fishing with dynamite in Lake Victoria, where in the short term you get a lot of growth, but actually you end up killing off the entire ecosystem and the future for potential for demand. That was capitalism serving inside the wall. I think this wall analogy is really important because 30 years ago when the Berlin Wall fell, that was the triumph of capitalism in theory. Actually what we've discovered is it was not the end state.
That this was actually the ticket to stay at the table and see if as a model of growth and as a model of political economy, it could deal with the problems we've got. In those last 30 years, even though the Berlin Wall came down, another wall has stayed up, another much bigger wall, an invisible wall of wealth, of assets that capitalism has not torn down at all. As Ian just said, actually with pandemic-driven increases in inequality, that wall has got higher. As climate change threatens to destabilize political economies, the example of Singapore shows that actually that wall's not going to be just invisible in the future. We've got this window now where with the direction we're headed towards is the walls becoming physical as well. The question is, what are we gonna do about that?
What's the city of the future gonna look like? This is where I think it's just interesting to look at this alternative vision, this alternative intention of what we do with technology, which is actually to turn it outwards instead. A lot of the stuff that's most exciting for me at the moment, we're doing a lot of work with climate tech startups around net zero. It's of course much bigger than that, is just the wealth of opportunities that we're seeing to use tech. Of course, it's not the panacea, it's just one plank on the raft that's gotta get us across the chasm to use tech to start to solve these problems. What do they look like? I've been talking to a company, it's called GainForest, and they're looking at Amazon deforestation.
You know, one of the great triumphs of COP. How do you enforce it? How do you make it happen when it's now become a net emitter in Brazil, for example. They're working with a tribe in Brazil called the Kayapo. The Kayapo are an indigenous community that live in an area that's twice the size of the U.K. It's about 10 million hectares of virgin forest, and it's got the equivalent of about 2.5 billion tons worth of carbon in the trees. The Kayapo with their blow pipes, with their indigenous tools, don't just know the endpoints to the forest, but they control the choke points that the loggers come in and out of with their trucks.
What GainForest does is it uses satellites to do high-resolution imagery of the trees to verify that the trees actually are there, that they have not gone down. Then on that basis to be using a blockchain-enabled coin that provides rewards, payments for ecosystem services to the Kayapo to give them the resources to continue to preserve. You can see on the map, you know, one patch is green, the other is orange and yellow. You can see the difference in the deforestation. You take another example on the side, which is not just green, but social as well. 'Cause this has absolutely got to be both. Take the hardest problem, the hardest nut you could possibly crack. 1.2 billion people in the world who don't even have electricity. They don't have power 'cause they don't have power.
They spend 70% of their income on kerosene, firewood, you name it. Just take a simple stack of technologies like the d.light solar light, which might cost $200. You can't afford it if you don't have power or income. We can put a SIM card in it, then with a chip it can be turned on and off remotely. This is a company called M-KOPA based out of Oxford, who Ian will know as well. It's $0.50-$0.60 a day you can lease it for way cheaper than the cost of kerosene or firewood.
You get access to a banking system and microinsurance and the ability to get a loan for the $36 KickStart hand pump, which gets you access to the underground water table and you can then triple the number of crops that you are providing. In one study, income went up from $180-$1,800 a head. Exam pass rates up from 58%-83%. The point is, it's a market that as you serve it grows. It's the opposite of the subprime. You're increasing their productive capability. You're increasing their potential to make their lives better. Then of course, go up the value chain and get loans for agricultural equipment, maybe 3D printed Shanzhai agricultural equipment and loans for refrigeration to basically become viable, successful, self-sustaining local small business farmers. Why do I say that?
I think we are at this point of transition.
Leo, please.
this inflection point.
Leo, don't forget our deal.
I'm finishing now. I can literally finish now.
Keep going.
We're at this turning. The delta between the good and the bad is as big for our generation as it's ever been, and that's the turning point. For me, there's only one fork to take, and anything which gets people together, anything like events, anything like hotels where people come together, communicate, share ideas, and breed off each other, the capacity to innovate, that's a pretty crucial part of the mix. Jan, I've gone over myself.
Yeah. Fine. Leo, two questions to you immediately. You talk now and then about the cities of the future. Now who, which ones will be the dynamic cities of the future?
I think you've gotta look at your city and you've gotta ask yourself, and this is a Renzo Piano distinction, the architect, the great architect says, "Is your city shaped like the plaza, the shopping mall, or is it shaped like the piazza, the place where people get together and where the real entertainment is each other?" That's what the city of the future has as its real asset. It's the brains, it's the people, it's the cognitive surplus. I think the city of the future is not just that place where they mix and mash together. It's the place where there's then, of course, an ecosystem of innovators, where there's a VC network that can get those innovators through the valley of death.
In the end, it's the city where the people are unlocked and are able to be with each other and just get that extraordinary mashup between problem and solution.
Oh, that's-
that happen in a time to come together.
That's another expression you often use, is a city for people. I think Gunn has something on that perhaps.
I mean, I kinda feel like I got the answer, but I'm wondering is it going to be easy to live in that city in the future? Like, this smart future city that you're talking about.
I think so. I mean, in the end, people vote with their feet. To get those best people, you gotta make it livable. Not just livable, you gotta make it fun. You gotta make it a place where people want to get out, want to be with each other, where the sheer friction of the other. A city is the place where you're most likely to meet the other. You've got to make that the beautiful thing. We've had a century of the self. We're about to have a possible century where what we do is turn our back on the other and lock them out. The city that will thrive will be the one that does exactly the opposite and creates these multiple open spaces for us just to collaborate and do stuff together.
Leo, let's talk a quick while with Ian. What do you spontaneously want to comment on what
Yeah.
What Leo says?
All right. I wish we could be together 'cause we always have fun together, especially over a drink.
Thanks.
We get a drink later.
I mean I think Leo is right, that the vibrant cities will be places where there's sparks, where people can do things they can't do on their own and they can't do elsewhere. They're tolerant places, they're diverse places, they're creative places. Another vision of cities of the future is that they're refuge. When I think of the fact that 99% of city growth is in middle-income and low-income countries, virtually all population growth in the future is in these cities. These cities, whether it's Lagos or Mumbai or others like them, are basically places where people have left the fragile and increasingly fragile countryside because of rising oceans and floods and droughts and are coming to cities to try and survive.
They're increasingly informal because the cities can't cope and can't supply enough people with enough resources. People are finding solutions for themselves in these places, and that's quite extraordinary.
