How To Make Access to Hospitality Luxury Easier and In Tune with Our Times

In this podcast, Robert Recupero shares his extraordinary career path with our listeners and explains how this path led to the creation of Moomenti, a high-end marketplace for booking luxury hotel experiences.  This entrepreneurial adventure was Robert’s answer to making hospitality luxury easier to navigate and enjoy.

 Early in his career, Robert worked at Swissport, which enabled him to learn essential service and leadership skills that have helped him throughout his career and triggered his passion for travel and hospitality. 

 His move to Thomson Reuters, the multinational information corporation, as the Senior Vice-President of Sales and Services allowed him to hone his leadership skills and he brought these skills to JP Morgan Private Banking.  In 2021, Robert started his own company, Moomenti and he explains his reasons and motivation for moving into the Luxury Hotel Experiences sector.

 Robert also describes how the hospitality sector is an ever-changing landscape that is creating new avenues and why technology is at the forefront of this movement.  Robert’s broad experience allows him to evaluate and understand what travelers and guests are looking for and how to meet their growing expectations. Finally, Robert explains his bold decision to become an entrepreneur and what he has learned so far.

 Robert Recupero is an expert in organizational design, technology metrics, and user experience/customer experience (UX/CX). With an impressive career spanning senior leadership roles in banking, finance, and technology, Robert brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to his current endeavors.
 

As a former Managing Director at JP Morgan Private Bank and Senior Vice President at Thomson Reuters, Robert has demonstrated exceptional leadership in banking technology operations and high-end client service. His strategic vision and expertise have driven significant advancements in these areas, making him a respected figure in the industry.
 
 Following his tenure in banking and finance, Robert transitioned to a successful career as a Senior Independent Consultant. In this role, he advised numerous organizations on organizational design, IT leadership, and governance, helping them navigate complex challenges and achieve their strategic objectives.
 
 Currently, Robert is the founder and CEO of Moomenti, a high-end marketplace for booking luxury hotel experiences. Launched in Switzerland, Moomenti is now expanding to Asia, Latin America, and the United States, reflecting Robert's innovative approach and global vision.  Don’t hesitate to reach out to him should you want to know more about Moomenti. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

It's the facilities brought to you by Swiss hospitality guild, the reference and training for hospitality professions, and leading authority in hospitality training. SHG is renowned for its excellence in preparing professionals for the hospitality industry. Their training programs have produced health tier candidates who have achieved notable success, winning medals at prestigious competitions like Swiss Skills, Your Skills, World Skills, and the AIC Mark, the world's best receptionist contest. To learn more about SHG in this podcast, get in touch with Jideo Marcato, the founder of SHG, and the producer of this show by emailing welcome at Swisshospitality Guild.com. Good afternoon and welcome to Fifty Shades of Hospitality. This is Crystal Cavan, your host. Today we're welcoming Robert Ricupero. Welcome, Robert. It's a pleasure to have you on our podcast today. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Hi, Crystal, and thanks for having me. So, yeah, a little bit about myself. I'm Robert. I'm born in 1967, mind you. I'm born and raised here in Geneva, Switzerland, where I'm broadcasting from today. And um, yeah, so born and raised here. Uh I thought a pretty jigsaw career. So my background is uh the financial markets, but it's funny because I was uh a high school dropout, so I dropped out of high school and I started the first job in the 80s you could do without a degree was travel agent. So it's interesting because we'll circle back to that. And uh I started off at a very small agency called Etoile Polaire, the polo star. And I started there, I learned the ropes of the job, then I did my EATA accreditation, and then I worked for American Express at the time. Very prominent travel agency, absolutely loved it. And then for some reason I left American Express to work with Suisseir at the time, all the ground operations, so I did pretty much every work there is to know on the airport. I did luggage, I did uh check-in, I did uh boarding, I did accept passengers on wait lists, and that really I think uh started the seeds of my passion for customer service because uh uh without knowing it, I was doing customer service day in and day out, and that was really a very formative experience for me. I really loved it, I loved the airport, and then just to cut it short, I decided ah, this is not gonna be a career for me. I need to go back to school at some point. So I went back to school at the age of 19, and then I more classic, you know, I did a law and finance degree from the University of Geneva, and then I started my first job at Thomson Reuters at the help desk, which they call the knowledge center, but really, in essence, it was a call center uh here in Geneva. But I was answering, you know, calls from traders and I was supporting basically Thomson Reuters financial products. So it was anything from you know helping a trader doing you know uh bond pricing or pricing an option or building a zero coupon curve. And that was very, very interesting for a young guy, pretty interested in Excel and everything else. But then again, the key to this, especially in high-tense markets like the financial markets, you want to have customer service skills. And this is gonna go along all my career, that passion for customer service and understanding that beyond the hard skills, you need to have the soft skills that get along with it. So that's me in a nutshell, uh, Kristen.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Okay, great. We're gonna circle back to what you just said about the soft skills because I think this is a really important topic for our podcast. Roberto, in reviewing your profile, we observed that your involvement in hospitality seems to be fairly recent. Could you please share with our audience the studies that you completed and describe your professional and personal journey in this field? I mean, you gave us some information about, you know, if you could fill us in a little bit more about this path that you uh took.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

