Beyond Service: Inspiring the Future of Hospitality

Maxime Blot, Meilleur Ouvrier de France (French Best Craftsman) for Hotel Reception, talks to our listeners about this professional honor and describes the demanding process of competing and winning this prestigious award.  Maxime has worked in some of the most prestigious and luxurious palaces in the world and in this podcast, he describes his first few years of honing and perfecting his skills.  

 Maxime also talks to us about his current job as a hospitality consultant and the Hospitality Insiders podcast producer and host.  We find out more about what motivated Maxime to create his hospitality podcast and why he thinks his podcasts can support and motivate hospitality professionals. Maxime also shares his ideas on the current French hospitality industry and the kinds of challenges it currently faces. For Maxime, service excellence and the use of cutting-edge technology are the keys to improving hospitality service. 

 Maxime Blot is a recognized leader in the world of hospitality, renowned for his commitment to service excellence and his innovative approach to guest experience. With nearly two decades in the industry, he has mastered the art of hospitality, earning the prestigious title of Meilleur Ouvrier de France 2023 in the category of hotel reception—one of the highest distinctions in French craftsmanship.

As the founder of Hospitality Insiders, Maxime shares his expertise through consulting, training, coaching, and keynote speaking, helping professionals and businesses elevate their service standards. His deep understanding of guest expectations and operational efficiency makes him a sought-after expert for luxury hotels and high-end establishments.

He is also the voice behind the Hospitality Insiders Podcast, the first French podcast dedicated to service excellence, where he interviews industry leaders and shares insights on creating unforgettable guest experiences.

Passionate about craftsmanship in hospitality, Maxime embodies the idea that exceptional service is not just a profession—it’s an art. Whether advising hotel brands, coaching teams, or inspiring the next generation, his mission remains the same: to redefine excellence in hospitality, one guest at a time."

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Get in touch with GDM Market. The founder of the SHT. I'm the producer of this show. By emailing welcome at Swiss Hospitality Guild.com. Good afternoon and welcome to Fifty Shades of Hospitality. This is Crystal Cavan, your host. Today we are happy to welcome Maxime Bloh to our program. Maxime, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you on our podcast today. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Hi Crystal, very happy to be here between podcasters. My name is Maxime Bloh, as you said. I'm 33 years old. I will describe myself as a hotelier, first of all. I started when I was 14, 15 years old, let's say. I'm in a hospitality school in Grenoble and I did all my education, mostly Grenoble and then Chambéry. I'm in France, obviously. Up to a license, well, a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree in hospitality with a specialty in revenue management. After that, I moved to Paris and I worked for about 10 years in hotels. Well, not going to name them all, but mostly the peninsula, which is uh of course one of the most famous. I did the opening of the peninsula in 2014 from um the front desk side, the receptionist side. I worked as a receptionist and uh front desk supervisor, night manager. So I worked at night for two years before I moved to another hotel, and I became uh well front desk manager, as they say. And this was my last position, hotel position, because as you know, 2020 something happened, a big crisis, and the hotel where I worked uh was closed, and it actually closed for one year and a half. Wow, so I had plenty of time, and it was actually cannot complain because it was one of the best opportunities I had ever because I became an entrepreneur, meaning I created my company. Well, let's be honest, in 2020 I didn't know I would create my company, but I had free time and I thought, oh, maybe I could do some trainings for people, maybe I could share some knowledge on LinkedIn, then create a podcast, and so on. And in 2021, when the company where worked reopened, I said, guys, you saw me on the on social networks, you know what I'm doing now. I have my own company, and this is how I left being an employee and I created my own uh company. If and if you want, I can briefly present what I do nowadays. Yes, yes, please do. Sure. So Hospitality Insiders is a company that has three main pillars. One is called uh education, where I give classes, uh lessons in schools, mostly Ferrandi here in Bordeaux because I live in Bordeaux in the southwest of France. I have also a business part, it's mostly with hotels. I do audit trainings, coachings, and conferences as well for hotels. And the third one it's the media pillar with mostly the podcast. So the podcast show is also called Hospitality Insiders, and I have one episode per week, mostly with hoteliers, but not always, and we talk about excellence of service. Hospitality Insiders is actually the first French-speaking podcast regarding hospitality and uh excellence of service.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Excellent.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