When you add to that maybe a meter or more ocean rise this century, increasing floods, big extreme weather events, including hurricanes and others. These are fragile places. All the action, political action, economic action, something like 80% of economic activity in the world, in cities already much 60% of population, 80% of economic activity. What does that tell you? That cities are much more productive places than other places. That and that shows in all the productivity statistics. I think they're gonna be increasingly varied, big challenges, and that's where all the action is.
Now, I don't see Leo on the screen, but are we still in touch with Leo?
He's always g ood for good.
Good. Thank you. Thanks. I couldn't see him here. Great. You do at PwC some kind of index for growth city growth. Could you just quickly explain that to us?
It's an index. It looks at good growth. It looks at not just economic growth, but livability. There's equally a livability index. There's also a net zero economy index. There's these multiple index. I think there is a really important point to make, and it builds on Ian's point too, that the city is interrelational inside the city, for sure. That's what makes the successful city. I think it's also gotta be interrelational outside the city. You know, I think a city is as healthy as the economic region around it is healthy. Where I think things will really break down is if actually what we decide to do is ignore the broken countryside and allow the continued trend of distressed migration from the countryside into the city, the 1.5 million a week that are fleeing into the cities. Cause they will have two side effects.
They will swamp the city that doesn't have the infrastructure to deal with them in the first place, and that is facing these threats of sudden or gradual climate change that is gonna break the existing infrastructure they've got. That's the first problem. The city can't handle it. The second problem is the countryside then becomes broken as well. What we need to do urgently is focus not just on cities, but their interrelationship between the rural the urban. We need to make the countryside work, and we need the city as a vibrant market for the countryside, and source of talent and two-way traffic.
I don't know if Ian you would agree with that.
Good, good. Time's running, Leo, but since I asked a question beside the point to Ian, I thought I must have one to you as well. Can you guess what that is?
I'm hoping it'll be what I think it is.
Well, now my question beside the point to you, Leo, is that you happen to be the younger brother to Boris Johnson.
Yep.
Yeah. Is he-
In fact, I'm so sorry.
Is he using you as a secret advisor?
We do talk on some stuff. It would be fair to say I did not write his speech yesterday.
Okay, I won't blame you for that. No.
He should've. It would've been a lot better.
He's my brother and I love him as we all love all of our family members. We do talk on some stuff. I'll also say that, you know, over the last couple of years, there's been such a lot of passion around doing some of the green industrial development stuff, and I've really thought, "Okay, damn, some of this is good stuff." You know, much as I would love to like throw darts at some of the environmental agenda, I've really thought, "Okay," and I've really tried to lean in with ideas on that as well, so.
Yeah. I guess you've got that question 100x . I won't follow up on that.
Leo, thank you very much for joining us a lot. Thank you, Ian Goldin, for being with us today. Thanks a lot. Did you listen to the music in the beginning? That was pretty special, wasn't it? Good.
Give us an example and explain what it is.
Usually when I do different productions, DJ productions, you come up here, you play. It's the same thing every time. I usually tell the people that I can make something fun, something special. I can produce you a special jingle, but they usually say no, cause they don't understand what I mean. But Pandox liked it. They said yes. Here is an example. It can be funny.
Pandox. Forever Pandox.
Yeah, you get it. I mean, you feel it, right? Right?
Now, I tell you what, this is not just anybody singing.
Yeah.
This is not just anybody.
I produced the track, and I called my best friend, Jasmine Kara. She's a famous Swedish singer, who's singing on the tracks today. She played for Beyoncé. She stayed in New York the past, I think, 15 years. She's been in a couple of competitions like Melodifestivalen, TV shows, Let's Dance, these kind of things. She's really amazing.
Good. That's fine. We're gonna talk a little about hotels with you, but we do it later since we're running behind.
The schedule a little. It is time for a break now, but it's short, so stay on. We will be back in five minutes, okay?
Pandox Hotel Market Day will be right back. Stay tuned for Andreas Scriven, Chris Sanderson, and Kathryn Bishop.
Yes. friends, we keep our promises. It was five minutes, and we run the program again. Please let me remind you then about the QR code, so you answer our questions online or perhaps also here. There you have it on the screen. So please check it out and answer the questions behind the QR code. There are three of them. Can I please ask about your attention, friends? Can I please ask for attention? Shh. Thank you very much. We're talking about change all the time. Change, change. I'm really serious about what will really change, in fact for example, in the hotel business. I am sure that our next speaker has some really interesting answers to that. Go ahead.
Please welcome Head of Hospitality and Leisure, Deloitte UK, Andreas Scriven.
Good afternoon, and it's fantastic to be back in Stockholm after last year obviously not being able to come for a variety of reasons. It's good to be back in person. What I've been asked to talk to you a little bit about over the next 10 minutes or so is kind of what happens next for the industry. I think, you know, part of the challenge of answering that without using a crystal ball is that things are changing all the time, right? What we decided to do very early on in the pandemic is to see what insight, what data, what sentiment we could find to help guide us. Yeah? What I'm gonna show you is not going to necessarily be the truth in the future, but it's how people, guests, businesses are feeling right now.
You know, some of the questions we're being asked right now are, "When is this gonna be over?" Yeah. "Is corporate travel ever gonna come back? Is guests behavior going to fundamentally change?" We heard previously some changes around the tech side and of course ESG, hugely important as well. I won't quite have enough time to cover all of those, but what I did want to start out with is just give you a bit of sentiment of where the industry sees disruption and how long that's gonna go on for. We do a survey every quarter or so, and that suggests that disruption is expected to continue throughout next year and into 2023. If you look at what's happening in certain countries right now, again, that could move out slightly to the right.
In terms of normalization of trade, business as usual, which of course we're never gonna go back to business as usual how it was, but the sentiment there is we're looking at 2023, but a not insignificant minority think that's going to carry on into 2024. I've just seen the latest results of the next version of this survey which will re-release next week, and the positive news there is that has stabilized. People aren't thinking this is gonna continue beyond this at the moment. One of the other questions I get asked a lot is around corporate travel. I think we feel a bit more confident around leisure travel. We had strong summers, strong domestic demand in leisure destinations, but what about corporate travel?
We've just in August interviewed 140 execs who have control over significant corporate travel budgets. We asked them one of the questions we asked them is when do you think you'll be spending as much as you did in 2019? What you can see on that graph is it's gonna be steady improvement, but it's gonna take time. The dark blue line that you see is when they think they're gonna be spending 100% of what they spent in 2019 . I think the number, I can't quite read it from here, but I think it's 52 or 54% think they'll be back to 100% of spend by the end of next year. Still a long way to go.