As I said, my path is really Thomson Reuters help desk, if you want to call it call center, whatever they called it. And then I moved to more leadership positions and ended up 10 years after as global head of uh data and applications for Thomson Reuters. So I used to be based in Geneva, then I moved to Manila and New York, so all sorts of places. But in those positions, then I was really in touch with customer service skills. And when it came to really create in Geneva and elsewhere, so basically we had a basic strategy, which was let's keep Geneva as the language center for Europe, let's keep Sydney as the language center for Asia, and let's move all the support to Manila for the English support. So we had a huge recruiting exercise. Uh, we're talking about 1,500 people. So it was a huge operation. And when we had to decide the basic principles for the recruitment, we thought, do we need people with hard skills? Or do we need people that have more, you know, maybe less of a technical background and more of a hospitality background? So that's where really I started to weave in my passion for hospitality into my work and taking an interest in, you know, what are the great hospitality scores? What kind of stuff is taught in these places? You know, what are really the, and I'm talking now the early 2000s, these years, and that's where I not only myself, but everyone in the leadership team uh started to realize that hospitality profiles were really what we were looking for, leading and building high-performance teams in these great language centers. So Geneva, Sydney, and even Manila, where I've been based two years. So that's really uh, I don't know if that answers your question.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Yes, yes, it does.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

It it exactly that's exactly where my passion for hospitality is born.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

And of course, that's exactly what we want our audience to know is we want them to realize how important a hospitality field can be as a jumping off point, how an hospitality education can really bring you to so many places. I'd like to just go back and revisit your career history at Swiss port. You said you worked for a travel agency, so it's quite obvious that you have a passion for travel, for hospitality. Could you talk a little bit more about this? What attracted you to working for a travel agency, then on to working at the Geneva Airport, working for Swiss port?

