The Future of Casual Living with Asli Kutlucan (TFE Hotels)

00:03
Kristian Lupinski
Welcome back to Pillow Talk Sessions. I'm Kristian Lupinski, joined as always by my co host Jessica Gillingham.

00:08
Jessica Gillingham
Thanks Kristian. And today we're joined by Asli Kutlucan, who's CEO Europe at TFE Hotels. Her global career spans extended stay, co living and hospitality innovation. This has given her a deep understanding of how hotels and residential living are converging.

00:29
Kristian Lupinski
We'll be exploring TFE's casual living strategy, the evolution of the Adina and Moment brands and how adaptive reuse, technology and shifting guests expectations are shaping the next generation of flexible service driven living.

00:43
Jessica Gillingham
Asli, thank you so much for joining us on the Pillow Talk Sessions podcast. I'm really looking forward to sort of delving deeper with you on some of the things that you've got to say about hospitality and some of the really cool things that you're doing and as well. So before we sort of get into the conversation, really love it, if you could introduce both yourself and TFE Hotels to our audience, please.

01:08
Asli Kutlucan
Absolutely. And thank you Jessica and Kristian as I'm very delighted to be joining to your podcast. I did listen quite a few of your episodes over the years and it's just very nice and very thought intriguing. So yeah, I'm Asli and geez, I stopped started my hospitality career early 1990s and my family hotel. So it's hospitality and hotel has been in my blood and that's what I've been doing since that day. My career has taken me across from Turkey to America to uk, Africa, Europe, all around the world which I'm very grateful. My career has spanned and started of course with resort hotels and moved into luxury country warehouse hotels segment and followed by before Europe can spell extended stay.

02:02
Asli Kutlucan
I joined very early days of Frasers Hospitality on an extended stay and then since then I just sort of did bit of both of everything and in my previous role I grow a company both from an extended stay and full service perspective across Europe. And yes, now I've been part of the TFE family as Europe CEO since January 24and what we are predominantly focusing here in Europe is that sort of the living sector, if I may call it so the Adina brand family as well as the Moment brand are our key focus here in Europe casual living segment.

02:48
Asli Kutlucan
However in Australia where we come from, apart from these casual living brands such as the Adina's, we have many other brands that are a bit more tailored towards the transient hotels, luxury heritage hotels and today in Europe we're proud to say we have 22 hotels currently across four countries. And looking forward to growing this to many more hotels in the coming years both with our Adina as well as our Moment Brand families.

03:23
Jessica Gillingham
Oh brilliant Asli. And firstly you've got like it's such a, a really deep experience in hospitality everything from the hotels to the extended stay and now moving into living. And we'll talk a little bit later of what you're doing with the Moment Brand as well, which is really is very unique. But firstly, you know your TFE is an Australian company that is also now in Europe and of course across Asia as well. And, and but firstly you talked a little bit there about the casual living and you know, what is casual living and hotel living like what is it that you're doing there from the, with the A by Adina Brand.

04:06
Asli Kutlucan
Sure. I mean casual living is the sort of the terminology we use internally for everything we have in our hotel Brand family let's call their hotel at the end of the day because you can stay there for one night on all of. However, of course these are hotels with additional services especially within the room with additional amenities where you almost feels like home like comfort in a hotel like reliability. Right. So that's sort of what we are providing in our Adina Brand family. A by Adina especially it's our sort of the newest brand in the Adina Brand family which is our sort of relaxed luxury where again where you find very high end amenities within the hotel and the rooms.

04:57
Asli Kutlucan
But you know, you can choose to be there one or two nights alone or with your family or you can choose that's your pied a terre every time you come to that city, Monday to Friday because you're leading a company but living on the countryside or you're relocating a location where you will feel comfortable enough to live there for extended period of time whilst you have the homelike amenities but the hotel's great service. So that's sort of in a nutshell what I can describe them to be. The segmentation.

05:31
Kristian Lupinski
Super interesting. I think that's a good segue into. Our first topic that we're discussing today is this idea of hotelization of residential real estate. You know, your career as you mentioned has extended, you know spanned across extended stay co living service apartments. You know, how do you see this hotelization of residential space is you know, reshaping, you know, the guest expectation but also the operational models, you know, especially over the next decade.

