Emma Nelson (3:20)

So what is it that you then go and do at university? Obviously it is a course that allows you to travel, but lots and lots of people, when they go into hospitality, which is where we're making our way to now, and what you ended up doing or why you chose that course is that hospitality is often something that you work from the ground up and you don't necessarily need major qualifications. Some of the greatest managers on earth started polishing spoons.

Dan Ruff (3:42)

That's absolutely true.

Emma Nelson (3:43)

But you take the formal route. So explain that to us.

Dan Ruff (3:45)

So I went to Cornell University, which has one of the best hospitality schools in the world. I did not attend the hospitality part of the school. I was in arts and sciences. So I was looking at these hotelies and I was like, they're taking something called food and beverage. Well, I'm taking some super intellectual history of the thing and the thing. And actually my focus in my program, I wrote a thesis on the influence of Louis XIV's court system on that of Peter the Great in Russia. So super esoteric, having nothing to do with anything, certainly not a career builder. But at the end, it was just this curiosity about cultures and it continued on. So from that I took the obvious step of becoming an investment banker. Right, that's clearly direct from a weird esoteric liberal arts education to become an investment banker. But to me, it was the means to the end. I didn't know exactly where my career would take me, but I knew I was fascinated with traveling the world. I knew I was fascinated with languages and cultures, and I also knew I didn't know anything about numbers. And I knew that to run a

Emma Nelson (5:03)

business, bit of a tricky one for an investment banker, one would imagine.

Dan Ruff (5:06)

Well, but that's why I became an investment banker.

Emma Nelson (5:08)

Oh, right. Okay.

Dan Ruff (5:08)

Because it was my business school. It was, you know, really an education in the foundations of finance. And that has served me very well since then.

Emma Nelson (5:18)

Indeed. So how much is this as we're going along? I mean, you've walked past the food and beverage department of Cornell in the middle of studying the influence of Louis XIV's court on Peter St. Petersburg. How much at that point is hospitality part of the business mind of Dan Ruff? How much is it actually playing a part in your game? I mean, you talk about travel, you talk about love of langu, but that is something that we can all do without actually deciding that we're going to go into hospitality. So from the point of view of an entrepreneur, when does this. What's happening?

Dan Ruff (5:52)

It was a personal passion. So while I was studying These things and learning these things. I was eating at every great restaurant that I could find. I was traveling on every break I could manage. I was going everywhere, I went to Argentina, I went to China, explored everywhere. And I wasn't staying in luxury because I couldn't afford luxury. I was young and without the means to do it. But I was exploring and I fell in love with the experiences that people were creating for me.

Emma Nelson (6:30)

And I thought, wow, can you remember some of them?

Dan Ruff (6:34)

I mean, everything from, you know, the first time I spent a few months in Buenos Aires right after the devaluation in Argentina. And I remember going in with my dollars to the best steakhouse in Buenos Aires. And I remember this impeccable service, this unbelievable food and being able to afford that was just magic for me. And the incredible waiters who come on and they put on a show as they serve you the meal. And they're so genuine in their passion for what they're doing. This stuff is contagious. It really is.

Emma Nelson (7:13)

Something has to change though, doesn't it? So you are consuming hospitality but you're not working in it. What changes?

Dan Ruff (7:20)

So the beginning of my career was on the business side of hospitality. I was in the mergers and acquisitions group of a very big hotel company. This was kind of the continuation of my investment banking journey. I kind of went in house and I began acquiring brands for Starwood Hotels and that's what brought me to Europe for the first time. So I was in, in my early 20s, we acquired a brand called Le Meridian. It was based here in London. And I moved. I was young, I was mobile. I said, let's go. So I moved to London and I helped the operators integrate the business that we just acquired. I thought that this was going to be a six month thing and I'd be back to my home in New York and life would go on. But actually, at the end of the six months, someone who later became my mentor, Roland Voss, he was in charge of Europe, Middle East, Africa for Starwood. And he said to me, hey, do you like it here? And I said, I love it here. He said, do you want to stay? I said, yeah, I'd love to stay. And he said, great, so you'll start in Brussels in a few weeks time. I said, Brussels? I thought you meant London, Brussels. He said, yeah, we're based in Brussels. So you come to Brussels. I was like, okay, fine. So I went to Brussels for a year and 10 years later, I'm still in Brussels. I'm married to my Belgian wife. I have a little Belgian Baby, that was the next step.