SPEAKER_01 6:53

First of all, it wasn't really a choice, as I said. At the time I had very little options without a degree, especially in Switzerland. You couldn't go to many places, but I had a passion for travel. I had an ambition to travel, didn't have the money to do it, but I had that passion. So I figured maybe I'm becoming a travel agent, maybe I'll have those cheap tickets, you know, ID 75 or whatever they were called. And that's where it started, really. But then I realized, whoa, this is really a great environment. This is really wonderful. And when I moved from that little agency called Etoile Polaire to American Express, now I realized, wow, this is really big. It's a big network of agencies, it's a big company. And I only knew at the time the credit cards, but American Express travel was pretty big. And I used to work in an implant within Union Carbide, so it was really mostly professional, you know, travels and things like that that we were servicing. At the time, I was doing everything, even delivering the tickets, physical tickets to the senior executives. That was funny. And then I realized maybe I got an offer. I met this girl and she was team leader at the airport, and she said, Do you want to come here and work for the check-in? And I really loved it. So I moved to the airport. It was Suisse Air, very prestigious at the time. It got bankrupt afterwards. But at the time it was really super well regarded as an airline and still is, but it's changed the name of obviously. But I really loved it. And then that's when I really got that passion to servicing people. At the time we had smoking flights, so you had to check-in, you not only were asking, you know, window or aisle seat, but you were asking smoking, non-smoking. So you had four options. So for me, that was a very diverse job already. So but then I moved, and then I realized as to my earlier point, that maybe it's not really, I don't want to do incurities, it's really hard work, it's uh it's shifts and everything. So I said I decided to go back to school, but I never lost my job. So I just decreased my hours and I became, they called it an auxiliaire. So I reduced my hours to 20 hours per week and then 15 hours per week, but I kept the job. But as my responsibilities went down, I could really tour every possible job at the airport. So I know the industry inside out from an airport perspective. I did the check-in, I did the assistance, so you know, carrying, you know, wheelchairs and everything else, and and unaccompanied miners, I would take care of them once they boarded off the plane. I did the luggage stuff, really uh charger at the airport. I did boarding flights, closing flights at the gates, and that's very, very formative. You have those um really angry passengers on a Friday night that have been confirmed and they're now on wait lists. And how do you handle these people? So I had to learn on the job how to handle these kinds of uh high-tense situations. Uh, and then it's funny because it ties back as my career in terms of responsibility decreased at the airport. I finished my graduation, so I had a high school degree and then my college degree, and then I started at Thomson Reuters. So, what's great about Thomson Reuters is all the learning and development opportunities they offer to their employees. At the time, it was really amazing. Now it's been sold to the London Stock Exchange, but it's still very, very efficient in terms of LD opportunities. So I started to put science around customer service. So I started to have courses around what it is to be a great, you know, service person, what other soft skills requires. And beyond just the attitude and being polite and everything else, it is a science. And that I learned it through learning and development opportunities that I could apply to myself. And these are things that I still to this day use, and that's very important. So, again, there is like a funny hidden, like the universe wanted me to follow a certain path. And I got there uh very empirically first, but then I weaved science into it. And it's really great because that led me to very senior leadership positions at Thomson Reuters, when then you have really to weave in how do we measure the user satisfaction. And remember, this is 2002, 2003. So it wasn't as sexy as now customer support. It was really, it's not about at the time user experience, that that word didn't exist, it was just user support or customer service, and every all the rest of the company chucked everything into that. So, but we had to deal with real customers and real frustrated customers, but we had to drive loyalty and really uh customer retention. And that's really the essence of customer service, and that's why I have a passion for it. So, and then we weaved like the science into it. How do we measure user satisfaction? How can we have an event-driven program where we could measure constantly user satisfaction and so forth? So, from very empirical, funny kind of um, I'm trying just to do my job to a more scientific approach to how do I handle this customer now? I really got better and better in the learning curve in terms of handling customers and understanding customers, which is what loyalty is all about.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

So, as you're aware, this podcast series aims to serve as a source of inspiration for nurturing aspirations, fostering passions, encouraging career choices, and exploring the various facets of professions within the hospitality industry. Having a rich 11-year experience at Thompson Reuters handling client sales and services, could you elaborate maybe a little bit more on your insights related to customer service within this particular context of finance?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