05:58
Asli Kutlucan
That's a great question. Before I elude perhaps how I see it's developing if I may allude to what happened in the last decade and what is sort of dictating the future of that blurring lines between residential and hotels and everything in between. You know, most of our youth when went to university, we all end up sharing some very questionable accommodation in a shared houses, in Victorian houses or, you know, 10 other people. And for us that was what we learned. Student accommodation in certain universities of course had their dormitories, but that was it pretty much. Now over the last 10, 15 years, what we have seen is the immense growth on branded student accommodation. So every country you go these days is literally this very fancy sort of branded student livings, 12 or 15 square meters.

07:00
Asli Kutlucan
Some has their own kitchen, some has their share. But what happened is that this has affected that new generation coming into the workforce to first of all get used to having hotel like services, if I may say. Right. So they sort of came out from their parents house where most of them being very well looked after and then go straight into this accommodation type. Whilst this is happening, of course it comes Airbnb which completely sort of changed the mindset of the consumers that there are so many different alternative accommodations. And then on the back of it then we start having this co living. So what happened is that we have a whole new generation already in their mid-30s that started their life after their home to be on a branded student accommodation.

07:55
Asli Kutlucan
Followed by some Airbnb on their travels down, followed by on their first role in an internship in a different city that some form of a co living. Right, so this is where for the whole mindset actually start shifting now. Extended stay hotels were always there, quite big in US and quite big in Asia and Australia, even much longer than Europe. Today I think Australia is around 20% of the hotel inventory is extended stay hotels. And similar stats both for Asia and Americas, but in Europe we're still around 5% just to put that into concept as well. So we're catching up.

08:39
Asli Kutlucan
But surely with the new generation that have much different expectations from their life they're going to spend from university until retirement, they are looking to find a solution that where they can actually be first of all get great service, some form of a great service. All right, they don't probably want to deal of cleaning perhaps or they don't want to deal with council tax or how to get the Internet and dealing with those things. And they also choose the flexibility, say okay, well three months here, I'm gonna pack my bag and go somewhere else. That's what I want to do. Now if you had a house an apartment that's a bit more difficult.

09:27
Asli Kutlucan
So where we're coming from is that sort of, those are, I think, I believe the key shift pattern shift changes started and today we are in a much more mobile lifestyle than before. So that then kind of becomes that what do we do with our current residential stock and what we do with the new hotel stock and how we define them and that's becoming blurry and I think more and more people gonna start living in a more apartment like lifestyle in the cities and less in big houses and gardens and etc. Because they want to have that flexibility to be able to be moving around and going different places.

10:15
Asli Kutlucan
And while that's happening, what we define a branded residency versus an A by Adina versus a co living product depends on the what kind of demographics we are going to be welcoming into the each under the roof, into each product and how we are going to be amending the flexibility of the service offering and the residential unit offering.

10:41
Jessica Gillingham
It's so, you know, the cultural reasons why hospitality and living are changing I find just absolutely fascinating. And it isn't just lifestyle changes, but I guess it's also affordability as well. You know, buying a house with a garden is perhaps out of reach for many people or it comes later on the journey, doesn't it, in our lifetimes. And maybe it did 20 years ago or you know, definitely probably 30 years ago. I've got. And then also, you know, I've got a couple of things I want to ask you now actually I've got one. And then I'll wait till you answer that and then I'll go to another. But also that extended stay. Previously it would be business people, wouldn't it? Or relocation, you know, people. Yeah, project workers, that kind of thing.

11:33
Jessica Gillingham
But when, now that we're seeing this sort of shift culturally if you like, or lifestyle, what do you think is. And you talked about convenience, flexibility and then also wanting that kind of service side. What do you think is most important for the next generation or as we move forward in what we're. We're offering as a hospitality offering out of those, what do you think is probably the core that everyone is really looking for?

12:02
Asli Kutlucan
Yeah, if I just quickly allude back to your original sort of saying about the traditions has changed. My experience has been, you know, sort of having lived in very different parts of the world, I certainly was surprised sort of in the mainland, continental Europe, house ownership is less of a thing. Rental life is much, you know, renting something was much more common. Whereas you know, My upbringing in Turkey than UK where your ultimate goal was always to own a house culturally or you were lucky maybe you inherited a house. And in America sort of there was a huge difference between the city living and sort of the New Yorks and Chicago's of where sort of people only rented and where sort of you go into so countryside. So I think there is a variety of different approaches.