If you start asking individuals how likely they are to travel for business in the next three months and whether technology has fundamentally changed how they will travel or if they'll travel less frequently, you get some really interesting geographic differences. The Chinese say 37% of the Chinese say they'll travel for business in the next three months, and only 5% think technology has fundamentally changed how they will travel for business. In the U.S., that drops to 27% and 14%. If you bring it into Europe and the U.K., again, another significant drop, only 17% think they're gonna travel for business over the next three months. The Germans, over a quarter of Germans think that technology has fundamentally changed how they will travel for business in the future.
Now, as an advisor, one bit of comfort I take from this is the consistency. As one number moves down, the other one moves up. Of course, in any good data set, you need an outlier. I thank India for providing that. 69% think they're gonna travel for business over the next three months, but also loads of them, over a third, think that technology has fundamentally changed how they will travel for business. I haven't quite figured out the answer to why that is, and I'll let you know when I do. Why are people traveling for business? Interestingly, both in Sweden, I'll show you data for China and the U.K. as well, the biggest reason to travel is for conferences, exhibitions, and trade shows.
Something that typically lags behind, but it clearly shows this pent-up demand to get back together like we are today and network. Whereas the Chinese, for example, you know, not likely to travel to make a sales call, yeah, which you can see highlighted there. If I take that back to Sweden, in Sweden, that is one of the main reasons for traveling for business. Then in all three markets that I've shown you, so China, Sweden, and the U.K., training is very, very low down the list. Of course, that is because technology is playing a major role of delivering training in different ways. Again, very different reasons for travel and by geography there as well.
When you look at this, and this is again a piece of research that we've done, split into quadrants, what areas are going to thrive in terms of demand and which ones are most at risk to be replaced by technology. What I'm doing right now, which is delivering content at a conference, is at risk of being replaced by technology. What you just did when you all walked out and networked with each other is gonna be, you know, absolutely thriving because people have that requirement to meet in person. I think it's really critical to look at what aspects are gonna be influenced by that change in behavior of business travel that I highlighted a little earlier on as well. How our consumer behavior is gonna change.
What you see up on screen there is a tool called Location Edge, a geospatial analytics tool that we use, and it looks at all of Visa spend, a lot of Telefónica's mobile phone tracing data to look at immediate behavior changes, as people, you know, spend on food and beverage or shop in grocery stores and so on. What you see up on the screen there is the data for Paddington Station in London, right? Pre-pandemic. What you see is a lot of people obviously commute into London, so the spend comes from the left there into Paddington, and that's where it gets spent. What does that look like due to COVID? Like that.
Interestingly, the market size has only dropped from about SEK 345 million- SEK 320 million because what's happened is the catchment area is much smaller, but nobody's leaving the area, so they're spending their money in situ. The spend and type of spend has fundamentally changed. Spend on grocery markets, which is the blue box that's highlighted in green there, has gone through the roof, whereas dining out has really taken a hit. If you look at a market a little bit outside of London, a typical commuter market. This is Feltham. You can see Heathrow just above it and so on. Totally different situation. This was pre-pandemic, and that's during the pandemic. Virtually no change in terms of where the spend is coming from.
Interestingly, this market was worth about GBP 120 million in spend pre-pandemic. It's now worth GBP 220 million. Because people aren't going anywhere. They're spending where they live. Tracking this is gonna be really, really interesting to see how cities evolve, where people are gonna spend money, what they spend it on, and so on. I think there's a risk that we over-exaggerate the impact of the pandemic and say, "That's what it's gonna look like in two, three, five years' time." The reality is that spend is slowly gonna drift back into the cities. I'm convinced of that. The only other point I wanted to highlight is around the labor crisis that we're facing in the industry.
Twelve months ago, we would have never thought we were gonna talk about a labor crisis, a shortage of labor in hospitality. In our sentiment survey, we added that question in July, and it immediately came in second spot. In the latest survey, it stays in the second spot, so this is a major issue for the industry going forward. You can see the scale of it, right? 7.5 million or so jobs lost in April 2020 in the sector in the U.S. in one m onth. 100 million jobs across the sector globally lost in 2020. The challenge here is not necessarily those immediate job losses, although they're obviously painful for the individuals, because a lot of those jobs will be required again in the future.
The real challenge is around leakage of people out of the industry to work in supermarkets, to become Amazon delivery drivers, and they're never coming back. That's the main concern that I have is that permanent leakage. If you look at the U.K. hospitality, huge number of vacancies, major problem. Only lags health and social care at the moment. If you actually look at that on a per 100 worker basis, the hospitality industry is massively impacted. That's true in the U.K., but it's true in many other markets. It's a really serious issue in terms of the recovery and not putting the brakes on the recovery, as it starts to really gather steam. The pandemic isn't the cause of this.
This was a major issue well before the pandemic. I remember quoting in 2018 that 80% of major tourism markets were gonna have a labor crisis by 2024. What the crisis has done, it's made it worse, and it's accelerated it. The aging of the population and the reduction of the workforce already happening in Europe, and this actually holds true in most major markets with the exception of Africa over the next 30-40 years. What do we do about it? I think we need to be more creative in the war of talent. You see the cover page from The Economist there around the war for talent.
You know, do we reach out to generations that typically would already be retired and bring them back in, but bring them in in a more flexible way? You know, somebody who has a lot of experience, a lot to give, a lot to train, they maybe wanna work two four-hour shifts in a week. Bring them back in and have everybody benefit from that. Because the issue as an industry that we have in terms of the recovery and being able to staff it is at the other end of the age spectrum. If you look at 17- 18-year-olds that are just about to come into the workforce, and you look at that by industry, so you've got the accommodation and catering industry there. The bluish lines are the net vacancies by 2024. The hospitality industry has a huge net requirement.
The green line below it, which is very small if you can't see it, is the desirability for the sector by 17- 18-year-olds. We have a big need, but nobody wants to come and work in our industry. Where do they wanna work? Art and culture, entertainment, and sport. Let me translate. They want to be on the X Factor, they want to be Instagram famous, or they want to be a footballer. Yeah? Lots of kids want to do it, and there's not a lot of jobs in that space. I think this is really an issue for us as an industry to address, and it's around storytelling.
Oh, how do we get those 17- 18-year-olds to understand this is a fantastic industry, you know, it's global, and you can move around the world, and it has all types of jobs in it, not just one type of job. I know that ends on a slightly downbeat note, but I think these are all key areas that we as an industry need to focus on to help the hospitality industry get back on its feet and evolve going forward. That's all I had for you today.
Thanks a lot. Andreas, every single time I meet a person from the hotel industry, this is the issue they point out, restaffing. Seems to be a huge, am I right?