So very high-tense markets, the financial markets are very tense. Um, the more closer you get to the cash, so you have the Forex traders very tensed, they need an answer right now, right here, to the bond traders, to the equity traders, to the option people. So it's these were very highly tense situations. And you get to realize your instincts alone may not do the work. So you need great products, you need you know great personal skills, but then beyond that, you need a great process around you where an issue, if I can't solve it, can be can travel and navigate within the organization to resolution. And that really is a science. So it taught me at the very low level to the most senior leadership positions to okay, let's have people trained on how to handle highly tense situations. But beyond that, let's have a process that really can help and facilitate the resolution of issues. And besides the process, then let's try and figure out what metrics do we need to put in place to realize whether we're moving the needle or not, really. Are these guys leaving the company because they're so frustrated? Are these people keeping with us? Are they loyal or not? So we had to invent really a formidable metric suite. And all the senior leadership positions at Thomson Reuters were all behind us in support in trying to really invent what then would become the UX framework, the user experience framework. But at the time it was more about let's try and understand what is it we're doing, how we can drive customer loyalty, and let's try and figure out how we can measure user satisfaction. So we invented what was then called at the time the even-driven program. So after a service event, you know, customer support call or whatever it was, a sales intervention, we would a company, actually GFK, would call up the customer and measure the satisfaction through a survey. It was called the EDP, the even-driven program. And that led really to us really understanding how we were moving the needle or not, in which areas. So they were asking all sorts of questions for our clients, overall experience, how was your overall experience with support, what was the welcome process, what was the passion and dedication of the staff, what was their level of knowledge, you know, what was the call service experience for you? So we were really measuring all sorts of metrics, and against each of these pillars, uh, we would track the percentage of very good and excellent ratings we would get. So not only would we be in a position for every agent individually to tell them this is your overall client satisfaction score, this is your score in terms of knowledge perception. So, and it's funny because sometimes the most knowledgeable people didn't come across as the more knowledgeable. It's a matter of service skills and soft skills. So it was very interesting because, as I always say, the more intelligent data you gather, the more intelligent discussions you may have. And it was more about really then trying to have those intelligent discussions, especially with highly operational staff. You want to have really data-driven discussions. Now, it seems very obvious today, but in the early 2000s, that was very, very new. And so we were able across the service organization to have those EDP scores. Oh, this is how your personal score is right now. And it wasn't really well perceived at the time. Oh, you're really measuring everything I do. But as we didn't link it to compensation or anything like that, at the time it wasn't really well perceived, but it was a great driver of satisfaction for our users and for our clients. So that maybe summarizes it. And then I took this, and maybe you're gonna ask me about JP Morgan, but I moved from some role to JP Morgan, and again, this is what I had been asked to do at JP Morgan. So very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Actually, I am going to ask you about JP Morgan, but before I do that, I can imagine if you go back and look at between 2001 and today, the technological disruption that you and revolution, I would say, that you've seen has been probably phenomenal. Could you just talk just a little bit about how have you seen this revolution, this disruption? And I think one of the questions uh we want to ask is how difficult is it to keep up with all of these technological advances?

SPEAKER_01 17:23

So it's a fascinating question, Crystal. So I'm not an engineer, right? But as you can see, all my life I've been working with engineers and great engineers. And so I've been following, but more as a consumer of technology, but also they put me in these senior leadership positions in tech as a non-tech guy. So it was a great combination. So to answer your question, it's very interesting. If you think about technology in the 90s, 20th century technologies, they were meant to do one thing, to do stuff for us. And they weren't producing much data. So it was a fax machine, it was producing faxes, it was a copier, it was copying stuff. And then, you know, all the technology we used to have, even a car, it wasn't producing much data. So what evolved in the 2000s was that technology not only was helping us, enabling us to do stuff we don't want to do, like copying, printing, calling, whatever. But alongside this, the more and more the tech advanced, the more and more data, our tools, our technology devices started to produce data. Our own phones, if you think about the Nokia phones, they weren't producing any data, but now it can tell you how long you've been on the phone, how long you've been wandering on social media, how long you've been, and that mirror effect is really changed everything. And if we take this now back to the industry, to the business world, this is new, new wealth of data which we need to digest and understand. How do you make sense of all this data? Like an engineer would say, you need to decouple the noise from the signal. And what is the signal? Now I'm a senior leadership guy, I'm a CEO, whatever. Um I'm just a guy in technology or in hospitality. What is the signal? What is the noise? And that's the key question. And understanding and decoupling the signal from the noise is really what it's all about now. What is noise? What is signal? And this has evolved so much that now you need even technology to tell you what is the signal and what is the noise. So that's ironic, but that's where we are. So it's really fascinating. But overall, it's been massive. The help that the technology has brought. And not only now technology can tell basically what we've been doing, it tells us who we are more and more. How do you consume technology? Tells us who we are. And so in the business world and in the hospitality world, how our users use the technology will tell us how they are as a client. And that's really fascinating. If we talk about my company, we use data day in, day out to understand what are the trends, what are people liking, what are less inclined to like, what are less, what are they less using. So behavioral pattern and behavioral metrics become the key to customer service because you want to anticipate what people want. So it's really aligning all these dots that lead us from the early 2000s into now. But the question remains: what is the key drive of satisfaction? What are our customers wanting from us? And that's really a fascinating question.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Well, I'll give you one answer for that. Not to wait so long when we want to call the call center.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Not to be put on hold and listen to some terrible music.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Exactly. Exactly. Get me the person, get me to the guy. It could be a robot, I don't care.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