Emma Nelson (8:49)

And how is business going at that point? Because you've gone to obviously renovate working with Starwood and Le Meridian and then you end up in Brussels. And at that point, just explain to us where luxury is at that point.

Dan Ruff (9:01)

So I'm across all parts of hospitality at that point. What was great with Roland, he took me from the finance guy, the M and A guy, and he got me closer and closer into the operations of the world. So I was the bridge between the owners who owned the assets and the brand. I was able to, at that point, speak both languages. I spoke finance and I spoke operations. And in those roles I had over those years, I really started to love the logistics. The magic behind creating the magic, understanding how the operations work, seeing how hard and diligent and passionately the teams work to deliver these experiences that I had always had as a consumer, but not as the deliverer. It convinced me that I wanted to touch every aspect of the business.

Emma Nelson (9:53)

And so explain to me a little bit more about, I mean, what lessons we can learn now, because everything that you're telling us now is going to have to sort of formulate your story to where you and Belmond are in 2026. The idea of being the bridge between assets and brand, it is an enormous gap, isn't it?

Dan Ruff (10:11)

It's enormous.

Emma Nelson (10:12)

How do you go about bridging it?

Dan Ruff (10:15)

So it's an enormous gap and it's one of the biggest challenges in our industry today. At Belmond, we are very fortunate and pretty unique in that we own almost all of the assets that we operate. So amongst the luxury hospitality brands that have scale, I think we're probably the only player that does that. It is a unique opportunity to be able to play both sides of that, to be very focused on the real estate value, to be very focused on the profitability, and at the same time, be completely targeted and passionate about delivering incredible guest experience and building brands. Because normally there's a natural and healthy conflict between the owner and the brand. We are all of it.

Emma Nelson (11:04)

How do you do that? Come on. Secret sauce time, please.

Dan Ruff (11:06)

Secret sauce. Do it. Healthy conflict within our business, honestly, we always have to wear multiple hats. We always have to challenge to make sure that we're making the right decisions for our real estate as well as for our brand and for our guest journey. But what we believe is that when we deliver exceptional guest experiences that are truly Belmont and we can talk about what that means, we know that the financials will follow and that the real estate value will grow. We Know this.

Emma Nelson (11:40)

Okay, let's go back a little bit to Brussels. And then suddenly, where does Belmont come along?

Dan Ruff (11:44)

Sure. So I was in Brussels, I moved to London. And then Roland calls again, and Roland at this point is the CEO of Belmont. And he says, okay, what do you think? You want to come? You want to run operations for this beautiful luxury brand that I've started working for. And he'd been in the job a couple of years. And I said, wow. Of course, because my career at that point, I had spanned every aspect of hospitality. I had done luxury to economy, I had done owned assets to franchise. So really everything that exists in hospitality I had messed around with. But Belmond was the epitome of, you know, it was the dream to be on the own side and the luxury side, not just the luxury side. The apex of luxury that. I mean, there's nothing that beats that. It is incredible. So I jumped at the opportunity.

Emma Nelson (12:46)

First day on the job, what was that like?

Dan Ruff (12:48)

First day on the job? So the first few months on the job was intimidating. I didn't know what to expect. I walked into a company not, as you know, because I had worked in the industry for a long time. I wasn't the traditional luxury only person. And I was very worried coming in that Belmont was going to be snobby. It wasn't at all. What I think makes Belmont special and always, it always has been, is kind of the genuine, down to earth nature of the people. And that translates to the guest experience. It's not overdone, not all formal and white tablecloths. It's really genuine. We actually proactively empower our people to be versions of themselves.