Yes.
A huge problem now. Let's take a principal question about that first, Gunn.
What I think about when I hear this is what about promoting inclusion? Because the younger and the future is inclusion. If you feel like there is a place where you feel included, you want to work there. I would think you would get more younger people to come, and they would not look at the X Factor, or they would do both of them. I think, inclusion, more inclusion everywhere, and really to show it.
More public.
And I to totally agree with you on that. I think if you look at the industry traditionally it's been quite hierarchical, general managers and certain types of levels within the organization. I think what the industry and most businesses need to look towards is being more adaptable, more nimble, and allowing people to, what we at Deloitte call, bring your true, authentic self to work, right? You don't have to pretend to be something to fit into a certain hierarchy. It's all about being adaptable, flexible, to address some of that. I totally agree, and I think a lot of this is also around purpose and organizations having to be purpose-driven. Not just saying something and then not doing it, but actually, you know, walking the walk, as it were.
Sure.
Andreas, I can come up with hundreds of questions on this, but I choose one.
Okay.
That is about your own profession, really. Because everything is so uncertain. Everything is just a big question mark, and the reality seems to change every second day now. How do you do these polls and your research and all that? If you do a new one in next week, it will look different, or?
Especially if we do it in Austria, yeah. It will change a lot, yeah.
For example.
Look, it's a challenge, so that's why I said at the beginning, this is not about providing total certainty of the outcome, but it's to inform so better decisions can be made, so we can detect more permanent trends more quickly. But absolutely, it's a huge challenge. What we say to a lot of our clients is it's not about predicting one right future, but it's actually, you know, being prepared for whatever the future looks like. It's being adaptable, nimble. I think that's been a big lesson for many corporations.
You have the chance to talk to or email with Andreas. He knows a lot about this stuff. Thank you very much, Andreas Scriven.
Thanks so much.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Travel, how will the traveler change? What kinds of trends are there, when you look at the patterns of the traveler's behavior? We have a couple of really interesting speakers from the Future Laboratory in London talking about this now.
Please welcome the co-founder as well as the Foresight Editor at The Future Laboratory, Chris Sanderson and Kathryn Bishop.
Good afternoon, everyone. It's a real pleasure and an honor, and a privilege to be back with you again. I was last here in 2019, whereas some of you will remember our key theme was sustainability.
We started.
To tackle the inherent problems that this industry faces when it comes to sustainability. I think the Pandox team have done it again, haven't they? They've been taking you on a journey. I don't know if you've noticed, but there's been this funnel of information that has been coming your way, and we're now moving to the bit where we start to evaluate some of the data and the bigger global drivers that you've listened to, and the large scale mega impacts that we're all beginning to face. We're starting to drill down now into our industry, and we've just had some great data there from Andreas and his team. We want to add some color and to build on that through our understanding of how our consumer is continuing to evolve and grow.
We've already heard a couple of really important words here, I think, around this sense of growth. Because acceleration and exacerbation, along with resilience.
Seem to be the watch words of the last 18 months. Indeed, many of the things that we're now experiencing that seem to have been squeezed over the last two years were, of course, bubbling away under the surface or becoming more and more relevant in the late teens as we moved into this, the transformational '20s. It's a focus on not just understanding what we've been through, but thinking about the bigger picture as we start to move into the inter-COVID era, this transitional period that hopefully moves us through a trans, as Ian was saying. This isn't about bouncing back or taking the same trajectory. This is trans. This is a movement across. It's a point of difference that we move away from and we move towards, but we make a positive decision to do things differently.
This is what K athryn and I, would really like to talk to you about. We're gonna do this through six key areas.
Yes, we are. Accelerating trends. Today, we're going to look at six, and we're gonna look at these through the lens of now. What we expect to sort of bed in in 2022, then what is new, what we expect to be coming up in the next sort of one to three years in terms of new trends, new directions in consumer behaviors for you to be thinking about, the wider hotel and travel industries to be thinking about. Then what's next, a bit more future facing, more towards the end of the decade, some of those exciting trends that will be upcoming. We're going to start with thinking about the now. Slow travel, this slow tourism movement really starting to bed in as we move into the next year. There are several reasons why this is starting to happen.
The first one, of course, the pandemic, and also, of course, climate crisis. People are taking stock. They're thinking about the reasons why they travel now, and also, you know, what are those personal reasons? Why is their particular trip relevant to them as well? We're seeing travel organizations respond, of course, with slower options, slower sort of itineraries for tourists, sometimes even helping you as a traveler think about things like the respect to the places that you're traveling to. One example is The Mindful Travel Co., which operates in Australia and New Zealand. They've got a really interesting take on this because they think about how to make travel not only meaningful, but also more mindful for their customers.
Their co-founders, Emma Penfold and Laura Hughes, notes that "Our customers tend to be eco-conscious, sometimes they're spiritual, but mostly they're just looking for a well-deserved break." It's balancing that eagerness that a lot of people have got to get back out there with also doing it in a more considerate way.
Now, moving on. Again, still looking at this idea of what's happening right now. As we move through our various pandemics, we're by no means over them all.
It's in the COVID era, we have all begun to, I think, test ourselves or find resolve when it comes to resourcefulness in terms of staying healthy, being well, and thinking also about our mindfulness. For us, how we start to address these issues and also embrace them within the hospitality industry.
It starts to become really interesting. Because again, it's one of these moves that takes us beyond the idea that when we address wellness, we simply think of spa, and the solution is to put a couple of wet rooms and a massage table into our basement, that we actually think in a far more holistic way about what a mindful guest might want and look like and enjoy, and what a more 360-degree approach to wellness and the idea of health is going to be for our traveler moving forward.
That sense of how we start to combat our sedentary lifestyles and start to make a play, I think, towards a far more active cohort of travelers who really are thinking so much more holistically about the idea of staying well rather than just preventing illness as we move through this transformational decade, the transformational '20s. The idea of how we start to place sport and fitness at the heart of our offering is going to be increasingly important in this decade moving forward. Indeed, according to the Global Wellness Institute, wellness travel is projected to reach EUR 779 billion by 2022. Now, that was actually a figure that we got earlier this year, so it's a recent stat rather than a pre-pandemic one.
It's that sense of understanding and anticipating the market of growth in this particular area. How we start to incorporate this newfound passion for physical hobbies into the tourism experience, I think, is about, again, this idea of how we embrace a new generation of travelers with new interests in mind and new points of focus. We're seeing how the niche and the desire to become niche is also an opportunity within this particular category. On screen, we can see The Courts Hotel in California, which the whole hotel experience revolves around the idea that it is a tennis hotel. That's its raison d'être. In fact, this idea that we become more niche in our outlook rather than more general, again, we believe is one of the guiding principles of the next 10 years.