Exactly. So let's go back to you just mentioned JP Morgan. So your almost six-year tenure at JP Morgan represented a significant achievement, obviously, in your career. How did this role contribute to shaping your passion for customer service, hospitality? And although identifying a direct connection may pose a challenge, we believe that there may have been another positive aspect at play.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

So I think there is two angles to this. A very private event, and I'm going to talk to that just a little bit because it explains a lot as to why I created Momenti. But also, the more I went into seniorship lead positions, I got hired at JP Morgan, and my boss told me, make it professional. The service was very disparate. It was very existing and very passionate, but it was very the US were doing their thing, Europe was doing their customer support thing, and Asia was doing their own thing. Was for me to globalize the function. I was global head of technology operations, which means beyond just customer support. It was tech support, it was learning and development, including for clients. So it was the training for clients, how do you train a client to use the JP Morgan apps and such? So it was a very release, release management, disaster recovery, business continuity, all sorts of functions, huge role. So that led me to travel quite a bit, Crystal. So by traveling, I started to realize now from an end user, from a user of luxury, because when you work with JP Morgan, you're lucky enough that you could you get to go in great places, great hotels, and you get to travel a lot, business class and first class and such. So I got to really realize, you know, maybe there's a gap here. And that's where the idea of Momente started to stem in my head. And really that's where it comes from. And now privately in 2011, I joined JP Morgan, and unfortunately, my wife passed away. My son was seven at the time. So yeah, and Robin was just seven. And then you get to realize, wow, I need to do all these things on my own. And I, you know, from the age of seven up until now, he's 20 now. So I used to take care of everything, every leisure option, travel, you know, vacation. And kids that age, even if you're in the most luxurious place in Palm Beach or whatever, they get bored after two days. So I thought maybe there's an opportunity here. I don't know, it would be great if there would be a platform where I can book a pool afternoon somewhere else and where I'm actually staying. And that's where the idea comes from. Not only was I witnessing this gap on a professional perspective, because I was in New York one week every four weeks, but also on a private level, I was there trying to organize stuff, and it was very cumbersome. And nobody, at least here in Europe, thinks about luxury hotels as a viable leisure option. We don't think about them really. So I thought, oh, maybe there's an opportunity for a marketplace to basically display, have a collection of luxury experiences I could do and book in a few clicks without calling anyone, without doing anything else. So that's the linkage, really. But what JP Morgan really brought me is the high-end service. JP Morgan, it's all about ultra-high net worth individuals. 30 million and more, and it's really a very specific category of clients. So it relates to me to very specific brands, and we share with those luxury brands the same passion for ultra service. And you know, there is haute couture, and I think there needs to be hot hospitality at some point. And when I see the hospitality industry evolving, it's exactly about that. There is the mainstream luxury, but then there is hold hospitality. And you see those that break out from the pack and they do very bespoke and very obsessed about the customer experience. And that's what I think it's going to make the difference going forwards. So that's really maybe the linkage. I was asked, you know, to globalize a service function, which I did. It involves a lot of travel. Personally, I was having some challenges at home, and I tried to reconstruct all of this, and I thought maybe there's an opportunity here. So you start to talk to colleagues and such. And one of my great partners now in Momenti is Pedro, who used to be an executive director at JP Morgan. So there you go, full circle.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Okay, great. So let's learn more about Momenti. So after you left JP Morgan, did you work as an independent consultant?

