The Cycles Are the Opportunity: Ian Livingstone on Crises, Capital, and Long-Game Real Estate

What do you do when the real estate market collapses? 
If you’re Ian Livingstone, you buy. 

In this episode of Distinguished, Dean Arun Upneja speaks with Ian Livingstone, the co-founder of London & Regional Properties, one of the UK’s largest private real estate groups, about what it really takes to build a £12 billion global empire, through booms, crashes, and everything in between. 

Livingstone shares how he went from running 170 optician stores to reshaping urban skylines; why crisis moments create once-in-a-generation opportunities; and how he’s built cities like Panama Pacifico, where 20,000+ homes, schools, and commercial districts grew from a single idea and decades of patience. 

A candid, behind-the-curtain conversation on timing, conviction, distressed assets, hospitality real estate, and why the future of leisure and experience-driven travel still holds unmatched potential, even in the age of AI. 

The “Distinguished” podcast is produced by Boston University School of Hospitality Administration. 

Host: Arun Upneja, Dean
Producer: Mara Littman, Executive Director of Strategic Operations and Corporate Relations
Research and Content Creation: Lu Lan
Editing: Isabella Laikin
Sound Engineer: Andrew Hallock

Music: “Airport Lounge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Transcript

Welcome & Guest Introduction: Ian Livingstone and London & Regional Properties

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Markets crash, investors panic, most run for cover, but not Ian Livingstone. In 1987, when the world of real estate was falling apart, he and his brother stepped in, turning crisis into opportunity, and opportunity into a 30 billion pound global property enterprise. Welcome to the Distinguished Podcast. I'm Arun Rupneja, Dean of the Boston University School of Hospitality Administration, and I'm thrilled to be speaking today with Ian Livingstone, who has built a remarkable and quite significant global real estate portfolio. Ian has spent more than three decades shaping skylines and redefining how cities grow. As co-founder of London and Regional Properties, he's guided one of the UK's largest private real estate groups through multiple economic cycles with calm judgment and a long-term view. But property wasn't where he began. Ian started out as an optometrist, then moved into retail, opening and running stores. Those early lessons in people and places later shaped how he built communities and cities. Welcome, Ian Livingstone.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Thank you very much for the introduction. It's great to be

Buying When Others Are Selling: The 1987 Market Crash

SPEAKER_01 1:20

here.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Fantastic. So you began your career in one of the most turbulent moments in market history. So let's start there at the beginning. It's 1987. The markets are crashing. Everyone is selling. What did you see that others didn't see? Some people wait for sunshine, but you wait for storms. What's the psychology behind making your best moves when the world's panicking?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

I think the simple answer to that is to be contracyclical. It's an easy answer to give, but it's not quite so easy to do. In 1987, the world was in crisis. People were fleeing real estate. They were selling whatever they could in order to raise money to meet commitments, whether it was pensions or financing. And we bought things at unbelievably low prices, prices virtually halved. The problem when that happens, of course, is that the banks are also forcing liquidity. And so it's very hard to get a bank, to find a bank that's going to back you in buying these assets because although the prices are low, real estate needs leverage. So it's a combination of finding all the scared banks that are forcing people to sell and finding a bank that believes in you, that thinks that your thesis is right, that values will recover. And we managed to put the two together in those days. It's much harder to do now.

Staying Contracyclical: Then vs. Now

SPEAKER_00 2:55

But have you continued doing since then? Every time there is a pullback in the market, you are jumping in?

SPEAKER_01 3:01

We generally try to, but the world got a lot more complicated because when we started, property was owned by big institutions, usually uh pension funds, life insurance companies, um, as well as um listed companies. And they were all very, very slow. They were like a herd of sheep. When one person bought something, the rest all followed varying degrees of success, but they kept on doing the same thing. And then when something went wrong, they all decided to sell together. And so if you did nothing else but the opposite of what the institutions were doing, you could make money. That's all you had to do, the ex the polar opposite of what they did. The world's changed now, though, because there are many, many uh investment funds. And investment funds are full of smart people who have got huge amounts of money to deploy. It's not their money, it's LP money, but they're there to deploy it and they're there to make money, and they only make money when they deploy it. So suddenly, instead of having those sort of markets to ourselves, it became a lot more competitive.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Everyone followed what you were doing and see, okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Um but for sure, they many people saw those opportunities and learned those lessons of different cycles.