12:57
Asli Kutlucan
And in Germany today I was very shocked because most people are renting and that has been the culture. So going back to your second part of your question is that where the new generation, you know what is it affecting their sort of decision? Is they getting married later or not even getting married? I think there's building a family concept slightly shifted right between generations. And that's I think also another pivotal point where accommodation but from a hotel or residential perspective has changed because you know again if I just give two extremes, my mom's generation, I think before 30 everybody had a couple of kids and settled down. And I'm looking at today, my God, children on their twenties they're like the aim of marrying is not even spelled right.

13:53
Asli Kutlucan
So that's the whole and that affects everything about their career choices, living arrangements, travel choices. So I suppose I don't have of course the crystal ball to say where these generations gonna take us to but I can certainly today define and see it with our products, with the moment product in the Adina product and also in other products. We're watching these young professionals so being so fluid in their lifestyle and that is reflecting onto their choices. Now we've gone through a major globalization piece a couple of decades ago. Today we don't know where we're going with the globalization but I don't think you can stop globalization. Therefore I think this is going to continue off people feeling much more relaxed to sort of call home where their suitcases rather than the city they were born. Right.

14:51
Asli Kutlucan
So then again that's sort of going to push through that. If these people come into Berlin to work as a nomad for three months, are they going to stay in a shared house on a co living or a moment or a dinner? That's where we are today. Now when this generation, which let's call them to be the mid management young management today in 10 years from now when they start talking about family and kids. Now obviously I give you guys the sort of personal timeline, you know, branded student accommodation, co living and then sort of adenas and whatnot. So when they get to that level there is a huge indication that they're going to choose More branded and serviced residential, if that makes sense. Right.

15:45
Asli Kutlucan
So they're going to look into the options where I don't want to start planning everything three months ahead, applying for the Internet connection and this and that, the water. They just want to basically bring a truck and bring their suitcases, bring the new family, put in that whatever it is, an apartment or a house where somebody already done all this for them. And when something breaks down, they're least likely know how to fix themselves, like perhaps our parents and some of us. And they're going to be looking for a service like they can call a concierge or a house manager, building manager to say, oh, my dishwasher is not working or my water is not hot enough. And they expect that to be delivered or fixed. So I think that's the transition we're going towards. More towards, I think in the future.

16:38
Asli Kutlucan
Would that be the end of normal residential? I don't think so. I think there's two people going to be sort of looking to that beautiful house with a garden and where they can grow. But more and more generation, current generation habits are shifting towards that kind of a living. Solutions.

16:57
Jessica Gillingham
Absolutely. What I'd say there is, Kristian's about to buy a house and become that person.

17:01
Kristian Lupinski
Yeah, that's exactly. You explain my whole situation, like, spot on. I'm 40 now. I'm 40 years old now. I'm starting to look to buy a house. You know, I got a two year old and you know, just looking at all those things, you know, I was looking at. Now I have to. When I buy this place, it's not connected to the city sewage, so I have to have the septic tank cleaned and all these things. Like, do I really want to do this?

17:24
Jessica Gillingham
Can I just say. So I'm at a different end of the scale. I'm about to be an empty nester over the next year or two. And you know, I'm British so I was ingrained to buy a house as soon as I could, but now I'm like, okay, once we're empty nesters, we'll go and do the service. Living, you know, three months in Berlin, three months in New York, you know, all of those things. So. So it's exciting. But before we get to the next topic, and I know Kristian will be biting for us to get to the next topic, but I have a question about operations. Right, so how.

17:59
Jessica Gillingham
So how do you like it's more complex or different to be doing, let's say a hotel where it's just like one, two nights that Somebody comes and stays to more of this casual living, hotel living operationally what have you learned in terms of being able to kind offer those differences like is there anything or is it just all easy peasy?

