2023-12-19
11 分钟Monocle Radio’s senior correspondent, Fernando Augusto Pacheco, speaks to Bob van den Oord, CEO of the Hong Kong-based Langham Hospitality Group. He tells us about a record year for the group and its plans for expansion next year. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello and welcome to the Monaco Weekly.
I'm Fernando Gusto Pascu, and for today's show, I speak with Bob Van Den Oort, CEO of Hong Kong based Langen Hospitality Group.
This year is said to be the best performance in history for the group across its 32 hotels in four continents.
Bob tells me a little bit more about it.
Yeah, thank you so much, Fernando.
It's great to be here.
I'm a great fan of Monocle and really lovely to have the time to chat with you and indeed your readers.
Look, I've been with langham now for 25 years, and I started in Boston and then from Boston, I went to Hong Kong, did different roles, different positions, worked in different parts of the world, came to London to manage our Langham London here, and indeed, overseeing hotels in the United States and the Middle east and Europe.
And of course, now I've recently come back to Hong Kong to take over the helm of the group, and it's a privilege to do so.
So, Bob, you've mentioned before that you've used to work quite close to the Langen, right?
Yeah, that's right.
When I started my career, I think I was 20 years of age and I was working in this hotel across the street from us here, the St.
George's Hotel.
I was in charge of breakfast in those days.
And every morning I would look out of the window at this hotel.
It was the Langham Hilton in those days.
And I always thought, gosh, if ever I can work at a hotel like that.
So it's great that I've now come full circle and not only having worked at the Langham London, but now actually overseeing the whole Langham Group.
It's very exciting and it's a dream come true.
How do you see hospitality now?