As a special preview for Insider readers, we present two excerpts from our upcoming podcast conversation starring international hotel guru Bashar Wali. Listen out for the full audio which is due to go live in the next few weeks – we promise you won’t want to miss it!
When Bashar Wali speaks, the hospitality world tends to sit up and listen. Whether it’s his six-figure LinkedIn following, the avid consumers of his TED Talks, or the rapt crowds for his appearances at conferences and other industry gatherings, this is a man with an audience.
He also puts his money where his mouth is, as Founder and CEO of a clutch of businesses that he runs from his adopted home of Portland, USA. These include hotel management company Practice Hospitality and lifestyle hotel brand, Another.
Thanks to the matchmaking skills of longtime Insider favorite Stanislas Helou, we managed to secure a precious hour of Bashar’s time to record an episode of The Insider Podcast. You’ll be able to hear that episode in full shortly; but as an appetizer, we’ve gathered a couple of snippets of conversation and turned them into a special bonus Leadership Insights feature for this issue.
Enjoy!
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Martin Green (MG) Insider Podcast host: You mentioned the word tribe, which intrigues me, because I know that the creation – or the finding – of a tribe has been a big part of the whole lifestyle hotel development. Is that something you do in relation to the hotels that you’re involved with? Can those tribes be found?
Bashar Wali (BW): So, if you combine everything I said, this idea of longing for belonging, this idea that we all want to be together. And I like to use this word that people don’t like: cult. Cult has negative connotations about it, but ‘cult’ is a part of ‘culture’. Apple is a cult. If Apple tomorrow made toilet paper and sold it for 25 pounds a roll, you would buy it because you subscribe to the cult. Now the quality better be there and there better be a reason for it to be worth that much, but (as an Apple cult member) you’re blindly buying it day one without even knowing a thing about it and with zero advertising.
A lot of these brands that we love and admire are cults in their own right; and they have cult leaders, like it or not. I mean, every brand we generally love tends to have a human at the front; it’s not some big dark corporate thing even in the hotel world, right? Whether it’s André Balazs with Chiltern Firehouse, whether it’s Ian Schrager, whether it’s Bill Kimpton, Bill Marriott, on and on.
I think if there became a checklist for how to do this, it becomes diluted and not worth it. There’s not a checklist for it. It’s 10,000 things you do that create that environment, which in turn creates this sort of cult following for certain brands. Some brands are brilliant at it, and some brands are not.
Now the question is, how do you create a cult? How do you create a tribe? How you create culture? We humans, obviously, our very first goal – very, very, first goal – no matter what anyone tells you, is to survive. Safety is hugely important to us. So, when you walk through my doors, I make you feel like you belong. You’re home now and you’re safe, literally and figuratively safe. I think your guard is down, your senses are heightened and all of a sudden the lighting is better, and the scent is better, and the food is better. And that all comes from the people, not from the things.
So, if there was ever a list on how to create a tribe or a cult then it’s dead; it’s over. I don’t want to be in it! I really think it’s practicing what you preach and creating environments that are conducive to this and then hoping for the best – there is no 100% guaranteed formula for success.