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[00:00:00] Guido Lips: I believe that it's no longer all the amenities and solely the features we offer. People need to find a belonging. To belong in the hotel.
[00:00:20] Matt Welle: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another Matt Talks Hospitality. And today, I'm speaking to a friend of mine, Guido, but he's also a wonderful hotelier. And I met him a number of years ago. And every time we meet, I was like, we should hang out more because we get so much energy from our conversations. He's today the cofounder, and oh, I need to read the title. He's cofounder and Head of Guest Experience and Culture at The July. The July have hotels in Amsterdam and in London, and they're really blending what you would expect from a hotel with what you would expect from an apartment. And they're figuring out how do you make that work in this environment where you've got people staying longer term and shorter term, and how do you make that culture come to life? And I think that's exactly why I wanna speak to him to figure out, is it formulaic? Can we figure, can we scale this really well? Guido, thank you for joining me today.
[00:01:08] Guido Lips: Well, thank you for meeting me.
[00:01:10] Matt Welle: Did I summarize well what The July is, or do you wanna give a stab and see if you can improve my description of it?
[00:01:16] Guido Lips: No. I was actually wondering what you thought of The July because we can think what we are, but it's more important what you think we are. I just wanna add that The July is an aparthotel, but not only for the leisure traveler, but also for the business traveler, for families, for the Gen Z, for the solo traveler, and with that, it comes to a very beautiful potpourri of different guests.
[00:01:42] Matt Welle: And do you naturally attract a variety of guests just from what they see on the website, or do you have to put a lot of effort to make a very diverse group of guests come into the hotel?
[00:01:52] Guido Lips: Well, I think that's the brand itself. It attracts, we're focusing also on the local feeling, the local touch. We think that's very important. We all wanna have that local experience. Yeah. And local comes also with an apartment. So, we blend in the luxury of hotel services with the apartments that we have in studios, one bedrooms and two bedrooms. And attracting is, of course, we need to do our marketing very well. About 50% is long-term business in certain months. And with that comes that we have to also cater to the needs of those specific guests.
[00:02:36] Matt Welle: Yeah. Yeah. Because what does a business guest need that a leisure guest doesn't want? Or what are the differences between them and the way that you serve them?
[00:02:45] Guido Lips: For me, hospitality is always looking at a specific person. So, you know, I'm always trying to avoid any biases. But the corporate business traveler wants, and actually, most of them now are bleisure. We see lots…
[00:02:58] Matt Welle: Bleisure?
[00:02:59] Guido Lips: Yeah. Bleisure.
[00:03:00] Matt Welle: That’s an awful term, but it's the term.
[00:03:02] Guido Lips: Yeah. It is. But probably also what you’d do if you go to a city that you have never been.
[00:03:06] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:03:07] Guido Lips: I don't know.
[00:03:08] Matt Welle: Yeah. In a house, when you come for the weekend.
[00:03:09] Guido Lips: Yeah. You come for the weekend, and you know, you add your business state to it. But with that comes a larger space, the WiFi needs to be sublime.
[00:03:19] Matt Welle: Yeah. Not free, but actually good.
[00:03:22] Guido Lips: Good.
[00:03:23] Matt Welle: I was in a hotel last week, and I had to pay for my WiFi. And I thought that is, how, in this year, do I still have to pay for it?
[00:03:28] Guido Lips: And did you have to pick up a phone and dial in?
[00:03:31] Matt Welle: No. Luckily, that, like, that sound, like, I think a lot of the younger generation doesn't remember that sound. They thought it was awful.
[00:03:37] Guido Lips: It's not only that. It's also about flexibility in cancellations and extending stays. We also offer workspaces in the hotels. So, our hotels, basically, are not only rooms and just a bar. It's a full-service product with event spaces, work co-workspaces, beautiful designs, spas, a gym, very important for a business traveler. The companies they work for come with specific restrictions or specifications they ask for, and it's safety, Internet safety, and then also, of course, the regular fire regulations, but it's a little different. Yeah.