SPEAKER_01 25:36

So I worked for uh as an independent consultant. I left JP Morgan simply because my job was to rationalize spend and you know I had to optimize every location, which included Geneva. So I knew right off the bat that my own role would need to move. I was uh managing director, and we knew right off the bat that my role needed to move from Geneva because we had a lot of principles, including you know, the managing director roles would need to follow where most of the people are. So we moved my role back to New York, and I couldn't follow my roles. I wasn't in a position to follow the position, so I wasn't mobile at the time. So I decided to go. Great package, managing director package, great opportunity. And to your point, I started to do consulting and I did consult for Geneva Airport on how to build a great customer service culture. So I did this for the Geneva Airport. I did the same kind of consulting for the Geneva hospitals. When I started to create content, what am I gonna do now that I need to consult and do all this training to these people? I started to think of the performance lifecycle we all go through. Like when we start in the job, we're very flexible, but very babies, very flexible, but not really uh skilled in terms of the framework. And then you evolve around along the skills you know curve, and you you get more and more skilled in the job, but less and less flexible. And then you reach the point where you're really on target, and then maybe you tip the line and you're a bit less now. You're really skilled, but maybe you're a little bit know it all, uh, even worse, know it better, and then you tip on the other side and you're really not desirable as a resource. So we all go through that life cycle, and then you have that those phases where you're more like, leave me alone, and then I want to leave the team. So I started to really try and do something along those lines, which is more okay, service is a framework, it's a science, we need to measure it, but it's also a mindset, and I need to manage myself. How can I have a positive mindset? How can I avoid, you know, seeing myself as a limiting factor in the process? So that was really what was all about. So I did consulting a couple of years. My son at the time needed me, and to be honest, I really took care of my son in those years. That's when really I took time to take care of my son. He was probably 16, 15 at the time.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Oh, yeah, the teenage years.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Exactly. So combining, you know, the luxury of consulting, which is not a you know, full-time all days type of work like JP Morgan 70 hours a week, that was really perfect for me, the perfect match. But then I was missing something, and that's when I really decided that that idea of that marketplace, maybe let's try and implement it and let's try and make the company.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

So let's talk about Momenti. What is the essence of Momenti? What services do you provide? How does it operate? Who comprises your client base? And who are the additional stakeholders involved? So a lot of questions there, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

So company is a little over a year old or year and a half. It's really Momenti is all about booking and paying for luxury hotel facilities. So, how can I access luxury hotel if I'm not an overnight guest? That's really the gist of it. So we wanted to create a collection of great experiences where people can really easily book and pay for privileged access. So we're not about discounts at all, we're not a discount app, we're about privileged access. How can I spend a pool afternoon at the Intercontinental in Geneva without having to go through the very 20th century process, which is I need to find the pool, I need to call the pool manager, book, and so forth. So most of these are 20th century processes where you have to call. So we thought of the marketplace, of the app and everything else. And not only that, there's a level of ambiguity around luxury hotels. So you never know which ones are accepting external guests and which one are not. So for me, it was a really an easy step to do and think, oh, let's have a marketplace where I can list all the available places. And not only that, where I can book them in a split second. And I don't have to worry about availability. If it's on Momenti, it's available. And I can book it morning, afternoon, after work, or for the full day. And that's really what Momenti is all about. In terms of uh who are our users, I'm glad to say that 65% of our users have uh 35 or less years of age. We're very appealing to the younger generation. I believe I don't want to position myself as an expert, but I'm really observing what happens, and I think they interact with luxury brands, with luxury in general very differently than people used to. It's more about moments, it's more about, okay, more frequent moments than just a luxury week now. So they love the ability. We basically enable that. We enable that lifestyle. Oh, it's sunny outside, not today, it's sunny outside. Let's have two friends, finish early, and go after work at the pool at the Intercontinental or at the President Wilson or whatever. And that's really what Momenti is all about. Spur of the moment. On Momenti, you cannot book three months out. Our booking window is only seven days out. So it's really meant to entice the spur of the moment kind of thing. And for hotels, it's not how I imagine it, but for hotels it's great because they can put all their distressed inventory on the platform. So although we're not a discount platform, we're just about putting to work all the unsold inventory. And that's really great for both our users and the hotels.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

And Robert, tell me, is this a global platform? Are you providing this service around the world or are you just focused mostly in Europe?