18:24
Asli Kutlucan
I wouldn't 100% confirm that statement. I think how the guest is increasingly expect sort of consistency and hope home like feeling in their temporary accommodation, let's call it so it can be the service apartment or co living. The service expectations also change. They're not looking to find someone dressed like they're soldiers with three piece suit and sort of yes ma', am, yes sir. I think that's what sort of originally all hoteliers been trained to provide which is can come across less home like less family like. I think therefore we sort of move towards more friend like service if that makes sense. Somewhere we care about your service because that's, you know, if you're there one or two nights you're not going to build a relationship either.

19:25
Asli Kutlucan
So if that person is just bit rigid and sort of just kind of a bit more like an administrative person behind what I call a rejection desk because it's just so high and massive things behind they're not looking to build the knowledge. But if you're there for more than two nights, even if it's four nights or five nights or two weeks, then your mindset and your expectation shifts. I mean the best way to explain this perhaps and just everybody, most, you know, most Britain, most people in Europe goes to holiday for a week or two week in Spanish coast resorts or Turkish coast or Greek coast where you go to these hotels where you certainly they choose more relaxed service because they know they build that rapport, they build that service. So that's just basically bringing into the city.

20:16
Asli Kutlucan
So you they looking for a bit more friendly service, someone who can understand them perhaps. One interesting point I can give you now. We brought the moment brand with fully techanum enabled, right? So literally fully tech enabled. And our lab hotel has been able to run with no human, let's call it, you know, if we want to. So we tested that tech is working. Now our ambition here wasn't to open hotels or sort of the extended stay or casual living hotels so that we can run them without people we want to open these hotels with fully tech enabled to actually have a bit of a different type of people within the building to welcome you. Now first of all hospitality has had a big loss of workforce over Covid and etc.

21:13
Asli Kutlucan
And secondly, because what I just alluded to, people are looking for something different. If I can stop having to employ people that has super administrative skills to be on a reception because they need to be able to understand all that complex interfaces and constantly do the things on the computer, on the pms, give you a piece of paper to sign and then file that and this and that. If I can just remove that means I can hire anyone who has a care for people. So with the moment, I'm seeing that we are going to be designing a hospitality stage, a theater, right? So in every city we're going to open these moments. I want people to already come in, checked in and done and dusted, no administrator.

21:59
Asli Kutlucan
They're just going to welcome and they're going to be greeted by people with lots of sort of care and, you know, intention to understand their purpose and how can they help you. So we're going to be able to now look into hiring people from performing art or from care homes because I don't need them to have that extent or the hotel experience. So just kind of saying, why are we doing this? Because that's the expectation. People wants to speak to people they feel they can connect. And my job as a CEO, bringing these new brands, opening these new hotels is that hire the people who can give that what we really call genuine care and what we really call community feel. The community feel is just this hip bird everybody use or connecting with no community connection.

22:48
Asli Kutlucan
Start first within that building by the people who are serving you and that then brings the rest of the community and the neighborhood. So that's sort of where we're trying to take and we will be taking the service ethos and then the mindset of the people who providing the service.

23:07
Jessica Gillingham
I think this is a really good opportunity for you to just give us an. For those who haven't heard of the Moment Brand and for our listeners, it looks like mmnt and we did previously do a podcast with Philippa Wagner from People, Places Spaces who talked about it. But actually an overview of what it is because it is really cool what you're doing there and it's really unusual what you're doing with the Moment brand.

23:33
Asli Kutlucan
Yeah, yeah. I mean, moment is an incredible solution to a couple of the big problems we're facing today in our lives in the cities. So first of all, it sits somewhere between co living and extended stay. Right. But it also gives the guests the community without losing their sort of privacy and they still feel their own space, but still feel connected. Now the Moment brand is a adaptive brand. So for example, Adina Brand, we have very, you know, Sort of brand standards, you know, sort of. And usually it needs to really be built ground up and it usually will be a bit more difficult to share the same floor space with other people. People, right. So today biggest problem from a real estate and sustainability perspective is that we have every day more and more redundant retail and office space. Right.