[00:04:19] Matt Welle: Because you refer to, you said the hotel, so does the word hotel stretch far enough for the concept that you're doing?
[00:04:28] Guido Lips: We have debated long about that. What is an aparthotel? What is an apartment hotel? And in different countries, it has different meanings. I believe now we are okay with calling it apartment hotels because, basically, every room we have has the services of an apartment, a full kitchen with a full hub, and a dishwasher, and an oven, and a microwave. So, you can make use of it as an apartment, but it has the services of a hotel. So, it's either way you wanna live. We've had people staying with us for one and a half years.
[00:05:02] Matt Welle: Really?
[00:05:03] Guido Lips: Yeah. And when they left, they were best friends with our front of staff or operations staff. And some people just stay for two nights. So, then the usage is different.
[00:05:12] Matt Welle: That’s so nice. Yeah. Do you charge differently? If someone stays a year and a half, do you charge per night, or do you have a monthly fee for rental? Or how do you think about pricing up a stay like that?
[00:05:21] Guido Lips: Is this the moment we talk about AI or not?
[00:05:23] Matt Welle: Yes. Exactly.
[00:05:24] Guido Lips: So. Yeah. Yeah. No. Of course. We, of course, have different contract rates for different for longer stays. That makes sense. That's normal. But still, it's always based on a nightly rate. That's also easier for the extension of a nightly rate. And it's not so common that people stay for one and a half years because we are not a regular long-stay apartment, and because we offer those hotel services. But especially for a certain kind of executive group, it can be very, very beneficial to offer the longer stays. And then we indeed have long stay rates, and then AI comes in. However, and that's the challenge, we have so many beautiful systems that predict rates, that look at the market. But for long stay, that's still a challenge.
[00:06:21] Matt Welle: Yeah. Correct.
[00:06:23] Guido Lips: Yeah. And especially the apartment sector.
[00:06:24] Matt Welle: There’s still much demand and movement. So, if the algorithm can't consume huge data, it's not that interesting. So, if you sell an apartment for a long stay, that's one cell that then occupies that apartment. So, then you'd have to have lots of apartments for an algorithm to be able to pick up on it. So, it is a genuine challenge to build a great revenue management solution for it, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't solve for it, but it's just hard.
[00:06:48] Guido Lips: No. And I think if you look at the apartments, the hotel apartment industry, that's actually thriving. There's more and more. There's much in the beginning. In Amsterdam, twelve years ago, we started ID Aparthotel, and we were Amsterdam's first apartment hotel. Now, we have many.
[00:07:06] Matt Welle: I remember it. I remember sitting in that boardroom with you in Sloterdijk. You chose someone else, and I've forgiven you for that at that time, but you did come back.
[00:07:15] Guido Lips: I did come back. I was just after two. We used two other PMS systems.
[00:07:20] Matt Welle: Everyone makes mistakes.
[00:07:21] Guido Lips: Yes. We learn by doing.
[00:07:23] Matt Welle: But it was very different from what The July is today. So, how did you go from that concept to what The July is today? Design experience, like, it does feel like a complete departure.
[00:07:34] Guido Lips: In a way, it is. In a way, it isn't. So, we still have that hotel. It's a three North Star. The beauty is that we are on the verge of renovating and remodeling the rooms. We're making big, nice plans by our design team, but in the last two years, we actually grew from an 8.7 to 8.9, so this is also very, it's giving us a beautiful insight.
[00:07:58] Matt Welle: That's like a ranking on TripAdvisor.
[00:08:01] Guido Lips: Ranking on our OTAs.
[00:08:03] Matt Welle: Right.
[00:08:04] Guido Lips: Yeah. And it gives an insight that it's not solely about product, and it's more and more about service, about belonging, about feeling. Coming back to your question, we started with this hotel, the first apartment hotel, but then we had the offer to go to another beautiful location in Amsterdam South, Stadionplein, and we wanted to create a more upscale hotel apartment. And with that, we hired a beautiful design company, MBDS. And we designed even bigger spaces, but more luxurious spaces, and, yeah, as a difference to what we already built. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:48] Matt Welle: Yeah. So, I had to read out your title because it's not a typical title. Your title is head of guest experience and culture.