Patient but Bounce-Ready: The Investor Mindset

SPEAKER_00 4:30

You've described your approach as patient but bounce-ready. How do you keep that balance, staying calm through quiet stretches, yet confident enough to move when these rare once-in-a-decade opportunities are available?

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Aaron Powell When you're an entrepreneur, it's quite hard to sit on your hands. Right now I'm sitting on my hands. Uh, and it's it's slightly uncomfortable because I have to manage the day-to-day business without having that excitement of finding something that um where I have a high degree of conviction. Right now I don't have a high degree of conviction on anything, particularly. I will come on to that in due course. I think there are opportunities, but maybe they're not priced right at the moment. And I think also uh your business tends to change as as time goes by. And for us, I think we probably have two different pockets of capital. One is long-term family assets, which have a less volatile and and have a lower return, but are you know there for the long term for family. Um, and then there's assets where we expect to make money by buying and selling, and I think those are the ones that are a bit more difficult.

Reading Today's Market: Rates, Empty Offices & Stagnant Deal Flow

SPEAKER_00 5:48

So I'm glad you came up to um uh right now because that was going to be my next question, which is that we are in a moment of uncertainty. Um interest rates are up, a significant number of office buildings are empty, inflation is continuing. So is this 1987 all over again, or is this something new?

SPEAKER_01 6:09

No, it's it doesn't, it's not, it doesn't have the peaks and troughs of 87. Um what's happened is it's a bit stagnant. Deal flow is down. So people people are, I think that they learned their lessons after the last few recessions. The banks learnt their lessons. Uh people are not over-leveraged. What happened before in 1987 were people were borrowing 80, 90, 100 percent, and so the banks, you know, caught a cold and immediately foreclosed on people. Um this time people are not forced because the leverage is much lower. People have borrowed 50, 60 percent. Even if prices are down a bit, the bank's not going to foreclose. Um so we don't, we're not seeing the same amount of distress this time. What's happened is people are just not buying and not selling. And so there's a lot of people like us are sitting on the sidelines. I think you can buy programmatically if you've got a specific business that you're trying to roll up, but if you don't, looking for one-off deals, they're a bit few and far between at the moment. And uh, and I think until we have more clarity on what's gonna happen with inflation and rates, that's gonna be the the case for some time.

Where the Next Opportunities May Come From

SPEAKER_00 7:28

And also, as you mentioned, there are a lot of other investors, uh, PE and people who are ready to deploy other people's capital, which means that you're not gonna have property going down to 50% of its value because it'll get snapped up.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

It'll get snapped up very quickly. Um I think one of the opportunities that we will see is that people, funds that are seven, eight, nine years old now need to sell because the LPs are looking for their money back. Uh and many of those won't have great returns, but they still need to get cash back to the investors who are being diluted every year by fees. And so they will be forced to sell off assets at whatever price they can get. So there may be some opportunities, but again, as you say, they're not going to be dramatically down.

How to Evaluate a Distressed Asset

SPEAKER_00 8:21

So since you mentioned that you don't see a whole lot of good opportunities around, so when you do see a distressed asset which needs a lot of love and huge amounts of capital inflow, what are the indicators that help you understand whether to invest in that property or not?