We find our points of difference. We understand as our consumer base continues to diversify rather than necessarily homogenize, we've got to be able to actually play to those key elements and those notes of diversification rather than sameness. The other example we've got here, El Mangroove Hotel in Costa Rica, launching a program connecting professional surfers with guests, understanding what its authentic self, as Andreas identified, really is.
Okay. From personal wellbeing, as Chris was just touching on, to that of the wider communities and planet, what we will actually start to see is this more regenerative solution coming through for travel as well. It's not that sustainability is gonna go off the agenda, it's more that the conversation is evolving around this whole system approach to travel futures. Of course, aware of the climate crisis, by the mid-2020s, we're going to see customers who are more conscious about traveling, but they're going to want the data to back that up.
When they're coming to hotels, when they're booking online, they're going to want to know that the destinations that they're landing into have maybe already done some of the work for them, but can also quantify maybe the impact of their stays, you know, when they're on the ground, how many local resources they're using, that sort of thing. We've already started to see the Eco Resort Collective, aptly titled Regenerative Travel, actually create an open source white paper on its website for hotel groups to actually download and read through so they can actually understand better their planetary and social impact. The co-founder of Regenerative Travel, Amanda Ho, notes that "Regeneration looks at everything from this whole system perspective," as we've just noted.
It's about being able to prove through scientific fact that our hotels are creating an agenda of impact, so the hotels themselves are thinking impact first, maybe not necessarily just about the experiences that they're offering. That is now part of the experience that they're offering. We're also seeing the Preferred Hotel Group, founded by Beyond Green, a platform for properties, now really integrating these three pillars of sustainable tourism into all of the work that they do, and these are focused not only, again, on environmental practices, but that bigger thinking, that whole system thinking, protecting cultural heritage, contributing to wellbeing of the local communities as well. As Gunn touched on, there's the biggest conversation here to think about under this umbrella of, you know, sustainability, and that's also intersectionality, is thinking about who are your future customers.
If we're thinking about sustainable travel, it's not necessarily affluent white people anymore. We have to think about how to engage new audiences, younger audiences, who, as we just noted, want to understand the impact of their trips. They have different reasons for traveling. They're traveling more for cultural and for ancestry, rather than just to have a great beach holiday to Ibiza. One really great example, if you aren't yet aware of them, is a travel collective called Trippin. They very much focus on Generation Z, and their whole approach is to replace this idea of sustainable travel with purposeful travel instead. They want to address that lack of intersectionality that has largely existed in this sustainable travel sort of movement so far to date, because as they say, right now there's an unlevel playing field for many intersectional travelers.
If you're Black or brown and you're traveling, you might not always feel welcome on what has been, quote-unquote, "a sustainable trip." Again, they're thinking and asking travel companies to think about what are their two pillars of sustainable tourism, and with this how that also filters down to local communities.
Now, moving on, again, Andreas talked about the impact on the hospitality industry of the workplace, both in terms of business travel, but also the idea of those that want to work with us. It was 15 years ago that at the Future Laboratory we coined the term Bleisure to actually embrace and understand the fusing together of the business and the leisure traveler. I think in tandem with a more sustainable approach to travel, we're beginning to see how consumers are increasingly drifting towards this idea of swapping short-term holidays for longer-term stays. Again, this was something we were definitely seeing pre-COVID, the rise of what we had called nomadism.
The notion of the worker who is increasingly able to think more carefully about how they travel, about how long they can stay in a particular location, because of the greater flexibility that many of us now have around our working patterns, is something that already hotel groups like the citizenM have begun to pay attention to. Providing companies with work stay incentives such as meeting rooms, hotel rooms, and free drinks in order to bring people together and back into their hotel for both, the professional time and also the leisure time to do it together.
Meanwhile, the airline company United has partnered with Peerspace to create team together bundles, offering companies packages that include the return flights, the short-term workspace rentals, the collaborative spaces that bring teams the time to come together, the reason to actually come together, to create that culture and to create the environment in which great new ideas can come to fruition. At the other end of the scale, we're also seeing how new luxury businesses like MUSA on Mexico's Pacific Coast are designing properties specifically for this more nomadically-minded traveler. The space will offer a hotel and individual living accommodation that really focuses on the idea of placemaking, on community, giving people the opportunity to experience the area before potentially deciding that this is where they may want to bed down roots and actually think about living.
That's a really nice idea, and I've seen a few of these concepts starting to come through of people getting a test run about living in a space temporarily, seeing how they feel maybe before actually moving there. Now when we're starting to look next, we're looking maybe more towards the end of the 2020s and where some of these travel trends could be headed. What is really actually quite exciting to see is how, through data and travel insights, what we will start to see is not only itineraries, but increasingly of course future hospitality experiences and even hotel design being founded on the data that hotel groups are tracking around user behavior, customer spend, where people are traveling. Very similar to what we've been shared just previously.
This is where the expertise of the travel sector and that ability to read and infer data will unite to actually hone and create some really exciting new spaces.
We've just seen one really interesting example in China. Alibaba's travel booking platform, Fliggy, recently used its extensive knowledge, of course, of the Chinese consumer base to create, for the first time, a three-day-long festival in the desert. This was very much, again, targeted using Fliggy's search engine data at Generation Z, it was called the Desert Hearts Music Festival, and they understood that Gen Z right now in China, as we've touched on, want to understand their cultural heritage. They kind of want to get back in touch with their ancestry. As part of this, they had music, dance, fashion, traditional Hanfu dress at this festival for Gen Z to come and enjoy. That was all just born from the data insights that they could see from their search engines.
Elsewhere, Culture Trip, some of you may know of it of course, the digital content platform for the travel industry, is translating its kind of editorial grasp and its reach of all of these local insiders that exist around the world to actually create a whole new travel concept called Trips. It's for small groups. It's obviously especially targeting maybe friends who wanna get back out and travel now, but do something that feels much more local. As we again saw with data, everyone's been very much focused on spending local, and so they want to translate that into their travel experiences now. You get hooked up with local insiders who obviously show you all the hidden gems, very much in the vein of Culture Trip's own editorial. Indeed, such data could actually really help us to maybe even accelerate some new travel hotspots.