So, as you can imagine, it's uh a very busy uh work as an entrepreneur, but well, I'm sure you know what it is.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Absolutely. And having a podcast definitely takes a lot of time.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Oh, yes, it does.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

As you mentioned, Maxime, you too are a podcast producer and a podcast host. What exactly motivated you to create your hospitality podcast?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Now that you have the story, let's get back to 2020. At that time, podcast shows, at least in French and in France, they were not so famous. But I started to listen to some of them, and I became a big fan of podcasts, meaning I could listen for hours, two, three, four hours of podcasts a day, and remember I had nothing else to do. Uh and I realized that uh there was no content about hospitality as a media, except the traditional you know media that we all know, like paper medias, and nothing was audio or video, and it was a trend at the time, and it still is. So I thought, why not creating the podcast I would love to add when I was 15 years old? And this is how uh hospitality insiders also became a podcast. At the beginning, it was one podcast per month, then uh two podcasts two episodes per month, and I started with the people I knew uh working in the in the field, and then I went wider to other people, and every time I have uh a guest, I asked for recommendations, so the person recommends me to someone else, and now I've I had more than 80 guests to the show on 100 episodes in total because there are solo episodes as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Excellent, fantastic. When you started this podcast project, Maxime, what were your expectations? And for you, do you think your goals have been achieved? Can you actually quantify your successes and how the podcast is doing?

SPEAKER_00 6:06

It's hard to say because when I created the show, my first goal was to share knowledge, to share knowledge to the students I was 15 years ago, and also to the people that are passionate about hospitality and would like to know more, and to go with my microphone to the leaders that usually you cannot talk to and to share that knowledge. But uh, if I would have to, you know, put a cappy eye on it, it's hard to measure, but I wanted to have more and more listeners every month. After four years of uh podcasting, I'm still not happy with it. You know what it is. Podcasts are always hard to have many listeners, but even if I don't have so many listeners, I'm pretty happy because it's very consistent and it I mean it grows up consistently every month. I have more and more people listening, and uh I have more and more feedback as well. And that's the point. And what's funny now it's uh that the podcast life became real as well because when I go to any hospitality event, like yesterday at an event in Paris, the people they they recognize me because of the voice on the face, because I'm also on YouTube, so they also see the videos, it's very funny.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

That's great. It's interesting because uh you've mentioned that you know you really wanted this podcast to be an educative tool. Have you been in contact with hospitality educational schools to encourage them to use these podcasts for teaching?

SPEAKER_00 7:34

I did not on my side, but I had some teachers that sent me messages to ask my permission to share that uh knowledge into their schools. So I said, of course, that's definitely the goal of that podcast. So use it for free. Of course, this is uh a free content for everyone, but also I've worked with schools. I said about uh Ferrandi before I work with them as a teacher, but also they sponsor me sometimes on the podcast directly. So we have another kind of partnership, good for them because they make also the promotion of the school, and also they share the content on the website for the students, and we have internal uh communications with them. So it's definitely a good way for me. I mean, to have this information shared and also for them, and especially the students, to learn more about things you don't actually learn at school.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Exactly. And one of the reasons we began this podcast was one of our former students was the one who mentioned or came to us and said, Hey, you should do a podcast. Young people today they listen to podcasts. We agree with this idea that a lot of young people would rather listen to a podcast than perhaps open up a book and uh read some information. Here they've got a much more lively way of learning things.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