[00:08:55] Guido Lips: Yeah.
[00:08:56] Matt Welle: Which to me is like, right. So, that's on the HR side, which is, meaning, I build culture, and I hire people, and on the other side, it's the guests. Are they two completely different fields that you have to somehow combine into one role, or how do you feel about that?
[00:09:09] Guido Lips: Maybe the job description should actually be the other way around.
[00:09:13] Matt Welle: So, culture first. Guests second.
[00:09:15] Guido Lips: As culture first, guest experience second. I really believe that a company cannot thrive without a very, very, very good company culture. Creating a culture is not a given fact. It's done by moments, it's not creating, not by writing down values and morals and beliefs, and this is what we're gonna be. No. It's creating moments. It's creating us moments. I always say it's putting on a coat to our employees, to our team, that you also do in hospitality. And if you have a healthy company culture, only then you can provide a good or excellent guest experience. Because guests nowadays are different from back in the 80s, in the 90s, where they really were going wild about, oh, this has this. Remember when we had the 32-inch televisions? We were like, oh my goodness, this is a flex.
[00:10:17] Matt Welle: We’re gonna pay for this. Like, the average rate's gonna go up.
[00:10:20] Guido Lips: Well, at that point, you also had to pay for certain movies.
[00:10:22] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:10:23] Guido Lips: Well, nowadays, we have streaming and casting, so you can do everything for free. The amenities that hotels used to have, we now have at home. So, I believe that it's no longer all the amenities and solely the features we offer. People need to find a belonging. To belong in the hotel. And that is really essential, and that comes from people, and that comes from culture.
[00:10:49] Matt Welle: Love that. So, if we start with culture, because the guest experience will follow. So, if you start with culture, and it isn't from a guidebook that you write that you then throw out into the world. When you open, for example, The July, how did you approach culture so that you started it afresh? After you open a brand new hotel, you get a chance to start afresh. But how did you approach that then?
[00:11:11] Guido Lips: I think a very good example is our new hotel in London, The July Victoria. It was very exciting to open up a hotel abroad, but will you also take your culture into the tunnel with it by train and then put it in that hotel in London? Last weekend, a very good friend of mine was there, and he said, Guido, this is just like in Amsterdam. This is you. This is The July. And how we do it is we hire certain personalities. Of course, we have a skill set.
[00:11:44] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:11:45] Guido Lips: Of course. We will never hire anybody with no knowledge about AI if we look for the specific job role. But more and more, it's about personalities, about fitting the team. That's the first because, you know, we can learn skills. Secondly, it's about taking them on board in our hotel. So, the entire team of London, we took them by train, 30 people, into our hotels here in Amsterdam. We started with a nice boat tour and a bitter roller.
[00:12:17] Matt Welle: Great. And it’s the only Dutch that we dare to serve to international people.
[00:12:21] Guido Lips: Yeah. Yeah. It's the Dutch bitterball. I saw it on the Laker 100, and all the Michelin star chefs did. What's Dutch bitterball? Yeah. We have to believe it. But with that, we give them an experience of how we do it in our hotels here, and then we have our onboarding training. And it's not a training. It's giving them experience, how we started it, how we do our things in Amsterdam, but how we can do it in London. And one of the things of our culture is that we provide a framework where we actually try to use examples instead of saying you cannot do or you may only do because scripting does not work. It kills personality. And we need personality. I always say, I'm not the one being screamed at in front of us. And then the head office says, oh, you can give 15% on the next day, but the guest doesn't wanna stay. So, that culture is creating a lot of us moments, weekly, monthly. And by that, the jacket becomes bigger and bigger, and then you create a culture. And the culture is also sometimes saying, hey, this is what we accept, and this is…
[00:13:40] Matt Welle: Be very clear.