Emma Nelson (13:38)

What does that mean?

Dan Ruff (13:40)

We know our guests, they live really nice lives. What they want, when they are on holiday, when they're taking the time to disconnect from their day to day lives, they want to be treated humanly, they want to be treated like people. So we ask our teams to just be themselves. Not necessarily the way they would talk to their best friends or their family, a slightly more refined way, because I certainly talk to my friends and family differently than I would a guest. But to be themselves, to not lose their personality in the refinement or the formality of it all. We've been renovating our portfolio over the last couple of years and what I find amazing is when we reopen a beautifully renovated hotel or train or boat where we've invested a ton of money, if we look at the guest feedback, it's always about the people. No matter what. It's always about the people. And that's because our people are just real and genuine and passionate, and it creates amazing experiences for us.

Emma Nelson (14:49)

Where do you recruit them from? And more importantly, how do you retain them? Because that is the big challenge. A couple of years, and it's a challenge that's not going away. I mean. I mean, be honest with me. Is it harder to keep the right people who sound like themselves, but who know how to step up, how to present themselves?

Dan Ruff (15:07)

Well, of course it's a challenge. Our industry certainly has a talent challenge because working in hospitality is hard work. Not only does our business operate every day of the year, it operates nights, weekends and holidays. So it's a major commitment when you want to work in hospital. But I think we have something special that is an advantage for us or a few things. One is we want people to be themselves, so when they come to work, they're comfortable because they're not putting on a show. They are really being versions of themselves, and that makes people feel happy. The second thing is the way we've structured our brand and our portfolio is very local. Belmond is a promise of something. It's a promise of slow luxury. Each of our brands, each of our properties, our trains, our boats, our hotels, our lodges, they have their own brand as well. And that brand identity is something that our teams are exceptionally proud of. If you are a local in Rio de Janeiro and you work for the Copacabana palace, that is something that means so much to you. It means so much to your family. It's something you're really proud about and your family is prideful of. And, you know, that coupled with the atmosphere that we try to create for our teams, trying to give them a little bit of this little luxury in their own lives, I think that has enabled us to retain staff as well as we can in this really competitive environment.

Emma Nelson (16:45)

Actually, I think this is probably the good moment to say, look, we're mentioning things like the slow luxury philosophy and the identity behind Belmont, but just outline for us just the scope and the breadth and indeed the depth of your brand, because you are literally planes, trains, in automobiles, or maybe not automobiles, but that idea that there is a philosophy behind it that you can shape when it comes to water, when you shape when it comes to a railway, and we shape when it comes to a building. Can you put your finger on what it is? We have to be quite careful here, because anybody who ever works in luxury or in hospitality will say the words authentic and they will say elevate. They have become such loosely sloppily used words nowadays. It's. So you probably would be the best person to try and define this.

Dan Ruff (17:34)

I'll try to give you an authentically elevated answer to that.

Emma Nelson (17:37)

You do that, and the interview finishes now. No, that's absolutely fine. Go for it.

Dan Ruff (17:41)

So, you know, what I think makes Belmond special is we are very much focused on time. From the beginning, Belmont has been delivering slow luxury to our guests. What does slow luxury mean? Our guests around the world are extraordinarily connected. They are busy, they are on their phones, they are working, they are thinking constantly. And they need an opportunity to disconnect from their daily lives and reconnect to the things that matter to them most. So what is our job? Our job is to create environments that allow them to do that. We say that at Belmont, your time is invested, not spent. And I love that.

Emma Nelson (18:38)

What does that mean?