24:39
Asli Kutlucan
And people don't know what to do with this because say for example if there's a retail with over five or seven floors today maximum, the two floor words we know that and the rest of that three floor is empty. So what can we do there? Can we put Adina? Bit difficult, it will cost much more because you really need to shift a lot of things. And that's where we thought that wherever retail is that's already an activated street or location. So therefore it's suitable for anyone looking for a living or stayover solution. So our Moment brand is being designed to be able to fit in any piece of floor plan at the workable location. It has to be of course we have three type of room types, so a small, medium and large.

25:33
Asli Kutlucan
What we have done is that when we start developing this idea is that we wanted to not just put it on the paper but we wanted to experience this and really test in a real life. So we have created our Berlin lab here. We took out this retail space and it's six room prototype, live, better hotel. Now what are the key differentiations about the Moment than some other similar products? First of all, Moment is not a budget brand. That's very important that everybody needs to know it's not sort of budget brand and it's never going to be. That's not what we purpose. It's not a luxury brand either but it is not a budget brand. So everything that we have used within the design and material is very much high end.

26:26
Asli Kutlucan
All if ideally all or close to all items should be recyclable, recycled materials and all the paints and items using non toxic and etc. So you can't, you know, that definitely doesn't become a budget as you know because you know in order to do budget you have to compromise on quality and sustainability most of the time. The second thing we have about Moment is going back to that we wanted to create something fully tech enabled. So we have all these incredible proptech guys came into our industry with these fantastic products where they sort of put on the buildings and sort of created a new segmentation of hotel hospitality living without any hospitality, just tech enabled which is great and we want to be one of those first hospitality company can bring in all the tech into the product.

27:23
Asli Kutlucan
And we basically built this whole mini beta hotel with six rooms in Berlin with all those ideas we had in mind as a test better hotel. We invited about 200 people to be our initial test guests to test everything from product to tech stack and everything. And then we sort of shut down for a month after that two months period with 200 guests. Did some of the adjustments that we can within whatever the building or the tech stack allows us. And then sort of last year, July, we reopened 2,000 public that the public can book directly from our website and social media or Airbnb only. Why? Because what we all know that Airbnb guest is the most tech adaptive guest.

28:16
Asli Kutlucan
They never had this expectation to go somewhere that is going to be traditional, welcomed by someone and this and that they know that they just knowing that they become an Airbnb guest. Right. So and we've been selling that products through the Airbnb in our own social media, in our website. And so far we've been monitoring all those feedbacks as well as our initial guests. So whenever we can we made some tweaks in here there on the design, on the concept or on the tech stack. And we are now on the verge of hopefully signing our first real moment brands and the first hopefully one. I don't want to jinx it and I'm sure Matthias, my head of development will kick me if hears that, but looks like we're signing it in Hamburg.

29:08
Asli Kutlucan
And this is the perfect location because this is an existing building that had some retail a couple of floors and they had some offices but not all of the floors up to the seventh floor. The offices work so they end up about four or five floors that the office wasn't working always retail will not work. And they were sort of what can we do with this? And it's also an interesting floor space because you have this huge atrium in the middle. So this was for us like even if I had a sort of blank canvas asking okay, this is my ideal first place property would look like this. It is that project.

29:52
Asli Kutlucan
So we now going to be able to hopefully all being well take this product where we can just plug into this each of these floors and bring over 100 key moment brand and that's for us is that this is exactly what we needed to do with this product is that help the landlords, real estate owners, the office owners to bring that additional solution so that they don't end up with vacant spaces forever. So that is exactly what moment is for and we're very proud of it so far. Everything you know is religiously every week, several times on Airbnb, checking all the reviews because you know that's where you got the real feedback and you know, albeit it was just a, a trial, better hotel. None of the rooms have fresh real windows and four of the windows have no windows whatsoever.

30:51
Asli Kutlucan
And the feedback is fantastic because people feel kind of a homely, kind of a relaxed and just sort of the amenities make them feel like they're not somewhere, they're somewhere in a 12 square meter room but they don't feel they're in a cheap room. Right. And that makes the whole experience very different now that small rooms we build, very small 12 square meter but very beautifully decorated in a compact way. They're all going to have their sort of shared kitchen space apart from the main sort of lobby or lounge bed where they can of course during their stay utilize the kitchenettes, coffee, whatever they want to do there. So that almost becomes somewhere as I say hotel is it co living or somewhere in between.