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Or no, it's a great question. So we wanted to focus only in Switzerland. Our ambition was Swiss, and we signed a deal with Swiss Deluxe Hotels, which is great. We are a preferred supplier for Swiss Deluxe Hotels. But then for some reason, we got introduced to people in Bangkok. So now we have a distributor in Bangkok. So we don't want to boil the ocean, and we have just three hubs right now. So we have uh Switzerland, we have Southeast Asia, where we have Wimintra doing great work in Bangkok, and now we just uh found a distributor in Mexico. We want to operate on this hub strategy and not try and boil the ocean and going everywhere at the same time. We don't have the financial means for that, but if we operate on a hub strategy, I think it's gonna work. And this is working because we now have great footprint in Bangkok. We have five hotels in Bangkok, so we're still a tiny, tiny mouse, Crystal. But Momentia has legs, and it's funny, I don't know where these legs are gonna take us, but and we have now we are talking to a person in Los Angeles, mind you, who it's called BLLA. We signed a deal, so it's totally official. It's a boutique luxury lifestyle association, and it's an association of more than 10,000 boutique hotels in the US. So they're gonna distribute us over there. And for us, it's really great because beyond you know the big hotels and the big structures, I think there is a space for boutique hotels and momenti. It's very trendy, modern luxury, it's all about you know, bespoke, small, tiny hidden gems. It's not only about big entities, which we love. We all love the big structures. So that's where we are to answer your question. It's more a hub strategy. Southeast Asia, so Thailand. We signed now with the Banyan tree in Langho, Vietnam. We're signing with Azera in Vietnam for 17 hotels. So we're still a tiny mouse, but and it takes time to create a luxury brand. It takes time to establish yourself as a credible, viable option for hoteliers to partner with us. So I totally get that. But we're really happy on how it's going.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Yeah, it's interesting because as you, you know, when I was asking you this question, I assumed that it was uh based in Europe in general, because you know, there's so many beautiful hotels in Europe. I just came back from travels in uh France, Spain, Italy. But yeah, it's interesting. I mean, it's great. It's great that you're looking at different places that are so different, you know.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Yeah, it's more about what's driving the strategy is more the quality of the people we meet, Crystal. So I would have loved, I'm I come from Italy, so I would have loved to cover Italy. I would have loved to cover France or the UK, but we didn't find yet the right people to represent us and distribute us. So it's just a matter of opportunity, who we meet. And I wouldn't try and touch the the France territory without having the right people, the right level of knowledge, the right network and such. So we're going more, you know, on a hub strategy, but also with the right people. We need the right people on the bus. It's always the same, uh, the same story. So the distributor in Bangkok has been a lead from someone who worked at the marketing team at the Intercontinental. So it was a great introduction. We really hit it off well. I met her at Women Trial, met her in uh Munich last summer, and it's really producing a lot of results. So that's how it happens.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

Organically, holistically.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Organically, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

Robert, what is the meaning of the word momenti?

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Oh, good point. Momenti means moments in Italian. So moments. But when I asked the legal guys and my great friend Marc Gileron, here a great lawyer in Geneva, when I told him, Look, I want to call the company Momenti, and he goes, get out of this right away, like right now. You cannot use the name Momenti when 1.0. So I said, Why don't we put two O's to it? And he goes, Okay, that makes sense. And then what the website was free, momenti.com, everything was free. And then I talked to the marketing people, and they're great for this. And they go, Oh, this is fantastic, Momenti with 2. It's like the moment we enjoy, we want to stretch it forever. So let's stretch the moment and let's put the infinite sign in it. So, and that's our logo. So that's really the story. So, Momenti means moment. Life is all about moments, like I was saying, and uh, that's our motto. We really want to offer moments to our community. That's really the gist of uh where Momenti comes from.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