SPEAKER_01 8:39

I think it's fundamentally about the long-term position of the asset and the brand that you feel that you want to put on it if it hasn't got a brand or if you feel that the brand is going to be appropriate for that location. So you need the right brand, the right location, the right bones of the property. Um, and then you've got to um spend money, you know, carefully. It's very easy. The problem that one of the problems that we have is in, and if I perhaps specifically talk about hotels for a minute, more than commercial real estate. One of the problems is this. Many of these hotels are operated under a franchise. And when the hotel gets sold, immediately, Hilton, Marriott, Intercon, whoever it is, they come along and they give you a long, long list of everything that they'd like to see in the hotel. And that is a major issue as a property owner because those things that they want for the brand are not necessarily consistent with a return on capital. And so there's this immediate sort of dichotomy between what they want and what actually is going to make money. And if you own enough hotels and you you've got a good relationship with the likes of Marriott and Hilton, you can negotiate that PIP, the property improvement plan. You can negotiate it quite hard. But if you don't, then it's incredibly destructive to the value of the seller, because the buyer is going to look at it and say, well, Marriott wants me to spend $15 million on this hotel, and I don't think it's so I'm going to have to take that off the price. So it's it's value destructive, and I think the brands need to be more user-friendly to their owners in some cases, and be more sensible when they set out this PIP on a sale. So that's a it's a very big issue to get right.

Hotels vs. Commercial Real Estate as Distressed Investments

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Yeah, this is music to the ears of all the franchise who are franchising these properties and are faced with these huge amounts of PIP. Um so since you do are interested in um distressed assets, um a strange question to ask. Well, what kind of distressed assets are your favorite? Are these hotels, are these buildings, are these office tower, leisure assets?

SPEAKER_01 11:06

I think it's easier to price a hotel because you've got very good data about what's going on in the neighborhood, what's the competitive set. We have STR data, we can tell on every on any given day what the competitive set's doing, what occupancy, what rate. And so we can take a pretty good stab at how that's going to perform and what we can afford to pay for it. Um, commercial real estate is much more of a local business. It's really hard to know. You can have an office building on one corner that will lease up better than one two blocks away or three blocks away. It's much more difficult to know. It's more of a local game, and I I wouldn't do it because I don't have as good data. Um, and I don't know the markets outside of my own home market, I don't know them as well. So when we're looking at at distress assets, we tend to look more at hotels because we've got better data. Uh, and and we've also got a team that's more international. Uh, on my office team, it tends to very much be local.

From Optometry to Retail: The Early Career Path

unknown 12:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Um, so earlier in your career, uh the right at the very beginning, you were an optometrist, and then you were a retailer, and it eventually ended up running hundreds of stores. So let's go back to that foundation. And you sold that store in 2011, if I'm correct.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Yes. I I had a joint venture partner in the about halfway through the uh development of that business, I sold half of it to a big conglomerate called Luxotica, which is the world's biggest spectacle manufacturer. Um, and that was a great partnership that lasted for many years. Um and as part of that partnership, when we sold them half of when I sold them half of my business, they a few years later sold me half of Sunglass Heart Europe, which we then integrated and combined with the business. And then it was a big business with 240 stores, and they bought the whole business. Well, they bought my half back off me a few years later, which was fine.

Transitioning from Retail to Full-Time Real Estate

unknown 13:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

So that was retail. Um, and then I since then you've much more been in um in real estate. So at what point did you realize that um that retail rather than retail you were wanted more real estate development, uh making cities, mixed use developments, and so forth, rather than running stores?

SPEAKER_01 13:35

I think I think I'd started really in in the late 80s, in spending a little bit more time in real estate, and it had just gradually progressed from then. And I think from about 2000 onwards, really, I was full-time on property. But I built a team that worked with me for many years in the retail business who I'm still in touch with. Um, and they uh I was the chairman of the business, but they ran it day to day. So I made the big decisions and I made I looked at the sites and I looked at the performance on a weekly basis and I had board meetings, but I wasn't involved in the day-to-day operation of that business in the last seven or eight years.

Owning the Whole Chain: Operations and Real Estate Together

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Even to this day, when you have hotels, you you have a lot of operations that are part of your um.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

We operate most of them.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

You operate most of them. So that is operations, and then you have the real estate part, which is uh buying and developing. So how do you navigate between those two, the different mindsets needed to uh operate in this?