And let's be honest, we don't have time. I mean, it's a battle of attention, you don't have so much free time myself. I don't read books during the day, I don't have time. However, when I take the train, the metro, when I'm on my bike, I listen to podcasts when I cook as well. So I can listen to one, two hours of podcast shows per day, and I keep learning every day. You cannot do that with any book or any other contents.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Yeah, I've had uh a podcast listener tell me that she listens to our podcast while she's running. So, Maxime, in 2023, you became a muff, M-O-F, Meur ouvrier de France. For those of you who don't speak French, it means the best receptionist in your case in France. Can you tell us about becoming a meilleur ouvrier de France and how this highly recognized honor has affected you personally and professionally? And maybe just give a little background because uh some people may not, you know, outside of France, may not understand what an honor it is to receive this.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Sure. I know that you already received uh muff on your show, so maybe some of your listeners already know what it is, but meilleurvries France, best craftsmen, it's a state recognition that we only have in France that recognize people in different fields. So you have more than 200 different fields. The most famous, of course, are chef, but also sommelier, pastry chef, and so on and so on. We celebrated in 2024 the century of the competition. But when I started my career, I was very frustrated because I was passionate about reception, the front desk part. However, we didn't have any title of MOF for the reception part. And um in 2015, for the first time, they created the competition of MOF also for the receptionist, and only one person had the title since that. So her name is Claire, Claire Duplex, in 2015, and as you might know, the competition takes place every three years. So 2018 no one had the title because it's not actually a competition, we call it an exam. Meaning that you can have five winners, but also no winner if no one has the level of points necessary for the competition.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Oh, that's interesting. I did not know that. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

So 2018, no one, and then 2021. The competition did not happen because of COVID, so they reopened in 2023. So let's get back to 2020 again, COVID time. I saw that the competition will open, I said, why not? I feel ready, I did not feel ready to be honest, in 2015 nor uh 2018. So let's go. And for two years, I definitely forgot about the competition because we didn't have any email about it. Everybody was only thinking about COVID times, and then it was um January 2023, and I received a famous email saying, Hey, the muff competition is taking place finally. Are you still interested in doing it? So I said, of course, yes, and um January I did the first step, which is you know, role plays, they test your level as a receptionist, French, English, you deal with complaints situations that you could have at the front desk, so it's pretty challenging, but it's not the biggest part. The main part takes place uh three months after when you have uh what they call the piece of art or the chef d'oeuvre in French. It's a work that you have to do. So you can imagine as a pastor chef, it's pretty easy to imagine a big cake, but as a receptionist, I cannot do I cannot cook, and I'm not very good at pastry by the way. So we had a piece of work to do. In my case, it was that they gave us a fake hotel, fake four-star hotel, and we had to create the journey of employees inside the hotel, taking into account CSR policy of the hotel that we had to create also. So I decided to create my own journey for the employees, and I imagine everything with the logo, what the employee will receive, the pen with the logo of the hotel, and also a mug, and behind the mug you would have a QR code, and when you scan this QR code, I created an app. So there was like a hundred personalized app of the hotel with all the e-learning, all the values of the hotel information, and also an internal chat directly inside the app. So that's the work I presented. So again, it's hard to give to show, but I had to give something because in the competition you need to give in hand something that they can touch. So this is why I created that mug with the QR code. So guess what? In last year, uh I had the privilege of being uh honored to be uh muff, and I was the only one.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Excellent.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

We are only two people to go that type.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Congratulations! It's a big honor, it's a huge honor.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

It's a huge honor. Definitely I feel blessed about what happened to me. I feel also, yeah, it's a nice recognition, but I feel also duty. The duty of sharing the knowledge and showing that being a receptionist in a hotel is not just giving keys to guests, it's definitely way more. And I think I have a responsibility to share that and make sure that this job and even bigger, this industry is more attractive to the people that don't know it.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah, absolutely. Yes, and you're absolutely right. Most people do not realize how difficult and complicated it is to be a receptionist. It's can be very, very stressful. You have to stay extremely calm and polite in sometimes extremely difficult situations. So, oh yes, definitely. Now, tell us how do you think being mayor ouvrier de France recognition contributed to the podcast project? Do you think it helped you having this great honor?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Honestly, I don't think it helps for the podcast directly, meaning I don't think I have more listeners or people that uh listen more carefully because I'm muff. However, it definitely helps me into my business because when I talk to uh potential clients, you know, in case they would doubt about uh my ability to help them, there is the title. You know, it's a label of quality. So I use it like this. I wouldn't say I have more clients since the muff, but I have more easily clients that sign with me because they don't doubt, they know that this person in front of them has this title, so it's probably one of the best in its category.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Absolutely. In your opinion, Maxime, did your experience in these prestigious French properties help you to become the mayor ouvrier of France and also to win the AICR best receptionist, which we haven't really talked about either. We'll talk a little bit more about that. But how did these two come together for you, these experiences?