Dan Ruff (18:40)

I leave it to everybody to understand what that means for themselves. But for me, what that means is when I am experiencing a Belmont journey or a Belmont Hotel or Belmont Lodge or whatever it is, my time doesn't pass without being value being created. And I'm not talking financial value, and I'm not being high and mighty and saying that we're changing lives either. But when you're on a trip, value is created through the experiences that you have, the time you spend with your family, the art that you see, the tastes that you have of delicious food. It's whatever excites you, whatever you need to connect with. We are there to help you provide that. And we've been doing that forever. And the places in which we operate have been doing that forever. So Splendido Hotel in Portofino, it was built 500 years ago as a monastery. This was the original slow luxury. Right? It was a place, at that point, a religious place, but a place for people to come and disconnect and reconnect with what mattered to them most. Then that building later on became kind of the birthplace of Villeggiatura. Villegiatura was this idea. The Italians, the wealthy Italians at the time, would decamp for the summer, for months, they would pack up their luggage, and they would move somewhere that was absolutely beautiful out of the city to slow down, to discover a new pace of travel, as we like to say. So Splendido became Portofino. And Portofino was this place of Villegiatura. And today it's the contemporary version of that. It's people from all around the world who are traveling there for a taste of that. The ability to disconnect, the ability to reconnect with some incredible food, with the people who are there, the communities that are built there are amazing staff who really are, as I said earlier, they're local versions of themselves. They're personalities. They are not there to bow down, they're there to engage.

Emma Nelson (20:53)

And how do you then take the. Let's take the concept of villaggiatora and put it on a railway. How do you then make sure that what is happening on the Amalfi coast is happening on the trains? And it is happening absolutely everywhere.

Dan Ruff (21:08)

So a different version of it will happen wherever you go around the world. Slow luxury is slow luxury. But if you're on the Venice Simplin oriented, or the Royal Scotsman, or the Britannic Explorer, the Andean Explorer, all trains we have around the world, Eastern Oriental Express out of Singapore, the experiences, each one will be different, but each one will give you this feeling of slow luxury, this feeling of disconnection. And there's something magical that happens on a train and I'm very bad at articulating it. It's something about being in this space. It's something about looking through these windows at the beautiful landscapes go by. And it's something about the sound that the train makes as it goes over the tracks. It's something about the pace at which we deliver the service, the experiences throughout your journey. It becomes a time warp when you're on the vsoe, the Venison Planarian Express. These were carriages that were built from the 1930s. And you're not sure if you're in the 1930s or the 2000-30s is this timeless experience. You never bored, but your pace is different. And I know this is not as clear as it could be, but that's why people need to experience it, because it's unlike anything else that I've experienced

Emma Nelson (22:28)

from the business point of view. That idea of defining that sense of placing yourself out of time can actually sort of slightly go against the idea that business always needs to be moving fast. How do you reconcile that?

Dan Ruff (22:41)

So I think a guest experience in our language, or a customer experience, the magic of that is that the pace of that can run very counter to the business itself. What we've seen is that as we've gotten better at delivering these experiences, we become more and more desirable. So more and more desirable as a brand drives good speed in the business.

Emma Nelson (23:10)

And when you're renovating, we'll come to the enormous projects that you have on your shoulders at the moment. How do you make sure that from the business point of view, your renovations are Going at the right pace while retaining that whole desire to keep things timeless.

Dan Ruff (23:30)

We are very, very fortunate. When I joined Belmond, we were a publicly traded company. LVMH bought us about five years ago.

Emma Nelson (23:39)

This is before you became CEO.

Dan Ruff (23:40)

This is when I was coo.

Emma Nelson (23:42)

Yes, coo. So what was that like? Watching, as you know, Belmond at this moment, you're talking about being particular, being individual, and then suddenly the great luxury behemoth turns up and scoops you up. What does that feel like?

Dan Ruff (23:56)

It felt incredible because they pushed us to be more ourselves than we could have been without them.

Emma Nelson (24:05)

What does that mean? What were they telling you to do?