SPEAKER_01 14:45

You know, I'm the first one to admit I'm not really a hotel operator. I'm a real estate investor who knows enough about operations to make a judgment as to whether I buy something, but I I couldn't really tell you the details of what everybody does in the hotel and how they contribute exactly. You know, I've never been a hotel manager. Um, I can look at a P ⁇ L and tell you whether it makes money or where it's wrong, but how to fix it, I I don't know. And and I think this comes back to the something we touched on earlier about running a business, which is hiring the right people for the job. And, you know, I have to say that in our in the business right now, we've hired a brilliant guy to run our hotel business, a guy called Cody Bradshaw, who came from Starwood Capital, who's re-engineering the whole of the operational side of the business and centralizing a lot of the key commercial team. Um so he's built a fantastic uh back office, which we can now use to expand our business or manage things for third parties. So he's far better at me than me at uh organizing that kind of thing. And I think we've just we maybe by luck or judgment, and it's something we talked about earlier, hiring the right person, um, motivating them and letting them get on with it.

Why Operational Control Drives Property Value

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Yeah, it's very important as we were discussing during lunchtime. But I am curious that you know you have developers who will develop, you know, who will buy a piece of land or develop it and then they're out of that deal. But you like to own the entire chain. So you have experiences. Now that is a choice that you've made that you are into running and operating those hotels, even if you have hired the right person, and in the real estate side. So, how important is it for you, or what is the the thing thought behind going into operations as well as the real estate side?

SPEAKER_01 16:47

When we start the first hotel that I bought, I didn't really understand anything about the operation at all. And so I signed a lease with Hilton. Um they paid me a fixed rent, and I still have one or two of those leases left actually in our business. And that was great. I thought I'd done really well until I realized one day that the rent they were paying me was about half of the EBITDA, half of the earnings. And so I actually figured out that even if the business got difficult, I'd quite like to have both halves of that income. And so I was leaving a lot on the table. And so then we did the first management contracts, and then I realized, of course, that giving it to somebody else to manage isn't always the best idea. And so you learn out of curiosity, really, you learn how that you take a little bit more risk. You take a controlled amount of risk and operate it yourself. And if you, you know, the downside is isn't that bad, because the worst case scenario is that you get somebody, if you mess it up, you get someone good in to manage it. But fundamentally, you've got control over the control of the operation is crucial to the value of the property. You can't dissociate the two. If your hotel doesn't operate well, it'll never have a high capital value because no one will ever believe that it can.

Building Panama Pacifico: A City from the Ground Up

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Okay, so I want to pivot to uh large-scale projects. Um few examples show more clearly than the Panama Pacifico, a city that you are helping build from the ground up. It's more than a development, it's actually practically a new city with 20,000 homes, commercial spaces, logistic hubs, even schools, all built through a public-private partnership with the Panamian government. So, what is it like to lead a development at that humongous scale where you're effectively managing a community inside another different country?