SPEAKER_00 15:56

It's all related. I started my career in palaces in 2013 at the Royal Monceau. It was still an internship at that time, and uh finishing my master's degree, and then I moved to uh peninsula the year after, and um, it gave me the spirit of excellence, the orientation to details. No, there is a level of consistency that you need to have when you're working these kind of hotels that you don't have in any other hotel. It's definitely I'm talking about Palace, which is in French Palace, is a label that exists that makes the difference between five certain palaces. But let's say on a global level, it's the best hotels in the world. And how do we recognize the best hotels? Well, usually there is of course the price, but also the level of service and the number of people that work per room. If you want to have a ratio that's above two employees per room and three, may sometimes four employees per room, you're starting usually to have a very high level of service. So, working in that kind of hotels made the person I am I learned so much. And 2014 again, I started in in August, and two months after they called me. I mean, my manager called me and said, Do you know about the AICR competition, the Trophée David Campbell, that was the name at that time. Said, I don't really know, it's actually so the competition of the best uh receptionist uh in France, and we think you should do it. And they said that to another colleague of mine. So this is how we prepared uh Kim, my colleague and myself, to that competition. So during uh one month, we prepared to definitely peninsula helped me having the spirit and also the preparation to go to that competition. But I didn't win actually the competition, I finished second at that one, but it probably you know gave me the energy and also the pension to the competitions. And since that day I remember uh I thought about the MOF, but 2014, if you still follow, uh the MOF did not exist in the receptionist category, so I had to wait a bit.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Well, and it sounds like the peninsula was actually behind you, they supported you in this uh for the AI CR competition.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

I mean they had to. Any student or any employee that goes to a competition needs to have support. Alone, you're not-I mean, you're not strong enough. I was just a young boy starting in this industry, I didn't know nothing except that I loved it, and I had to learn a lot, even if I saw that I knew everything, you know, at that age you think you know everything, and 10 years after you think you know nothing. But I remember um that I learned a lot and had managers that trained me, coached me. We had the private sessions with the coach, someone that already did the competition 10 years before, and um, yeah, of course they supported me, and without them I would never do it, and also because they were able to adapt my schedule to the competition and to the preparation.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

So let's just talk a little bit more about the AICR, the best receptionist competition. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about what this AICR is? We have had a few guests that have also, you know, been involved with AICR, but maybe just remind our listeners what exactly is it just in France? Is it the global organization?

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Yeah, AICR, I think it started in France to be honest. Still the name is French, it's Amicale International de Chefs de Reception, meaning it's an association of the front desk manager and also directors of hotels. Now it's a global association, but it started in France, in Paris, then in the south of France. They created their own competition to promote the position of receptionist because there was no moth at that time, and because it was important to show again the skills of a receptionist, and that they also had the need to gather and to share knowledge. And since 2014, I'm still part of the AICR. I don't have so much time, and most of the meetings are in Paris or in the south of France, so it's hard for me to go there, but I always am an active member, at least uh a digital active member, let's say it this way.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Through your podcast interviews, let's go back a little bit to uh your experience and your podcast. Can you take stock of the current situation of hospitality in France? What do you think are the needs right now? Where are the gaps? What are the strengths? What are maybe the weaknesses?

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Sure. So I'm not talking about podcasts, right? About the hospitality industry in France.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Yes, but given the fact that you do these podcasts, I'm sure that a lot of your guests discuss the situation, the current situation.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

I would say there are two levels, two different levels actually. The side of the customers. Uh, now in 2024, the activity in Paris and in France is pretty high. We still complain a lot. In France, we love to do so, but we actually have a level of activity in our hotels that is almost the same as 2019, meaning before COVID times. So we're back again. The customers, most of the countries they're back in France, they visit a lot. This year we had the Olympic Games. It's always good to have Olympics in terms of economy, but I think it will be not good that year, but probably during the next years, because the reputation, you know, the marketing it does for your country has an impact during the coming years. So the activity is pretty high. However, the other side, the other level, if you look at it this way, is about employees. This is definitely where we have an issue. We had already before COVID a lack of employees, a huge one, and uh we lost more than 200,000 employees during COVID in France.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Oh wow, oh my goodness, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

