As a special preview for Insider readers, we present two excerpts from our upcoming podcast conversation starring international hotel guru Bashar Wali. Listen out for the full audio which is due to go live in the next few weeks – we promise you won’t want to miss it!
When Bashar Wali speaks, the hospitality world tends to sit up and listen. Whether it’s his six-figure LinkedIn following, the avid consumers of his TED Talks, or the rapt crowds for his appearances at conferences and other industry gatherings, this is a man with an audience.
He also puts his money where his mouth is, as Founder and CEO of a clutch of businesses that he runs from his adopted home of Portland, USA. These include hotel management company Practice Hospitality and lifestyle hotel brand, Another.
Thanks to the matchmaking skills of longtime Insider favorite Stanislas Helou, we managed to secure a precious hour of Bashar’s time to record an episode of The Insider Podcast. You’ll be able to hear that episode in full shortly; but as an appetizer, we’ve gathered a couple of snippets of conversation and turned them into a special bonus Leadership Insights feature for this issue.
Enjoy!
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Martin Green (MG) Insider Podcast host: You mentioned the word tribe, which intrigues me, because I know that the creation – or the finding – of a tribe has been a big part of the whole lifestyle hotel development. Is that something you do in relation to the hotels that you’re involved with? Can those tribes be found?
Bashar Wali (BW): So, if you combine everything I said, this idea of longing for belonging, this idea that we all want to be together. And I like to use this word that people don’t like: cult. Cult has negative connotations about it, but ‘cult’ is a part of ‘culture’. Apple is a cult. If Apple tomorrow made toilet paper and sold it for 25 pounds a roll, you would buy it because you subscribe to the cult. Now the quality better be there and there better be a reason for it to be worth that much, but (as an Apple cult member) you’re blindly buying it day one without even knowing a thing about it and with zero advertising.
A lot of these brands that we love and admire are cults in their own right; and they have cult leaders, like it or not. I mean, every brand we generally love tends to have a human at the front; it’s not some big dark corporate thing even in the hotel world, right? Whether it’s André Balazs with Chiltern Firehouse, whether it’s Ian Schrager, whether it’s Bill Kimpton, Bill Marriott, on and on.
I think if there became a checklist for how to do this, it becomes diluted and not worth it. There’s not a checklist for it. It’s 10,000 things you do that create that environment, which in turn creates this sort of cult following for certain brands. Some brands are brilliant at it, and some brands are not.
Now the question is, how do you create a cult? How do you create a tribe? How you create culture? We humans, obviously, our very first goal – very, very, first goal – no matter what anyone tells you, is to survive. Safety is hugely important to us. So, when you walk through my doors, I make you feel like you belong. You’re home now and you’re safe, literally and figuratively safe. I think your guard is down, your senses are heightened and all of a sudden the lighting is better, and the scent is better, and the food is better. And that all comes from the people, not from the things.
So, if there was ever a list on how to create a tribe or a cult then it’s dead; it’s over. I don’t want to be in it! I really think it’s practicing what you preach and creating environments that are conducive to this and then hoping for the best – there is no 100% guaranteed formula for success.
MG: You stay in hotels across the world, but you have quite an interesting approach to this. Can you tell us about that and why you do it?
BW: I think neurotic, rather than interesting! So I don’t know when it began, probably 15 plus years ago. I have FOMO, a major fear of missing out. And I wanna try everything. I wanna see everything. So I decided that whenever I travel now, I have a one night stand relationship with hotels. If I’m in London three nights, I move three times, never the same hotel twice. So I pack and unpack every time in a city like London… and by the way, it is easy to move. I’m just walking from one block to the other. I do this across the globe; and I’ve kept track in Manhattan in New York. That’s the only place I decided to keep track, because I go there a lot and it’s a big city. I’ve stayed in 251 different hotels in Manhattan! And I will stay at the Aman, you know, at the very top. And I will stay at a hostel and share a room with sketchy people doing sketchy things in the middle of the night.
Look, I’m not gonna lie, it’s a little bit of street cred, social currency, bragging rights, right? I mean, imagine I walk in a room and I’ll say, I know hotels, try me. Pick a hotel, the first hotel that comes to mind, there’s a very high likelihood I’ve stayed in it. Ice Hotel in northern Sweden? Sure, I’ve stayed in it. The Faralda Hotel in Amsterdam, three rooms inside a crane? Yes, I’ve stayed that too. Burj Al Arab, blah blah blah. So 251 in Manhattan across the spectrum.
Initially it was education. I wanted to learn. And I’ve always said, the only thing I know is that I know nothing. It’s I think Aristotle or one of those smarter than I people’s quotes. But people think they know everything about their craft, and we don’t. It changes every day. So I said the only way to learn, again no offense to universities, is the hard knock school of life. On the road, pay the dues, check-in, check-out, don’t sleep well, the toilet doesn’t work, the elevator’s loud. And it’s interesting; I tour a lot of hotels, but touring a hotel is different than staying in a hotel, even if you tour thoroughly and exhaustively, because back to this idea, we are most vulnerable in our sleep. So our senses are heightened. So all of a sudden now I do hear the loud elevator, and I do hear the banging pipes and the noisy neighbors, etc. It’s just a different, intimate experience.
So I decided that the only way for me to learn and remain current is to do this thing. And then it became my thing. And people would call me out if I don’t move hotels. I’m so sorry that I’m staying at the Aman for a second night. Forgive me!
And I learn more from the smaller, scrappy hoteliers and hotels than I do from the fancy ones. It doesn’t matter how much it is or what it is or how many stars it is, none of that matters. People say, well, what do you remember out of 251 hotels in Manhattan? I stayed at the Baccarat Hotel. Ask me what kind of flooring material is in the bathroom. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. All I can tell you is I’m sure it was lovely and nice; I’m sure the art was lovely, a nice crystal whatever. But I don’t take any of that home with me.
I only remember when someone goes out of their way and genuinely gives a shit. The bar is that low! Somebody who actually remembers my name, somebody who actually knows what I asked him earlier in the morning and has it for me in the room without me asking him for it, etc. etc.
So it really is all about – and I’m going to get scientific and philosophical on you again – Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow is the scientist who says we humans have basic physiological needs at the bottom of this pyramid: shelter, water, air, food, etc. etc. And you go up to the very top of the pyramid and you get to self-actualization and above that transcendence.
So, if you think about the business we’re in as hoteliers. We’re in the shelter business. We are at the very bottom of the pyramid. One of the very basic human needs is shelter. And yes, we provide that. But if that’s the only business we’re in, we stay at the bottom. I want to be in the transcendence business. And to me, transcendence is a making you feel like you’ve arrived, you belong. You’ve found your tribe. And you are the only thing that matters.
When you’re standing in front of me in a hotel, engaging with me in any capacity whatsoever, I wanna fake it enough and pretend to make you believe. I’m not saying you have to love everyone and truly believe it. You don’t have to. But convince me that I am the singular most important thing in your day at this very moment.
Instead, what do we do? We’re answering the phone. We’re talking to someone else. You’re like a bot. You are literally an interruption in our day.
If we manage to do that, that’s transcendence, and that’s what builds loyalty. Not the art, not the bed, none of that stuff.
Full podcast conversation coming soon…
- Click here to connect with Bashar Wali via LinkedIn
Join the conversation!
Catch up with all currently available Insider Podcast episodes at these links:
Episode 1: Louise Lisztman
Episode 2: Sharòn Cohen Moore
Episode 3: Alex Slors
Episode 4: Simone Gibertoni
Photo credits
Bashar Wali: Linda Asian Photography
Faralda Hotel: Secret Places (https://www.secretplaces.com/)
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