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Um it's it's been challenging. It's been a great opportunity, it's an amazing opportunity. You know, I saw it very early on. I saw an amazing piece of land adjacent to a major, a major city that was highly built up and very congested. And it seemed to me very clear there was only one way, one place that this city could develop. And this was on the other side of the canal. The difficulty, of course, is getting the infrastructure right. So I think it was the right thing to do. Um, it's going to take longer than anybody anticipated, and that's quite a frequent thing in development. You don't know how long it's going to take. Um, I think the concept was right to build this, you know, we're going back now almost 15 years when we came up with this idea and pitched it to the Panamanian government of a sustainable community. And it was just beginning to sort of sustainable communities were just beginning to be talked about in in Europe and the US. And of course, when you go to see the president of Panama and you say a sustainable community, and he says, What the hell's that? Um, he didn't really understand. But eventually, when we explained it, um, they did understand, and it was the right thing to do. Uh today we've built about, I think, 6,000 homes, we've built four million square feet of um commercial and industrial. I think there's about eight, nine or ten thousand people living there, about the same working there. Um then we will ultimately build up to about 30,000 homes, but it'll take time. Um and we have lots of different communities. We have, I think, nine schools so far. Uh, we may have a small university campus if you have some interest there, let me know. And um it it will be great, but it has taken a lot longer because largely because successive governments, uh whether it was through financial issues or incompetence, didn't deliver the infrastructure in the time that they promised. And of course, when you're dealing in a country in a small country like that, you know, your um your recourse is limited. You know, if if I did a deal with the US government and they didn't supply the infrastructure, you know, pretty soon there'd be some kind of legal issue. But if you're in a country like Panama, it's probably not a great idea to try and sue the government because you won't win. Um and so we've had to sit tight and wait. And you know, we've managed the business and it's done, it's done well. It's just taken longer than we anticipated. But now the infrastructure's being built. I think the new president's great. Um, and they have followed through on what they said they'd do. So Panama overall is a good place to do business, a very open economy. It's a dollar economy, it's got a good rule of law. Um, and we're very positive about it, but it's just taken a bit longer than we. Would have liked.

Staying Committed to Decades-Long Projects in Emerging Markets

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Right. And so uh it's an emerging market. There are unique challenges, different legal framework, um, infrastructure, long-term commitment. So, how do you stay committed to a project that is going to span decades?

SPEAKER_01 22:16

I think, well, first of all, it was it was my idea. With I have a partner in it, and it was jointly our our idea to do this. Um, and because of that sense of ownership, you know, I have to stay focused and committed on it. Um, we have a commitment to the government there, we have a commitment to our staff there, and other stakeholders and people living and working there. Right. And so it's a it's a it's a live, it's a real live entity, and so there are always things going on. Um, and you have to visit regularly and stay in touch with what's going on and hire the right team locally. You know, clearly it's not something that we can manage by remote control from outside of the of the country, and luckily we've got a very good management team there who've managed it well. Um, but you've got to you've really got to have a long-term view and you've got to believe in the project and build quality. If you start cutting corners or you start being short-term, I don't think it will work. So we've had a very good uh long-term vision of the project. We've built amazing quality that perhaps other people haven't done in that region. Um and as a result of that, the big corporations that have moved there have all stayed.

The Future of Hospitality Real Estate: Trends and Opportunities

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Okay, so beyond scale, which obviously this is a huge, big scale, and I don't know if you're planning other huge townships of that scale, uh, but you're also creating and designing experiences. So let's talk about what makes hospitality real estate so transformative. Um you've developed hotels, leisure clubs, even entire cities. What excites you about most about hospitality real estate today? Do you see is there a momentum somewhere? Do you see some trends? Are you thinking about new ways of space?