[00:13:41] Guido Lips: Be very clear. It's about giving the right, it's about giving subtle guidelines, also by leading by example, I think. And it's not solely about accepting that everything is okay. It's okay to guide a little bit because that also gives clarity.
[00:14:00] Matt Welle: Have you had employees where you felt, right, in the interview, they were great, and then they landed, then you're like, right, these people just don't match with our culture. And can you turn them around, or is it like, right, there's an exit, and you need to find it?
[00:14:15] Guido Lips: So, there's two options to answer this. Yes, of course. Everybody that we hire is a perfect fit. No.
[00:14:22] Matt Welle: That's just not how it works.
[00:14:23] Guido Lips: It’s not how it works. I always say, but this is not only in my hotels. It's probably about my life. It's about accepting is a very, very important good in life. Accepting. You cannot control everything, so accept and go, you know, go further. Of course, there have been people that, yeah, didn't meet up, but you can always know that up front. And it can also, you know, sometimes it's also sad for a person to solve some personal issues, a cure, and they don't have influence on.
[00:14:54] Matt Welle: Yeah. Yeah. Culture is hard. There isn't an easy guidebook that just tells you what to do, but instinctively, you, as a leader, I guess, you just follow what you think is the right thing. And at Mews, I love our culture, and I've been so worried about scaling internationally. And does it last? But somehow it does because I show up. I think you show up in the same way. But I'm sure you worry about this more than anything.
[00:15:22] Guido Lips: Yes. But culture is not a fixed good. It changes, and you have to change with it. Yeah. You know, if I would push my culture that I had ten years ago, I wouldn't be thriving as now, you know, there's a new group. There's a Gen Z, there's millennials, and they need a different culture. So, we need to listen. We need to carefully listen to what they need, what we need, and together, you create basically, you evolve in your culture.
[00:15:56] Matt Welle: Yeah. Do you have an example of a time when someone did something in one of your hotels, and you're, like, nailed it? Like, that's our culture. That's so unique, but it works for us.
[00:16:07] Guido Lips: Yeah. Let me go back to a couple of years ago. So, at the ID Aparthotel, we have guests that stay there for a longer time, and they need medical care. They come from the Caribbean, and they are being treated in the FU center here in Amsterdam. And those stays come with extra care. It's different. And the connection our team, you know, gets with those guests is very intense. And at a certain point, you see that they need very special care by taking them to the hospital instantly. And I remember that one of our front office host, they took the car and just drove them themselves because they needed immediate care. They didn't wanna wait for an ambulance, and they bought extra blankets because it's cold in the Netherlands, you know, they needed some care. They offered, they created moments of games in the afternoon for them to gather in a safe space, a safe distance, in order to create a more community feeling because they were not there on a voluntary basis, so yeah. With that, you can see a lot of examples that you can really step outside that zone of just doing what you need to do.
[00:17:32] Matt Welle: So, if you get the culture rights and, like, what you were saying is they will make sure that they take care of the guests, especially today when, you know, it's not about the facilities. It's actually about the experience. So, how do you think about the digital experience? I know that you think a lot about the technology that you deploy across your hotels. How do you embrace the digital guest experience to ensure that they have the best, most seamless, engaging experience?
[00:17:57] Guido Lips: Seamless. Yeah. There's a lot of new technology coming at us. So, I think firstly, you really have to have your journey clear. What and when do you want to use technology, and what do you wanna use it for? Because if it's intruding into somebody's journey, then it's not good. Especially when tech should work for you, and you shouldn't be pushed, tech shouldn't be pushed by you or the hotel because we need to do it. I'm a bit advocate for AI. I believe it enables human potential. And what you see and what we saw the last few years is now, I think, we are all getting used to it, but, especially, people have been in the history a little bit longer, try to still focus that service is only personal and face-to-face, which, in my understanding, is not. It should be end-to-end. Not everybody wants to use AI or wants to use tech. It should be integrated into your journey so that, in one way, it's seamless. You don't know it's there, but if you wanna use it, for instance, book your parking or special packages through Bookboost or whatever. It should be there.