31:42
Asli Kutlucan
And I see these, you know, young people say for example leaving their house of residence, brand the student accommodation, getting their first job with Google or whatever the international company, they're going to do a six month or a year internship. They're not going to be able to find the right apartment or afford a nice place. So this will be their solution. For example, on the other hand, our large suites that can sleep up to four. We had a lot of families testing and now we're reading all the reviews. They loving it. The, the sort of the flow of the room, the kids, the parents, the kitchen in the sort of the, in the room.

32:24
Asli Kutlucan
And they just basically became a super happy guest that are staying here over a long weekend because it's easier for them to have that room with two kids than having two interconnected rooms in a hotel where they only depending on an outside restaurant or bar during the night if their kids wants to have something or early morning. So yeah, this is for us one of the most exciting journey we've been through so far. And having this product now being able to roll out in Europe and Australia and hopefully one day maybe America, that's really excite us.

33:04
Kristian Lupinski
No, that's very cool and it's definitely a place I have to book next time I'm through. You know, between you and Philippa and seeing what's on the site, I want to talk a little bit deeper on this. You know, because you mentioned it briefly in your last answer, you know, your strategy with TFE hotels is you know, emphasizing this, transforming underutilized buildings into this mixed use spaces for an operator. I mean what are the keys to making these adaptive reuse both financially viable and operation compelling for this long stay or co living audience?

33:35
Asli Kutlucan
The operational real estate operators and I will call ourselves as hotel operators, the office operators and retail operators. I don't think we any of us have any issues with making these spaces work. We first need a fundamental mind shift change in the cities and local authorities first because that is actually the only reason perhaps we have so many empty spaces across every city you can think of across many of the European cities is because the adaptive use and conversion for us, any of us and collaborate together as the operational real estate operators and again that's the retail, that's the office, that's the hotelier. Extensively. We can work, it works. Our biggest first change is to sort of reduce that amount of underutilized space is that we really need the local authorities and local governments to actually start appreciating this change as well.

34:39
Asli Kutlucan
Because zoning is just killing everybody at this stage. And that's one thing. On the other hand, of course, going back to your question, assuming that all being well, and we have designing approved for that building to be both commercial as well as sort of residential slash hotel, we obviously need to first look at the guest journey for all of them. Right? That's the most important one. And, and we have to. Everybody has a slightly different journey. So the retail and office behaviors will be more alike in terms of hours of operating and heavy footfall. Whereas with the hotel or residential it slightly will be the opposite side.

35:24
Asli Kutlucan
So what we need to figure out, wherever we're putting these products, let's say our moment product, we have to make sure that the integrity of the building, the guest journey from arrival experience all the way to their, you know, sort of room is not sort of cannibalized by the other usages either. And likewise to the office user as well as the retail user. Right. So we have to figure out that do we have enough lifts to serve in the peak times, are they fast enough, is the staircases and so on, so forth are suitable once if you can get a guest journey, right, for all of these different usage types, that's already a fantastic starting point. Then inside the building is obviously what you do in each of your, you know, sort of respective areas is going to be down to you.

36:16
Asli Kutlucan
But I, I suppose let's say if I had an opportunity to put a, a Five star conversion product on the upper floors and what I have in the retail or in the office, probably it's going to be a matter and we just have to be, you know, respectful to those expectations but in a bigger picture of things. I think as long as you can dedicate a nice first impression with the guest arrival journey, the right, you know, arrival and signage and whatnot, then I think the what you can do and above floors and in respective parts, it shouldn't be too difficult. And that sort of one was the.

36:57
Asli Kutlucan
One of our first thing that we spent the most time on that project of looking to sign is what is the guest journey feels like during the day and at night because that two important things. So and but apart from that to make these buildings sort of cohabitate by these different segments it is really viable. We've seen it in many different examples and I think there's going to be a huge game changer going forward. Should especially be able to get zoning for in the UK that will be commercial and C1 or in Berlin. Commercial versus residential.