Segmenting the Hotel Portfolio: Budget, Boutique, Luxury & Resorts

SPEAKER_01 24:11

I think within um hospitality or hotels, there are many, many different levels of luxury, lifestyle, budget, and each one of them you know has different developments, different facets that are things that are changing. And so I think it's important to have a team. I mean in in our business today, we have mentally I think I have three um or four buckets in our business. So we have a very successful business which has which is select service hotels, uh Holiday and Express being the biggest one with the biggest franchisee in Europe for that. Um then we have something called iconic luxury hotels, which is a jewel which is lots of really individual boutique hotels, usually, usually on average of sort of 50 to 100 keys. Um in iconic physical buildings in great locations. Again, that has its own management team. We have an asset management team that then covers our what I call big box hotels. So the big Hilton's, Fairmonts, Marriott's in big cities. Uh, and then we have a team that manages resort hotels for us predominantly in Europe. And within each of those, there are things, different things happening in in luxury hotels. You know, how do you you have to constantly be redefining what's luxury? And luxury isn't just having the right um amenities in the room, it's what do people want? What does people now have access to so many different things at home through their iPad, through shopping online, doing what is so? How do you cr give them a different experience? What is the guest experience that they're looking for? Something that they can't get every day. And it could be wellness, it could be sport, it could be talks. I I mean I don't know, but I think you have to be, you have to have a team that's dedicated looking at all these things all the time. Otherwise, your competitors will. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with watching what your competitors are doing in other parts of the world and importing it. Uh, it's just doing it well. So, in in a budget hotel, for example, what does that mean? Well, to me, that means people want great Wi-Fi, they want a good shower, decent air conditioning, and a comfortable bed. The rest of it's probably irrelevant. So, how do you make a difference there? Well, we make a difference by making sure that we do all of that right, and then we make sure that we do it on an efficient basis. So there'll be more AI, there'll be more automation, there'll be um more technology. So, for example, I don't, you know, as I said, you've got a comfortable bed with decent linen and good Wi-Fi and a shower. That's you've ticked those boxes, but that's not really the thing. For me, the next thing there is seamless check-ins. So you'll you'll download your app, right? As you walk in the door, it'll geolocate where you are. It'll say, Welcome to the Holiday and Express in Bista. Um, your room is number 535. You'll go, you'll walk up to your room with your phone and the door will open. You don't need to check in. I don't understand. It's the most awful process. And especially when it's on a Monday morning and you're arriving in your hotel and it's three deep at the check-in, and my heart sinks. I've got to wait while someone has this protracted conversation, trying to scam an upgrade, and it drives me up the wall. And they sit there for 10 minutes negotiating. I said, Well, I was in this room last time and this and that. I don't want to speak to anyone if I've got off a long flight. I just want to go to my room. I don't want to wait for my bag. I don't want to talk to anybody. I just want to know that I've got the best room possible, that I've got that I'm recognized, and that can all be done seamlessly, but it's not. Hotel companies have been really poor at that.

Seamless Check-In and the Role of Technology in Guest Experience

SPEAKER_00 28:44

You know, this is very interesting. We in in the in hotel business, we say we are a very interaction-intensive. We want to provide human beings and and you know, uh welcome. Yeah. But what at the end of the day, if the guest is not wanted, he or she just wants to go to their room, then giving good service means not giving them any service.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

In a budget hotel, it might mean just walking straight in. But in a luxury hotel, that is that you walk through the door and a guest service person has a little iPad and it pings up. Ah, the dean. Dean Upnage has come. Okay. And it says who you are, and it's got a picture of you. Welcome to the hotel, Dean. Welcome. Let me take you to your room. I already know who you are. I already know what your preferences are. I'm going to walk you to the room. So you've got guest recognition, you've got that, but it's seamless. You haven't had to stand in a line and talk to someone who may or may not know, he may not have that information. That's all possible to do today. We're not talking about rocket science. We're not talking about generation 5.0 in open AI. You know, this is really simple stuff, but we do it badly. Including in my hotels, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

I was about to say I'm looking forward to the day when I go into one of your hotels and someone says, Dean Upneja, welcome. It should happen. It should happen.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

It does, it does happen in some of our hotels. And it happens when we've got number plate recognition on the cars, or if there's a driver, and the driver is actually being trained to send a text message from the car when he's two minutes out. I'm with Dean Upnager arriving in two minutes. And so you'll pull up in the car and someone will meet you. It does work on occasion, but just not enough.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Yeah. When I go into Home Depot and I open up their app, it instantly geolocates and knows that I am inside a home, and it will immediately start giving me, okay, go to this aisle.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

It can actually direct you to the aisle and it can flick up promotions. It's it's simple. But why don't we do it? Don't know. Go and ask Hilton or Mario.

Spotting Hidden Potential: Data, Intuition, and Experience

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Okay, so uh building at this scale takes resilience, patience, and a willingness to take calculated risks. So let's talk about the challenges and mindset it takes to stay the course. Is spotting hidden potential? So you see a distressed asset and you imagine what it would be. Uh, is it about data, is it about intuition, or just you build up this experience over time?