[00:19:25] Matt Welle: Where have you deployed AI today?
[00:19:28] Guido Lips: Oh, in our pricing, revenue systems, we have beautiful Mews integration, of course, with the online check-in tool. We use Bookboost, and Bookboost is our CRM program as well as our web app based application where we, on every specific moment of the guest journey, we can personalize the offering or the message. And this is also where…
[00:19:55] Matt Welle: And the tone of voice as well then.
[00:19:58] Guido Lips: The tone of voice. Because every, see, this is the thing. Everybody is unique, and this is also the challenge of AI because we should, you know, when we talk about profiling, we tend to want to know everything about our future guests, but when is it gonna be too much? You know? It's very scary. A friend of mine…
[00:20:17] Matt Welle: When it’s freaky, like, how do you know this fact about me?
[00:20:19] Guido Lips: Oh yeah. You know, a friend of mine, a very, very intelligent friend, once got a little gay flag in his room, in his hotel room.
[00:20:27] Matt Welle: Oh God.
[00:20:28] Guido Lips: Does it ring a bell? But, you know, when do you push it too far? It's a very delicate question.
[00:20:37] Matt Welle: Where do you already see AI into the guest journey, the digital guest journey?
[00:20:41] Guido Lips: Now, well, basically, now the first part, the online check-in, the arrival, if the guest has already checked in, you know, we have more time to welcome a guest. I mean, that's also something we're doing.
[00:20:54] Matt Welle: Because what do you want that welcome experience to be like? They walk through the door. And I'm imagining you've got this mapped out. You've got a plan for that first ten minutes. And and
[00:21:02] Guido Lips: And let me, I'm not talking in my hotels. We don't talk about standards. We talk about guest promises. So, it's not when you walk through the door. It's before you walk through the door. It's already getting that email. Hey, your room is ready, AI. So, we think of you. You know that we're thinking of you. If a room is ready about, you know, at 11:00 in the morning, let them know, hey, you're welcome. We think of you. By the way, there's a road construction, and you're by car. We know that because we ask that. This is the route to go to. Then they arrive at the hotel. What did they see? Especially now, we talk about people or guests that come for the first time, they are always afraid if they booked the right hotel. Not always, but a lot of people are. And do I belong there? So, walking them into the doors, what do I smell? What do I feel? What do I hear? And those senses are on. So, what we want to do is give them not an overload of information in the beginning, but a soft landing, we always call it, a mindful check-in. So, we don't set rules on what to say, that you have to say, sir or madam. No. Look at the person in front of you. What do they need? A person wants to go to the room immediately. You will find out, but don't start talking about: are you checking in? Can I have your passport? Can I have your credit cards? And that credit card is also a thing because, you know, when we have our virtual credit cards or Apple Pay, that's already done. It's already been taken care of. It's secure. It's a secure booking.
[00:22:44] Matt Welle: Like, the thing I always worry about when we remove a lot of the admin through technology, and then people are like, oh, great, so you dehumanize hospitality. I'm like, no, no, no. That's not what we've done. We've removed the worst part of check-in. But it's like, what do you as a hotelier now do with that time? Do you just get the guest out of your face faster? Or do you actually make that a moment? And how do you teach creating a moment with a customer? How do you have a real conversation? And I don't think a lot of hoteliers understand that.
[00:23:13] Guido Lips: No. And an interesting part is, do I really know, in my age, how to have a real conversation with a Gen Z? So once again, it's not scripting. It's about coming together. It's about learning by examples, learning by best practices, and saying, hey, listen, we have a lot of different guests. How can we connect? What are the best practices from this hotel? And it can be cultural. Well, there are many things on the way to how we connect. But also, this mistake is that there's only one way to connect now.
[00:23:51] Matt Welle: Yeah. Just see the person. Yeah.