Dan Ruff (24:07)

They were telling us to slow down. They were telling us to focus on desirability rather than growth. So I'm probably the only CEO in hospitality that doesn't have a portfolio growth target. My target's around excellence, because there is this belief that when we deliver exceptional experiences, we will become infinitely more desirable and the financials will follow and the growth will follow. So we are under no pressure to grow our portfolio. And this is unique in our industry because we will only grow our portfolio when we find a hotel or a train or a boat or a lodge that will be accretive to our portfolio. And that is very special. So you were asking about the tension between pace of travel that we deliver for our guests and pace of business. We're very fortunate to be owned by a company that has a very long term view on our business.

Emma Nelson (25:12)

And so let's look at this restoration project. You've got huge reopenings, especially in Italy this year. You have Villa San Michele in Florence. You have the Cipriani, you have the Grand Hotel Timeo in Villa Timeo. Talk to us about how you do that because there are a lot of luxury brands out there who are all trying to, and especially in Italy, who are all trying to redefine luxury and preserve identity. And yes, you have LVMH in the background who are clearly taking quite a nurturing point of view. But having three huge projects, what's that like at the moment? Be honest with me, because you're coming in super relaxed.

Dan Ruff (25:53)

If it were only three, oh my God, the champagne would be popping. No, we're doing many more around the world and those are three of three big ones for sure. But we have a big project going on in Rio de Janeiro at the Copacabana Palace. We've got a number of projects around the world. Again, we are very fortunate that we were able to pace these things. So the Cipriani we've taken a decision to do parts of the Cipriani over multiple closure seasons. Now, this is something that most investors would look at and say, that's crazy, because what it means is that we operate short seasons for many, many years. Short seasons, you lose some profitability. But what do you do? You make sure that the guests who have been coming to the Cipriani for the last 40 years, every year, will keep coming back. They'll never have an interrupted summer. And that's so important for our guests who are so passionate about coming to the Cipriani as an example. It's also so important for our teams. If you go to the Cipriani and you sit at the breakfast there, maybe one of the best breakfasts in the world. The waitresses have worked there for decades, and they are amazing. They're absolutely amazing. We need to ensure that they can continue to work every year so we make real efforts of continuity because we can pace it correctly. There are plenty of places around the world where a Belmont Train, Belmont Hotel, or a Belmont Lodge would work, Places where we can deliver real, slow luxury experiences. What matters to me in a new property and in any of the renovations that we do is that the asset and the experience feels like it could have always been there. So it feels. I'm not going to say the A word, but it feels genuine to the place. It feels that it is real. It's not contrived. So as we look to grow and as we look to renovate, we need to make sure that it has the soul of the building, of the location.

Emma Nelson (28:08)

Final question, which you don't feel entirely obliged to answer when you were writing your dissertation on Louis XIV and Peter the Great, what did you learn about hospitality?

Dan Ruff (28:18)

Wow, that's a great question. So I think I learned more about how the world is truly global and how cultures will always be influenced by other cultures. And I think that has direct connection with hospitality, where service has been learned. Some places around the world have natural service culture. Others have refined, learned service culture. It's our job to make sure that we continue to preserve these local cultures, that we continue to help them be themselves, and we make sure that the world doesn't become homogenized and stays really genuine and real to what they are.

Tom Edwards (29:14)

That was Dan Ruff, the CEO of Belmond, in conversation with Monocle's Emma Nelson. To learn more about the business that Dan leads, head over to belmont dot com. There you can also find the latest news from the brand, including the reopening of Villa San Micheli in Florence this April and new journeys aboard the Venice Simplon Orient Express. And that is that for this episode of the program. We'll be back at the same time next week. The Entrepreneurs is produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack Dewars. You can listen again and find out more about the show@monocle.com that's where you can subscribe to Monocle magazine and ensure you're part of the club. You can also follow us and catch up with the Archive wherever you get your audio. If you'd like to get in touch with the show, do drop Laura a note on lrkonical.com I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye, and thanks for listening to the Entrepreneurs.