We could be reading this data to understand where we should be putting our investment or our focus next. Of course, some of these hotspots themselves might actually be a little bit ephemeral or transient even. Thinking about how we have to be much more flexible and also move with the time as travel brands, as travel companies. Showing this notion of transience already is 700,000 Heures, which is a nomadic hotel. It sets up for about six months every time it moves around the world. It's most recently been in Lake Como, it's been in Japan. Here it's very much encouraging those sort of high-spending customers to come and spend some time, again, immerse themselves in local activities, whether it's you know, Japanese calligraphy or gardening, that sort of thing.
This hotel, moving around the world and always seeking out and teasing its next location to obviously help build a bit of hype before it lands. Elsewhere, we're also seeing this start to push a little bit further afield. When we start to think a little bit more future-facing, again, towards maybe the end of the 2020s, the Anthénea is the world's first floating hotel suite. It's basically a solar-powered pod that can kind of float around. It can navigate rivers, it can navigate seas. It has a circular bed, it has a saltwater or freshwater bathtub, its own solarium. So your own little private boat space that you can float around on, and it can of course anchor in any place its residents want to be until they're ready to move. Maybe pushing this to the even more extreme end is OceanSky.
We're looking actually for 2023 for the first launch of OceanSky. This is bringing a fresh approach to Arctic Circle tourism. It's the world's first helium aircraft, they're back, ready to fly to the North Pole. Those 16 people who will be on this first trip on this OceanSky will be joined by Robert Swan, an explorer, for this once in a lifetime experience. This ability to kind of move around, enjoy these kind of hotels and these voyages that are, again facing new frontiers even as we look to the future.
Indeed. We'd just like to end with this particular quote, which we thought chimed very nicely with that idea of moving into the sort of the new horizon of travel opportunity and hospitality. This is from Sylvia Karasu, who's a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine in the United States, who recently told us, "They already own the present. What else is left to buy but tomorrow and the tomorrow after that? Suddenly, the fetish of the super-rich for space tourism starts to make sense.
It won't just be about space. It will be about our unexplored worlds, and it will be about how we discover parts of our world that we never thought we'd find or that we'd encounter. That, I think, is one of the most exciting opportunities that hospitality will have in the decade and the decades to come. Thank you.
Thank you, Jan.
Thanks a lot. It's like an English lesson, ephemeral. I wonder how many of you Swedish here who have used the Swedish equivalent to that word. Would you say about a hotel that it is ephemerat? Have you heard that? No. New term. You always learn. Gunn, I wonder if you will stay in hotels as a private traveler more or less the coming years?
I would say more as a private, less because I'll be working all the time, more in business.
That's a logical answer which leads to-
If I wasn't working that much, I also would be traveling more private. More private.
Which means that you will increase your.
Yeah.
hotel stays.
for business.
Yeah, 'cause during the pandemic, it's for me, it's been more like a long-term vacation. I mean, that's how I have to see it. I've been trying to really spoil myself living in the hotels and enjoying myself and continuing being creative, creating music, producing. Definitely, I will stay a lot more, and I am going every week back and forth staying in hotels in different countries, deejaying as we speak.
What a good customer, isn't she?
Mm-hmm.
Fine.
I am.
Excellent. This leads to the results of the QR poll. I think we have them now. I hope so. Yes. As a leisure traveler, when will you stay at hotels as much as you did before? I already do, 36%. Yep. Draw your own conclusions, friends. This was as a leisure traveler. What about the business traveler? Can we see that? 43% in 2023. Never again, 20%. Was that what you expected? Just about? Okay. The third question. How difficult is it for you to find the right staff today compared to before? Harder, 47%. Much harder, 28%. We've got a problem here. Thanks for the poll answers. Very short. You've worked with Pandox before.
Yep.
On a funny trip.
Yeah.
Tell it very short.
I don't know if a couple of you remember, if you were there, but five years ago, we went to Kiruna. Is there anyone here that went to Kiruna?
Yeah. Sure. Okay.
I remember Mr. Hamberg, he was dancing like crazy.
Staffan Olsson.
Yeah. We went to, first to Radisson by the airport. We had a pre-party, and then there was the destination unknown, and everyone flew up to.
Yeah
Kiruna for a two-day party by the Icehotel in some Scandic Hotels. I remember everyone went up on the mountains with helicopters and had champagne. I just remember with Pandox.
Helicopter and champagne. How lovely.
Very nice. I was waiting in the hotel. I remember that. No, but I really remember with Pandox that it was so nice, like, all the speeches. I remember Nissen too, and the beautiful speeches and everything. It really hit me.
Yeah.
It was different from all the corporate jobs that I do, and I remember that I really wanted to come back and play for Pandox.
Yeah. There you are.
Now I am back five years later.
Lovely.
I'm really happy that you-
Now we've got a panel coming in here. How good. Returning on stage, Liia Nõu.
Thank you.
The sub from the bench, if I am honest, and I am, Ruslan Husry. Thank you very much for saying yes last night late.
How could I say no? To joining the panel. That was wonderful.
Because Jens Mathiesen couldn't come, we have announced Jens Mathiesen. Wonderful. You represent the HR Group in Germany with lots of hotels. Robin, of course.
Robin Rossmann, a serial visitor to the Pandox Hotel Market Day, aren't you?
It's a great event.
Yeah. It really is. Now, couple of questions to you, and I start with you, Robin.
Sure.
I wanna know now. We talked so much about the pandemic.
Will we really learn something from it and change anything? Will we?
I mean, there's a lot of things that have been talked about today that, you know, it's clear we need to have change, especially around the environment and how we take care of that. I also think there are a lot of mega change trends that are talked about that they're not gonna materialize in the shape that maybe they get talked about right now. Will more meetings be done digitally? Yes. Will more people choose to live outside of cities and commute? Some will, yes. Does that mean travel is dead, and does that mean cities are dead? I think fundamentally not. It's interesting if you look at some of the worst performing shares in the U.S. at the moment, they are the likes of Zoom.
Zoom share price is down 30% this year, Peloton down 60%. The reason for that is their valuations were underpinned by assuming a growth trajectory that we've seen through the pandemic continuing. People were gonna change the way that they did things forever, and that's not materializing, not in recent months. I'll give you another data point. We have a business in the U.S. called apartments.com. It's a marketplace for renting apartments. The long-term average occupancy of apartments in cities is around about 93%. Obviously, during the pandemic, people moved out of the city, occupancy rates went down. In the most recent month in the U.S., apartment rate occupancy is 95%. It's the highest occupancy rate we've ever seen in 30 years of data.
People are choosing to move back into cities, they're getting off their Peloton, they're traveling again, and things are returning to normal for better or for worse, right? I think that's something that, you know, has positive impacts, but also it doesn't necessarily deal with some of the other challenges that have been raised today.