[00:23:52] Guido Lips: Yeah. See the person if they're family, if they have kids. The kids are important. The parents need some time off.
[00:23:59] Matt Welle: It’s your bridge. Yeah.
[00:24:01] Guido Lips: Yeah. It's the same when you have a dog.
[00:24:03] Matt Welle: I got welcomed in one of our hotels in Paris the other day, and they said, the first thing they said after I introduced myself, otherwise, it would be really freaky, but they said, how is Beyonce? And I was like, how did you know? And, like, because Beyonce is my dog, first of all. So, it's not like I know the real Beyonce, but, like, it instantly created a connection.
[00:24:21] Guido Lips: No? I mean, you're pretty famous now, right? All those who watch you.
[00:24:24] Matt Welle: I don't know her yet. I'm still working on that. Yeah.
[00:24:27] Guido Lips: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:28] Matt Welle: No. But, like, it instantly created a conversation. It's like, oh my God. How did you know about my dog? And then we just got talking about my dog. And that's clearly the way to my heart. But it's how do you teach that to hoteliers to use that information in a really clever and really smart way to start having that conversation.
[00:24:46] Guido Lips: Well, there's a PMS system that has AI in the profiling.
[00:24:50] Matt Welle: I wonder which one.
[00:24:51] Guido Lips: Yeah. You wonder which one. But it really makes sense. It's information from a previous booking or from other sources, and we need to, so preparing stays is still very important. So, put some more time into that, preparing what guests are coming. I always say, as an example, how many bags does a person have? If a person has one bag, just a weekend bag, they're not gonna stay for two weeks. So, okay, person X is also checking in. No. You're not that. You can make a game of it. What's very important is to lose the bias. It's not what we think a person needs. We need to ask these open questions. Give them a glass of water if you see, you know, instead of asking. It doesn't matter if they take it than that.
[00:25:38] Matt Welle: That is host-like, the first thing you did when you walked in here, I said, do you want a glass of cold water? Cold water, I specifically said, you know, and it's in my mind, I'm just trying to figure out what the experience was because you were warm. Clearly, you've been biking. But that's just a natural thing that I've learned over the years. Like, what? And there's an aspect of learning, and there's an aspect of knowing. And how do we teach this new generation of hoteliers to anticipate without crossing kind of a boundary?
[00:26:07] Guido Lips: Yeah. Crossing boundaries is always hard. But I think the first thing is especially new guests, you know, don't overpower them. Just start a regular conversation like you would in a bar. You know, welcome them as a friend. For London Victoria, we were just awarded some beautiful awards by Time Out, and they nailed it. As they say, like, the staff is unfussy, but still very connecting, without pushing too much. And that's also the hiring again. It's also the sort of people you look for. That have the ability, and that is what tech can never replace. They have the ability to connect with other humans.
[00:26:57] Matt Welle: Yeah. And it's hard to find those people when we are just in a rush to fill a role, right? Because we do have a shortage of people in our industry. Do you sometimes leave a job open longer just to find the right person, or, like, how do you go about the shortages of staffing in our industry?
[00:27:13] Guido Lips: We just use a robot now. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I think we're very lucky that we have people staying with us for a little while, you know, we are a great place to work. The rate is really high. So, it all has to do with this nice culture. And so, we don't have those issues yet. Of course, there are some, like chefs. I know that’s always a challenge. There's no one answer to that. There's also a…
[00:27:42] Matt Welle: It’s a hard decision as an entrepreneur because you’ve got to keep the hotel running whilst you're also trying to fill the perfect team, but there's also a staffing shortage in our industry. So, it is a very difficult thing to do.
[00:27:52] Guido Lips: Also, the balance. I mean, but in London, from the beginning, we only had two people leaving the team.
[00:27:58] Matt Welle: Because of the great culture.
[00:28:00] Guido Lips: Yeah. I believe so. I wanna believe so. Well, actually, their response was 96% on that great place to work.
[00:28:08] Matt Welle: Amazing.