And you need to imagine it's not only the numbers, which is huge, it's also about the quality of the people. People that had experience they left the industry because they realized that maybe it would be better to be. With family and to change the career. Now we're starting to recruit new people again, but they don't have this experience, they don't have this mentality. So we lost kind of our skills on the way. So this is definitely something we need to work more on because on one side we have a lot of activity still going up, and on the other side, we still not have enough employees to satisfy our customers. And as you can imagine, the result is the quality of service is too low compared to the level of price, which is too high. So that's definitely an issue for our country, and probably not only our country, to be honest, but definitely in France, this is something that I realize a lot. Talking to my guests on the show, but also being in hotels every week, talking to students that do internship. I see that a lot, most of the hotels I work with.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Yeah, you're right. We keep hearing this. I think the pandemic, everybody has said basically the same thing: that there were way too many people that left the industry because well, for many reasons.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

But if I might emphasize on this part, I wouldn't like the people to think it's because of COVID. It's not because of COVID. COVID revealed showed a situation that already existed before. We lost the people not because of COVID, but they realized that the situation we put them in was not the situation they would discern. That in any other industry except hospitality tourism, they would have a better treatment and a better at least a better treatment or a better salary or both. You don't have to be that clever to understand that I mean no one will stay in hospitality just because of patient. Yes, it's a position of patient, but you need to have a bit more of patient. You need to have recognition, you need to have good conditions, treatment, salary, and this is how we keep the people. And now that's the good point of COVID, according to me. Hotels, they realize that, and they're now fighting to get employees coming, try to recruit the best and to train them so they spend more money in recruiting and training the people to have it's not only the best customers that we want to have, but also the best employees in our hotels.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

And is France relying a lot on people from other countries to fill some of these positions? I mean, what percentage do you think are people working in the hospitality sector are French? And what percentage do you think are people coming from other countries? Because we hear that a lot, that a lot of countries are having to rely on uh people from other countries.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

I don't know the percentage to be precise. However, yes, there are a lot of people. Let's not look only at the figures, but also where these people are. People from immigration, this is what we're talking about. They work uh at the kitchen, they work at the housekeeping. We don't see them a lot in front of the guests, often because of an issue of language, sometimes skills, sometimes something else. But it's I mean, we do have these people, and thanks to we have them because otherwise we will have no one to clean our rooms, to clean our dishes in our kitchens, because French people they usually don't like to do it. So we rely on uh immigration a lot. So it's definitely something we need to keep having in France, but also to train these people, these people from immigration, because they're a good way of replacing the people that we lost during the last years.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Absolutely. We've heard from many of our guests, including you just now, saying that the hospitality sector is going through a crisis. What do you think needs to be done to get the hospitality sector back on its feet? I mean, you're laying out some really important issues. The fact that hours are often really long, the pay is not very good, they don't feel appreciated. What can the hospitality sector do to change this?

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Sure. For me, the key word is attractiveness. We need to work on the attractiveness of the hospitality sector. We need to make it sexy. We need to have people that will die to work into that industry because it's so nice to work in hospitality. And to do so, well, we need to communicate marketing about what it is to work in that industry. We will make the links with what I do, with my podcast, and uh also with the this title. This is something I communicate a lot in schools and um outside the schools as well to say, you know, it's a nice industry. We had some troubles, we did not recognize the people to their work, but we're changing, so we're changing our mindsets, we're changing the way we treat the people, and you can come and it's a nice place to work. You know, that way we will improve recruitment, we'll have more people, we'll have more time to train them because of less turnover. People will not leave to any other industry because it's nice to stay in hospitality. We will level up piece by piece the hospitality level of service. I mean it's easy to say, hard to do, of course, but I think it's definitely the main keyword that I will keep.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Yeah, and I think as you were saying, I think a lot of people in the industry have realized that they were perhaps asking a little bit too much of uh people in the sector. The hours were sometimes just you know ridiculously long. And if you know, I think the new generation, I don't know if you agree with this, but it sounds like a lot of people have commented that the younger generation coming in are much more interested in having a healthy life work balance, and that if the industry wants to survive, they have to respect this, they have to be able to work with this younger generation that is not maybe willing to work 16-hour days.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