You know, after looking at your profile and looking at what you're doing now, you know, Momenti stands out as a really bold illustration of entrepreneurship. Could you share what brings you satisfaction with this entrepreneurial path? And maybe perhaps talk a little bit about the obstacles that you've had to face.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Yeah, of course. Uh what brings me joy is when you have an idea, you try and probe it with friends, and you try and I I was asking my son at the beginning, what do you think about this? Yeah, that could be fun. And then you start and really apply a process to it. So we built a prototype, we did like more than 100 solution interviews, as they called. And mind you, in the industry, you do 30, 30 or so uh solution interviews, not 100, but for us it was our own money. So we did 100, and then people start to think, oh, this is a great idea, that would be great. And why don't you so you're encouraged to do more and more and more. So that's really a source of satisfaction. Of course, when people use now the app and the web app, this is really a great source of satisfaction. But lately, the greatest uh source of satisfaction is when people reach out to us and say, Hey, we want to work with you. So that really means the world to me. And recently, a very prominent cosmetic firm who operates longevity hubs around the world reached out to us from Bangkok and they said, Oh, maybe we want to work with you. It's not a signed deal, so I cannot say the name, but you'll figure it out. So they reached out to us, and when people proactively reach out to us, it means the world. It's really an incredible feeling. Or when people, you know, when you start a startup, you talk about yourself, and there's value to what you say. But when other people start to talk about you, this is when it's another layer of uh satisfaction. When partners start to talk about you, when other folks start to part about you, it's really a lot uh a very special feeling.

SPEAKER_02 37:52

And what are your aspirations for Mumenti? In what ways do you envision the growth of this brand in the years ahead?

SPEAKER_01 37:59

It's going well. We hope to partner with big brands, big luxury hospitality brands, of course. It's really about strategic partnership. We ambition not only to work with the hospitality brands per se, but we totally see ourselves working with uh an airline, for instance. We would be great to complement their offer. So an airline basically, when you land somewhere, you want to do experiences. So that's where we could kick in. Uh so that's a great idea. Cruise, you know, companies, but also the mice angle. So I met Oward recently, I was at IMEX in Frankfurt. The mice, you know, the meeting incentive, the all the convention and events angle is really great for Momente. If we could partner with event organizers so that their you know event attendees can do stuff, or their spouses or their families when they travel with the families, if they can use Momenti to really do things and have really a great, you know, inspirational and more intimate uh view of what Geneva has to offer or the city has to offer, it's really a great angle for Momente to partner with. So event organizers, airlines, of course, luxury brands and cruise ship, that'd be great. I have a little problem with cruises, but you know, I've never been in one.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

So neither have I. I can be very critical, but actually I was thinking, well, maybe I should try one before.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

So that's really what we want for our future.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

Before we say goodbye to you, Robert, would you like to provide any other personal message or words of inspiration for our listeners, especially for younger people that are considering going into this field or have started out in the field?

SPEAKER_01 39:38

For younger generation. Well, I would say if you embrace a career in hospitality, don't look only for hospitality opportunities. Look beyond the banking world is really needing you, the private banking world, insurance, even startups. I'd love to have someone from EHL or wherever working with us, and that'd be fantastic because you really have special skills that nowhere else are taught and nowhere else are executed so well than from the hospitality school. So that's really my advice. And maybe for younger people, if you have an idea, create your company early, not like me, not at 55. Create your company the minute you have the idea. Don't wait for it. It's really a great journey. I would end on this, Crystal, if that's fine with you.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

Okay. Robert, thank you so much for being part of our 50 Shades of Hospitality adventure, for giving us your insights, for describing your very interesting uh career path. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

No problem. Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

This episode is brought to you by Swiss Hospitality Guild, the reference in training for hospitality professions and leading authority in hospitality training. SHG is renowned for its excellence in preparing professionals for the hospitality industry. Winning medals at prestigious competitions like Swift Skills, Your Skills, World Skills, and the AICREST Reception is contest.