Ruslan, perhaps I was a little unfair to you because I didn't give you the chance to explain if you don't know what HR Group is. That's a huge hotel group in Germany now. I give you 30 seconds to tell what it is.
Yeah. Thank you very much.
Yeah.
Yeah. HR Group, it's a white label operator in Germany, asset-heavy, signing lease contract with the institutional investors, operating around 80 hotels in Germany and Central Europe, include like Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Spain. One of our big landlord is Pandox as a tenant, but also different institutional investors like Union Investment, Deka. We are also owning like part of the real estate. It's privately owned company, and asset-heavy with different-
It may be interesting just in this connection now that you have 10 or 12 hotels in Vienna.
No, I bought the Vienna House property, but it's a new brand, like it's a Vienna House called.
Okay.
I bought-
I thought you were in Austria as well.
Yeah, partly in Austria, but not as hotels in Vienna.
Okay.
I bought a brand, it's called Vienna House.
Yeah.
We took over the leases, and now we are considering. We are also partnering with different franchise partners.
like Accor or Hilton or
Yeah, I see.
When you're in them, you feel like you're in Austria.
Right. Sorry.
Yeah.
Now, Ruslan, the same question to you. What do you really learn from this crisis we are going through, still going through?
Yeah, like, also continue our cooperation first. The first lesson what I learned, like, we have to be prepared for the worst can happen. Luckily for HR Group, and thanks to Pandox, and thanks to Anders Nissen, well, he's not with us, because of the pandemic also we lost him, and thankful for that. Like, we had the first cooperation, and Pandox trusted in me as a company, and we made that sale and leaseback in 2019, where it was on the other hand, a good timing to be prepared for a pandemic. Nevertheless, for our business model, this was one of the big lessons to learn, because it's not written by laws, nothing written by contracts, nothing written.
It's cooperation between partners, how to solve the issue together, how to overcome this issue as two partners. In one hand, as operator, as a lease heavy, but in the other hand, as owner, how we can compete with this pandemic. The worst thing, like this took longer, and like with this salami process, you know, like piece by piece, longer. Nevertheless, like how to be prepared stronger, like from the operational side, cutting costs, react, taking care about the, like the hotels and, how to continue implementing digitalization, continue about i deas of food and beverage and so on.
What about Pandox, Liia Nõu? Is there a small talk in the office every day that, "No, we have to do like this instead because we learned something"?
Well, there's two learnings from the pandemic.
Yeah.
One thing is that the way you manage a crisis is how well prepared you were before. Well, nobody knew a pandemic was coming, but the business model, the having a culture of quick decision-making, and the corporate culture, enabling people, having the mandates, taking care of them, employees come back, et cetera, that's very important, and that we were proud of. I think we sort of said before, that's something that Anders put in place and we're all sort of part of, and that's what we're very proud of. The other learning is that, how to say now, facts, not fear, to base, like Robin, to base everything we do as much on facts as we can. There's a lot of numbers out there.
You mean you will be better on that due to the pandemic?
Because y es. I mean, we are a data-driven company in the sense that we always w e analyze and look at our competitors, and we always done that. Even more so during this pandemic, it's been really, really important to continue to do that and really sort of take decisions on that.
With, with-
Yeah
Without facts, you're just another person with an opinion.
Yeah.
Now, Robin, you listened to Chris and Kathryn.
From The Future Laboratory. What they are saying is that consequences of the pandemic, what they point out? Or is it things that would happen anyway?
I mean, I think they started off, and I actually had the pleasure of chatting to them before the event. A lot of those trends were around before the pandemic, and it is around an acceleration and an investment into those areas. They are still quite very niche trends. I think there is a big mass market that won't change necessarily as fast as that.
Although I will say the one thing, it was great listening to Ian Goldin earlier on, because just to hear him synthesize so succinctly all the changes that happened post-World War II, and realizing that those fundamental changes didn't happen in a year or two. Even though coming out of World War II, it would have felt like we need to change things now, it took years and decades for that to play through. I think we're in a similar place now where we all recognize the fundamental need to change things, and myself, and I'm sure many are frustrated that it doesn't feel like we have the right path yet. People often overestimate how much they can get done in a year and underestimate how much they could get done in a decade.
I think if we're on the right trajectory, that, you know, that's my hope.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Ruslan, you've been here the whole afternoon, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Have you heard anything interesting?
Everything was very interesting.
What was interesting? Tell me.
No, about all the opinions, especially also with Ian and with the understanding of the global situation also regarding how cities will look like, traveling, and so on, where I believe it will be change in the market, but I think it's the direction. Also I agree about what it means about restarting, like or going back to the path. I think there will be adjustment, like how we are integrating, like and how we see our recovery process, and it was quite fast in our hotel portfolio that we see secondary locations or today institutional investors are looking at the leisure market. Well, if I was talking to this institutional investor some years ago, they will never want to hear about the leisure market or to invest in leisure market, especially in Europe.
To see this kind of hotels where you can adjust business hotel as also leisure destination to prepare, like, for family traveling, create a, like, kind of offices like that people with family can travel between cities and the kids can go around.
you integrate this kind of philosophy in your hotels and these things that we have shared.
Soon, same question to you, Liia Nõu. Just a moment. Did you hear anything special today that you liked? Good. That you thought, "Ah, didn't know that," or, "That was interesting"?
I think everything was interesting to know a little bit how in general you work from the perspective from you as a landlord and Pandox and the hotels.
because I'm also the head of marketing of Stockholm Pride, so I'm the one putting the pressure from an inclusion point of view on the hotels, how you work in the business with your staff, but also how you can promote yourself without l ooking like you're pinkwashing, you know? Pinkwashing means you're just using the LGBTQ logo to look good.
Yeah.
You actually don't do anything for it. This was interesting to me. I get a lot from that.
Yeah.
It was this ephemeral pop-up hotel. I say pop-up.
Ephemeral.
Yeah.
Ephemeral.
Yeah, the pop-up hotel.
Yeah
Idea, I thought was very interesting.
What about Liia Nõu? You are the one behind all this.
Yeah, I'm sort of there.
What's interesting? What's interesting here?
I think it was interesting. I think that we are sort of coming quicker to a more normalized, we shouldn't say business as usual, but to a normalized travel. I pick out from all the speakers that I think actually hotels, staying at hotels, will be a bigger spend of the travel spend.
Probably, yes.
We need to plan better. Again, we maybe need to travel less times but we stay longer. You can't replace this meeting, you can't replace actually meeting people. Some people say they will never travel again in business, well, the competitors will travel. You can't really replace that. I think I take away a lot of good from that.