37:43
Jessica Gillingham
Can we dig as a little bit into technology with you? So one of themes that we talk about on this podcast is around how technology is enabling service or how it's enabling operations, but also service. And I know with the moment hotels, and I think you may have said it here, if not I saw it on the website, is that you refer to it as a digitally hosted hotel. You also talked a little bit earlier about how Airbnb guests or your experiences that Airbnb guests are much more open to essentially a digitally hosted experience than perhaps a more traditional guest might be. How are you seeing that play out not just in moment, but also across hospitality and hotels. What do you think we're seeing as a future there?

38:40
Asli Kutlucan
Yeah, that's a great question and I can now understand perhaps that word, the sentence may confuse digitally hosted. So from our, from sort of let's say the TFE perspective and from our perspective, tech should not replace hospitality. That starting point. It should free wonderful humans that works with us to deliver the moments that matter to them. Right. So that's the key thing I alluded earlier on as well. Being a hotelier since 1990s, wherever I worked, this whole rejection desk full of computers and machines has always, I always been allergic. It's just because it's really the tech and the layout didn't allow you to have that more personal connection with your guest coming on to.

39:33
Asli Kutlucan
So what we are sort of achieved with our tax stack today in moment, which is a Version of that we now rolling out for the rest of our Adinas and every single other brand we have globally is that we allowing the guests to do what they've been doing for the last two decades with airlines to do with us. I mean we are a little bit dinosaurs unfortunately hospitality were very late to catch up and because obviously this kind of attack required many startups to try different things and get fundings and etc perhaps in airlines that was bit easier but we are now finding that we have fantastic products out there, fantastic middlewares that you can utilize to sort of connect and you know everything comes first of all open APIs, right.

40:30
Asli Kutlucan
So everything is now can be connected and that starts from the connection to your guests before their arrival and throughout their stay and post right departure. So for us is first of all to be able to get all that unnecessary barriers between us and the guests to be done and dusted with their mobile phones. Because that's literally everybody is going to sleep with their mobile phones, they wake up with their mobile phones, they go to a train with their mobile phones, they go to an airplane with their mobile phones. So why can't they just do that where everything is checked in and they got everything before they arrive. So once they arrive then first of all I don't need that rejection desk. I can just have people just hanging around to welcome them just through hosts of their house.

41:17
Asli Kutlucan
And again I told you sort of the people we're going to hire are going to have to much more different backgrounds. We want them to create this whole sort of soulful hospitality slash tether stage to sort of really kind of engage with the people and we are more and more lonelier anyway every studies are showing so we're desperate for that human connection and less computer connection. So if I can remove these computers between us when you arrive, I mean that's already a win. If I can get you someone that is going to smile from their heart and really curious about where you're coming from, what would you like to do? How can we help you? I mean that's a very missing part of a lot of people today.

42:00
Asli Kutlucan
So with technology enabled hospitality is that I'm releasing and freeing my people to welcome these wonderful guests that are going to walk through our doors and just be able to be welcome. Now I'm a business traveler in average for the last decade or more I probably travel almost every week. I sleep probably around 160 to 180 nights in hotels and I'm usually a one night hotel stay. Now for me, tech is greatly important because I flew to a city, been on the meetings all day, knackered. All I want to do is just go to my room and have a nice shower and relax and I'm perhaps bit tired to talking people because that's what my job is. So tech enabled hospitality also allows me to be that person that just wants it.

42:51
Asli Kutlucan
I'm in and out one night, all I want is just kind of quickly go and relax and I can do that as well. So this is the purpose of tfe investing quite a few millions to be able to develop what we call the GXP guest experience platform. It's not just a guest facing platform, that's also employee platform to help them also to do their jobs much more proactively and with much more user friendly interfaces and with much faster than what the old system legend systems are today forcing us to do. So that's the tech enabled for us. The employees have less admin work for them on the computers or the softwares and tools we use. And then the guest has basically less interaction with a computer when they arrive or paperwork that's just being removed from the middle basically.

43:45
Kristian Lupinski
And I got one more question for you on the tech side. You know, as you mentioned that there's a lot of opportunity to put people back in hospitality and you know, smiling and saying welcome and actually enjoying their jobs, not punching a computer away. But the last question I have on that is how do you balance the speed of innovation with the risk of disrupting operational continuity? Because there could be some speed bumps along the way. So I'm wondering how do you balance those two things?