SPEAKER_01 31:30

I think it's largely experience. Um, but it's also being aware of what is the latest offering and figuring out whether you can actually operate it yourself or you want to use a brand. It's to some extent intuition as to whether you feel that you can operate it yourself. And then you've got to, of course, go into the detail. Can you actually fill this hotel? And if you fill it on your own without using a brand, will you get enough rate? Um, so it's got to be back when you're making these decisions, Yunny, you're talking about quite a lot of money, and gut feeling isn't enough. You need the data to back it up. And in some cases, we mostly we get it right, but sometimes we don't. Sometimes we extrapolate the performance in the past and think that's a guarantee of where it's going to be in the future, and it just doesn't happen for a bunch of reasons. Maybe our analysis wasn't good enough. Uh, maybe the market changed, maybe we weren't aware of a load of new competition that was coming in, and it's happened to me recently on something.

Long-Term View: What Excites Ian About the Future of Hospitality

SPEAKER_00 32:41

So this is the last question, which is um you've built through multiple economic cycles, um, always with a long-term view, and we've seen that over and over again in your perspective. When you look ahead, what excites you most about the future of hospitality real estate? What do you think will inspire the next generation of leaders to build places that truly people want to go and stay in?

SPEAKER_01 33:06

One of the great things about hospitality is that whatever happens with AI, there are you're still going to need hospitality. And I think that there will be a need for increasing amounts of hospitality as people have more spare time. Either there'll be less jobs or people will work less hours because of AI. And it's here to stay, it's not going away. There's going to be a massive reordering inside businesses, and it, you know, it it could be legal, accounting, medicine, it could be every business, every profession will be impacted by AI. And none of them, in my opinion, will be taking on more people because of AI. They'll be managing with less people, and therefore that means more leisure time. And so leisure is the right place to be, but hospitality uh is a great place to be. I think people want experiential travel, and experiential travel might be um it might be cruises, it might be fitness and wellness and health. I don't know what exactly the trends are going to be, but I think that it's got a very, very, I think there's a very clear need for hospitality. Um I think that it will morph over time into different areas that we don't yet know, but for sure, as a long-term investment thesis, it's the right, it's a right place to be. Um And I think that, you know, if you've got the if you've got assets in the right location with good bones, you can constantly reinvent them as years go by. But you've got to have the right asset in the right place.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Fantastic. Um before we let you go, a quick lightning round, short questions. First thing, first word, first phrase that comes to your mind. So let's start. Um, London or Monaco? Better espresso.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

Monaco.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

What's your favorite leisure time activity, completely apart from work?

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Driving fast cars.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Oh, okay. Thought you were gonna say running. And that. And that as well.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

If I had time, I would do more cars, but I don't. So running is easier, it's quicker.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Okay. If your investment philosophy had a theme song, what would it be? I know this is a hard one. I'll come back to that. Let me come back to that one. One word your team would use to describe your leadership style. Engaged. Okay, very good. Your recommendation for a book, a podcast, or source material for inspirational, informed, and innovative thought leadership on the business of real estate can be a current or a source that has withstood the test of time.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

I read an interesting book recently. Um, not necessarily the best, but the most interesting book I'd read recently was the the history of Conde Nast. What went right and what went wrong. And actually, where they I think failed at the end to understand digital transformation.

unknown 36:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

So they had a great business model. They were world leaders, they were market leaders, they had the best brands, but somehow they failed to understand the changes that were going on.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Ian, uh, thank you so much. That was a masterclass in capital strategy, entrepreneurial courage, and global chess moves that you've been making. Thank you for candor and thank you for coming to our school.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

It's a pleasure, and thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

So, to our listeners, if you're going to play big, play smart and be ready to bounce when the tide turns. Special thanks to the team that produced this. I think it's important. Producer Mara Littman, Rachel Hamlin, Land Hugh, Isabella Lakin, and Alex Dietz. The entire team at Boston University School of Hospitality. To keep up with the Distinguished Podcast, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. You can also learn more about experience innovation in our undergrad and graduate programs by visiting pu.edu slash hospitality. Have a wonderful day.