Okay. Hand on your heart, all three of you.
Depends what you're gonna say.
All three of you, this is a question where the answer demands total honesty. Okay?
Okay.
I don't want to go back to how it was before. Agree or not?
I mean, from a sustainability perspective, definitely not.
Ruslan?
Are you prepared for the change?
I'm prepared for the change, yes.
You are?
Yeah, but I need to learn from the past, and we are human being, we still want to travel, we still want to be there. I would like to learn from the past for the future.
Will Pandox go in the front now?
Absolutely.
It will?
I think we sort of plan sort of a sustainable travel. I don't think, I think that's already started pre-pandemic, so we are fast-forwarding the trends that were there before.
Just need to adapt to those.
Now, Liia Nõu, I haven't prepared you for this one.
No.
All people out there are curious. We will of course have a Hotel Market Day next year as well.
Absolutely.
We will sum up all the changes there have been. Will we?
We will try.
Yeah.
I've talked to Mr. Berg and Mr. Ax, who's the sort of brains behind this, and they've done.
Anders Berg and Erik Ax, yes.
exactly.
They're the heroes of this day.
will take all those.
I guess the Hotel Market Day will go on forever.
Forever.
Is that right?
Forever.
Well, time's running. Okay, thank you very much for sharing your views, opinions with us. Robin Rossmann, Ruslan Husry, and Liia Nõu, of course.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Now, there will be a slight change in the program. Nobody knows about it almost, not even Gun. The thing is that, excuse me, you online watchers now, you're online guests, this is about you who are here. Due to a technical problem, you were not able to see the video, right, about Anders Nissen, which we started with when I announced the tribute to Anders Nissen. I understood after because I could see it on my screen, but you couldn't. The suggestion from Gabardin, our production company, is that we just run it once again so you can see it. You can see it once again if you like. Okay? Are you with us?
Yes.
Fine. Thank you.
[video presentation] The first half of 2021 has been really challenging. We lost our cherished leader, Anders Nissen, to the COVID illness. Anders was a very inspiring person. I would say he was kind of a king of the hotel business. His attitude was always can do. If there was a headwind, he would say, "Let's force even more.
Every day, trying to find something that we can do better and try to improve yourself. Have fun, go to the job with a smile in the morning. That leadership are super important.
As a person, Anders was very caring, he was fun, but he was very, very determined. He was bold, very competitive, but yet very people-centric, so everybody felt seen, everybody felt included.
You always can improve yourself, and if you have that appetite, things normally go well.
Okay, that was it. Thank you. I like a conference where you also have a piece of news. Now we are going to deliver a piece of news. We're going to launch something really new, and this is made public for the first time in this very moment. The one who will do it is the handball legend Stefan Lövgren.
Thank you, Jan, and hello, everybody. I'm the only one here today who will not talk about trends or hotel market or interesting things for the hotel owners, but I will talk about Anders Nissen. We all knew Anders, or to be honest, we all were hit by Anders, some of us physically on the shoulder, of course, on his friendly way, but also hit by his enthusiasm, his energy, his business skills, and his passion of handball, and in particular in talents and the next generation of handball players. To honor the memory of Anders, the M9 Foundation has been instituted, and I'm really proud together with Staffan Olsson and the son of Anders, Oscar Nissen, to be in the board of M9 Foundation.
For those of you who don't know handball, and that's okay, M9 is an expression for the playmaker in handball, and Anders was a true playmaker. I would like to express my deepest recognition and gratitude to the anchor donations from Ulla Nissen and Pandox to the M9 Foundation. It will be a privilege for me to set Anders' ideas in force through the foundation, which aims to support, encourage, and develop handball talents, coaches, but also new ideas within business development, which can make the sport, handball, grow. I hope that you will follow the journey of this foundation and through that, the memory of Anders. You can get the contact details, of course, speaking to me or Staffan, during or after this session or having them from some of your Pandox friends.
Normally, I would end now and say thank you, but after getting hit by Anders, he learned to add and always end, "What's next?" I really don't know what's next, but with that, I would like to say thank you for the shortest time on the stage tonight, and that was my time. Thank you very much.
How many of you think that this is a good idea? All of you. How good. Great. Okay, we're approaching the end. We're not really done yet, but the program says that I now have a 25-minute session for personal reflections and summary. No, I'm only joking. I have a couple of minutes for that. I have nothing to tell you that is better than what we've already heard from the speakers. I just want to know, it may be that one or two of the speakers already have left. Leo is, of course, not with us now because he was online. Is Ian still here? Ian Goldin, are you here?
Yeah.
Yeah. Fine. Stand up, please. Where are you? I didn't see you, sorry. There you are. There. Great. Andreas Scriven, are you here?
Yeah, I'll stand up too.
You'll stand up too? What about Chris and Kathryn? You're still here?
Stand up, please.
Okay. Now, please deliver for these people a sitting ovation, okay?
Thanks a lot.
I think also the moderator deserves a big
Please wait a moment. Please wait a moment.
Oh, wait a moment.
Please wait, because I have one person who is more important.
No
Even more important, that is somebody who has been here listening carefully, being kind of the architect behind the Hotel Market Day for many, many years behind Anders Nissen. Always serving with good advice, good input, intelligent comments also to me this time, and I think Bengt Bodin is in the room. There he is. Please, Bengt Bodin. Yes, you may come up on stage because you deserve a second ovation as well. Okay. I don't have a microphone for you, but thank you for everything you've done for supporting me and the Hotel Market Day.
Thank you. Can I say something without a microphone? Very short.
Very short. Okay.
Actually, when we started the Hotel Market Day many years ago.
26 years ago.
Thoughts of Anders. The first one was, like Anders said in Pandox, we need to know the hotel industry and what's influencing the hotel industry. That knowledge is so important. The second thought, now I'm coming to my point, was that knowledge, or at least part of it, we should share with others in our environment.
Exactly.
That was actually the base for the Pandox Hotel Market Day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You have really checked up that this is what we're doing all the time.
I've done that, yeah.
Yeah. Excellent. Thank you.
It has been a privilege. Thank you.
Thank you, Bengt Bodin. Since I'm the head moderator, she's only the sidekick, okay? I decide that it was a fantastic pleasure, a great fun to work with Gunn Lundemo. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Brilliant.
Okay. You can do better than that. Long live wisdom. Woo.
Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Thank you.
There will be some great music at the end, I think.
Yeah.
We're there.
Yeah.
And,
We also did, like, a blooper version.
We just say thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being with us online all the time. See you on the next Hotel Market Day. Thanks a lot.