44:11
Asli Kutlucan
Christian, that's a great question because we're just rolling out this year the GXP across our portfolio. We're going to start rolling out here in November in Europe and that's going to be rolled out across once we sort of have everything down and we agreed as exec teams earlier this year I sent a note to our digital team and the tech teams and all these genius people who behind us said all right guys, so now we have the approval to roll this out from November. Can we start having our meetings on what GXP 2.0 looks like? Because by the time we roll this out, we are already behind Tech Stack on what the world is offering. So I think that's one side of looking at it. Now your question is more about the people who are going to be adopting using this.

45:01
Asli Kutlucan
And look, I'm fairly comfortable to say that where I say the guest interface is the important Part same. Equally importantly, we focused on the employee interface side, right and there we invested a lot of time to make it user friendly, nonsense and much speedy to sort of learn and adopt. And given that majority of our, let's say first line guest services, ambassadors, the teams, the guests, the employees, associates, majority of them are probably between 25 to 30, 35 year old. So that's a generation that was born actually with an iPad, not like us. So I think they are quite forward looking, they are quite looking forward to actually having this.

45:53
Asli Kutlucan
I can tell you they already all been informed and they've been eager to have something like this even before the ancient ones in the company that are half a century old trying to roll this out. We collaborated with everyone, we had test drives in different countries with different products and different teams and the feedback we got is that we've been waiting for this. So I think operationally the team members certainly not going to have any issue. I think we will probably have of course natural some adaptation period both for the guests and both for us. And of course we're going to make some mistakes and things gonna not work and gonna work but that will be very sort of, you know, short period of time just very quickly can be adjusted very much.

46:45
Asli Kutlucan
Seeing this, that's going to be a very one of the fastest things they're gonna adopt and utilize.

46:53
Jessica Gillingham
That sounds really exciting. And then. And your point being making sure that the team comes along on the journey of transformation is so important. Asli, before we kind of end, I'd love to firstly I really really want you to come and talk at our tech enabled hospitality event next year. I would love to have you on the stage talking a little deeper about this because you know, I think you've got so much good stuff to say and so much to kind of add to conversations. But before we sort of say goodbye to you because we're kind of coming up to the end of the podcast. What's, what's in the. You you kind of hinted a little bit at Hamburg but anything else that might be coming up for you, for you at TFE Hotels.

47:41
Asli Kutlucan
Yes, we last one and a half year. We really focus not just the tech and the new brand but growing the our footprint and portfolio here in Europe. So we finally have our UK hotels and that we are opening them in November. One in Cambridge and one in Glasgow. That will be the first time TFE entering into UK and we are super excited about it. On the back of opening our first A by Adina in Vienna, we just signed and it's on the news. Our second A by Adina for Europe which is going to be in Berlin and Yes, and on the back of that, you know, we have a very strong pipeline that our fantastic development team is negotiating with the Moment brand across both Europe and the UK as well as Australia.

48:38
Asli Kutlucan
So too early to say but those are sort of, I think in the next, you know, before the end of the year hopefully we will have bit more news to push through and give you a bit more news about the moment brand but Adina Brand is on a roll so we've been growing very fast. Yeah, that's all we're looking forward to. Just keep growing with the right people in the right places and that's what makes me happy.

49:05
Kristian Lupinski
That's brilliant. And you know, we wish you a lot of luck. And then also as Jessica said, absolute pleasure to have you on the show today. Asli.

49:13
Asli Kutlucan
Thank you guys. It's absolutely a pleasure talking to you guys and yeah, looking forward to continuing these discussions next year maybe at the conference.

49:22
Jessica Gillingham
Brilliant. Thank you Asli.

49:24
Kristian Lupinski
And that wraps it up for today's episode of Pillow Talk Sessions. Thank you so much for joining us. And to stay connected and never miss a conversation, head over to pillowtalksessions.com to subscribe. You can also follow us on LinkedIn for more insights and interviews with leaders shaping the future of hospitality, multifamily living and community driven spaces. Pillow Talk Sessions is brought to you by Abode Worldwide, the strategic public relations agency for tech brands and tech enabled operators. Transforming the way we work, play and stay, Abode Worldwide creates category leaders and builds brand value across hospitality in modern rental living. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time on Pillow Talk Sessions.