[00:28:09] Guido Lips: Yeah. It's amazing, especially when opening a hotel, you know, what challenges there are. Let the cure, so.
[00:28:16] Matt Welle: Guido, if you look forward to next year, the year after, any exciting plans for The July as a brand or for you as a technologist? Like, what's the thing that gets you excited?
[00:28:27] Guido Lips: In August, I think we get the keys for a Dublin property.
[00:28:31] Matt Welle: Nice.
[00:28:32] Guido Lips: Yeah. We just had the rooftop party near Temple Bar in the center.
[00:28:37] Matt Welle: Great. Dublin needs more hotels.
[00:28:39] Guido Lips: And once again, it's a beautiful The July property with 114 studios, one beds. Also, the design is, it’s very good to mention we have an amazing design team, and what we do, we also build hotels not only for our guests, but also for our communities. So, the local neighborhood is very important because we believe that a good ESG strategy is also being there for your neighbors, for your community, that you didn't…
[00:29:10] Matt Welle: But what I love is when we had dinner on the terrace here in Amsterdam. There was a terrace by the water, and there was a local community swimming whilst we had a glass of wine outside. And it really felt like the building was part of the community there, much more than any other brand of hotel that I would normally sit at.
[00:29:26] Guido Lips: Well, the example there is even that I always say that's, because when you walk in, the atrium is, like, three stories high. It's the most expensive air in Amsterdam because we could've have created three floors of rooms, right? We designed the buildings, because from scratch to open up the building towards the neighborhood. So, last November, we had our neighborhood party. So, then every year, we have a party from 5 to 11 for free fruit and drinks for our neighborhood friends.
[00:29:57] Matt Welle: Nice.
[00:29:58] Guido Lips: We offer every last Sunday of the month, we have a beer tasting party with salsa evenings.
[00:30:06] Matt Welle: That's great.
[00:30:07] Guido Lips: We have a lot of poetry evenings.
[00:30:09] Matt Welle: So, going back to Dublin.
[00:30:10] Guido Lips: Dublin is also also created for that location, and that is, by the way, there's a beautiful gay bar in front of our hotel with we even have a a rainbow crossing. And then we are now designing our new hotel in Amsterdam, Zuidas, that will get 244 apartments.
[00:30:31] Matt Welle: Massive.
[00:30:32] Guido Lips: The former Holiday Inn. So, once again, ESG is very important, so we're gonna make it a green building, we call it. We are opening in Q2 ‘27, our Lisbon Bayonessa.
[00:30:45] Matt Welle: We're gonna be Lazydino.
[00:30:46] Guido Lips: And that's actually really cool because now we have done the excavation and the digging, and the facade of the palace is actually floating. It's actually on the iron structure in order to create the structure underneath. And we have hopefully many more beautiful new properties coming with our partner, Aware.
[00:31:13] Matt Welle: Amazing. I am excited to watch you thrive in your career, but also watch these hotels.
[00:31:18] Guido Lips: There’s so much more I wanna tell, and so much more that, but…
[00:31:20] Matt Welle: But that's a good thing. That's a good thing. I keep going. Every week, I do one of these episodes. So, I'm hoping that in a year's time, you come back and we actually talk through some of the really exciting new openings that you've got going on. And they are beautiful hotels. Like, when you showed me around, and, like, I'm never gonna stay in a hotel in Amsterdam, but I'm so glad that you opened London because I do go to London a lot. So, I'm, like, very excited to try it out and I'll let you know afterwards if the culture hits it tomorrow.
[00:31:43] Guido Lips: I know you're a very hard mystery traveler.
[00:31:45] Matt Welle: Tough critic.
[00:31:46] Guido Lips: Yeah. You're a tough one. But be honest.
[00:31:48] Matt Welle: I'll be nice.
[00:31:49] Guido Lips: Be honest, because we learn by reviews. We learn, you know, that's always so important to us.
[00:31:55] Matt Welle: Thank you so much for coming.
[00:31:56] Guido Lips: Thank you, my friend.