No, on being paid for only 35 or 40 hours, that's also the point. Yes, of course. I mean, we like to complain about new generations, people always do, and we always complain about the next generation. It is true that the Gen Z, the new generation coming, they're already working. Some of them I coach some Gen Z managers, they're already managers in hotels. When you talk to them, they're willing to work, but they are not stupid, they don't want to work for free and they don't want to work only. They also have, as you said, to have a life balance, to be home sometimes, to have some weekends sometimes, not work uh night shifts all the time to be paid for the value they add to the company. So definitely we pad and we still have to change the way we treat them because they won't accept what even my generation, which is not that old, accepted before, and even more the generations before.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

How do you think that hoteliers can improve and embrace service excellence?

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Hard question. A lot of work, I would say. I would start by the people again, because this is what we talked about having the right people at the right place in your hotel. So it's recruitment and then training. Make sure that you train them not once in a while, once in a year, but all the time. You know, it's continuous training to make sure that your employees they get better every day. It goes by maybe outside people or trainers like me, but also internally, having the managers here to help people improve. So it's a dynamic to have that level of service as high as possible and as consistent because for me it's the biggest challenge that we have in terms of service, it's consistency of service. It's easy to be good once with one customer, it's hard to be good all the time with all the customers.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Let's just quickly talk a little bit quickly about technology and digitalization. How is this evolving currently in the hospitality field? And what are your predictions for the future?

SPEAKER_00 29:24

I like to say that hospitality is an old lady. She doesn't like to move too fast, to change too fast, but she's evolving, you know, slowly. Now it's better than ever. Hoteliers they have accepted that uh they couldn't work without technologies. So we have more and more technologies in hotels: cloud PMS, connected CRM, other tools, internal tools to help you improve, and at the end of the day, to remove as much admin part, as much paperwork as possible. That's definitely also my opinion. If you put technology, if you put digital, it's not here to replace the humans, it's here to you know give you some space so your employees can look after their customers and their other employees when they are managers, so they can look after other humans, and they have one technology that makes something you know automatically and it removes all the paperwork, so it's definitely better. Uh, now with AI, it's going to be even faster. Some tools I work with definitely makes life easier. I mean, I would love to be me as a receptionist 10 years ago with the AI tools that we have already because you go so much faster.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We're gonna wrap up this podcast. Maxime, today you have the opportunity to address young people who are aspiring to careers and hospitality in and outside of France. What is your message of encouragement and motivation that you have for them?

SPEAKER_00 30:56

If you're a student, don't get satisfied by what you learn at school. It's not enough. I mean, it's a basis that you need to have into your past as a human being, but especially as a hospitality worker. But don't get satisfied, it's not enough. You need to learn more. So when I finished my master's degree, imagine I had the eight years of studying hospitality, I had four diplomas, I thought I knew everything. I thought learning was over for me. I was nice, I don't have to learn anymore. I was 22, I'm very young and naive. Well, guess what? I have learned so much more during the last years because there is not a day where I don't spend time to improve myself, listen to podcasts, read books, you know, a newspaper, every uh quality content that you can put into your brain, take it, put it into your brain. Because definitely will help you being a better person when you don't realize a defect in it can have, not in one or two months, but in one or ten years. Imagine after 10 years learning every day new things, the power, the new person that you will become. I went that way, and I changed a lot since I'm 22, 10 years ago, 11 years ago, because I accepted that I had to learn and improve myself every day, and I'm changing and I'm changing my mind, and hopefully, I will be even a better person in 10 years because I still have you know this mindset of an everyday learning. So take everything, every opportunity every day to learn and uh get better.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

That sounds great to me. Lifelong learning. Maxime, thank you so much for being with us this afternoon to speak about your experience and about your hospitality business and your podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kristal. It 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.