Inside the Alpine Resort Where Mindfulness and Enjoying Life Coexist Naturally - Daniel Lauber, CERVO

Matthias: Today is one of actually my year's highlights and also kicking off the snowing season, the skiing season, I guess. I have the pleasure of talking to an incredible creator, the owner of and the mastermind behind the CERVO Mountain Resort in Zermatt, Switzerland. The CERVO is the winner for best resort at the prestigious AHEAD Awards, I think two years ago, three years ago, has been ranked among the best three hotels in Switzerland for years now in a row. Switzerland is definitely not a place of bad hotels, so to say something, I guess. As a member of Design Hotels, Daniel Lauber, welcome to the show.

Daniel: Good morning, Matthias. Hope you're well. I'm sitting here in Zermatt. It snowed last night, and when I woke up, it was beautifully covered in snow. So we're ready for a great winter.

Matthias: So you said the same, great. Actually, it's snowing in Munich too, but not that much, so it's not half. Daniel, to maybe kick this off for those who haven't been or haven't heard that much about CERVO, on paper, it's a five-star resort, right? It has, I think, a structure that's classified four-star, but then who cares about stars anyway? You have a couple of restaurants, you have a spa, so on the surface, it looks like basically textbook luxury resort typology, but then there's an unusual openness to the concept and connectedness to the local community, to people in general. Why don't you introduce our listeners a little bit to the philosophy behind CERVO? Why did you do it and how do you hold that space together and keep it open at the same time?

Daniel: Well, since the beginning, that was 2009 when we had the opening, we always wanted that the hotel is very open also towards locals and other guests from town or other guests visiting Zermatt and even staying in other hotels or apartments because we believe that the beauty of a hotel, it's beside the design, beside the concept, it's simply creating a space where people can lead and work and enjoy and interact and I think that's the beauty that a hotel creates this space and that was, since the beginning, a very important part of us. You mentioned CERVO, it's on paper, a five-star hotel. We have one addition that is a four-star hotel. But yeah, who cares about stars? We always said, and especially since the last five, six years when we had a little evolution of the concept and also an extension, that it's more a way of living. And maybe that explains a bit more. I think the German word Lebensgefühl is almost more precise, but let's call it way of living, that it really it's a lifestyle, it's how the people interact, how the food, how the music is curated and that makes CERVO quite a holistic concept.

Matthias: Okay, that's kind of interesting, because if we're looking at all the outlets, right, you have restaurants, you have one with Valais cuisine, if that's the way to pronounce it, I don't know. You have an Italian one, right, you have an Oriental one, and in the spa you have, I don't know, you have a Japanese onsen bath, and you have Mongolian yurts, I think, and bath rituals from Bhutan, was it? So again, and I've read people describe you as either glocal, which I think is bullshit, as a word per se, and the word eclectic came up a lot, but going back to your Lebensgefühl, and I'll introduce the American listeners to Google it, what if we said English Lebensgefühl, it's a beautiful German word, maybe you should adopt it to the English language. If you look at all your, let's say, outlets or rituals or whatever, it doesn't seem like the usual collecting or shopping for exotic stuff, right? It feels more like looking at wisdoms maybe that you probably encountered or whatever around the world. And it's not so much an accumulation, but it seems a lot about depth. Is that correct?

Daniel: Definitely correct. And maybe if you look one step back, CERVO stands for deer in Italian. Zermatt is at the base of the Matterhorn and on the other side of the Matterhorn is Italy, so we have quite a close relation to the Italian Alps as well. And 16 years ago, when we started with CERVO, we said, you know what, we want to do a contemporary interpretation of a hunting lodge. And there was this design philosophy, there was also content, a lot of the food we served. And it was conscious at that time as well. We definitely had a great focus also since the beginning on supply chain and energy. We had a heat pump system for heating water and also the warm water, so the whole supply chain. But it was a nice concept from the beginning and we followed that path for 7, 8, 9 years with that hunting lodge theme, quite Alpine, and at a certain point we said, you know what, this is nice, this is beautiful, maybe that was at that time a bit different than some other more, let's say, classic Alpine hotels with a holistic philosophy, but it wasn't enough for us. 2020, I mentioned that already, but before we had an extension and also an evolution of the concept. And we said, listen, there is much more than just being that nice, warm hotel with a clean yet Alpine design slash hunting theme. It's more than that. And we created the claim beyond exploring, which basically our vision, where we want to go. So we said, you know what Zermatt is a fantastic place to discover the Alps, the mountains, the skiing, the forest, you name it. But it's also a great place to discover yourself because you have the time to discover yourself. And that was all pre-COVID. So we really packed that all in. And around that, beyond exploring, we started the evolution of the concept, of the design, but also the extension. And that's why we created also several new restaurant concepts. So one was the Italian dimension, Madre Nostra. Therefore, it was very important to have as much as possible locally food, locally resourced food, and the beauty in Italian cuisine is it's a simple cuisine. You focus on the product. The product is key. So we really focus there on great products. And Madre Nostra stands for Mother Earth or Our Mother slash Mother Earth. So we really want to have a big respect towards the product, whether it's meat, whether it's fish, whatever. That was one restaurant. We kept the Ferdinand, that's our classic Swiss fondue raclette Valais cuisine. It's a must-have, pretty much 100% of the ingredients are served locally, including the wine. So that we kept and we said, you know what, if we create that beyond exploring, we also want a more conscious restaurant that is mainly focused on vegetarian and vegan cuisine. And we named it Bazaar, with a focus on Middle Eastern Moroccan cuisine. But Bazaar stands also a bit, it's a melting pot, where locals meet, where ski instructor meets after the ski run, where the hotel guest meets. It's a restaurant, it's slash a bar, slash a lounge, and it's a shop, so pretty much everything you see you can buy, and you can negotiate and trade as you would be in the Medina in Marrakech. That was also all a bit linked to the spa. That was definitely also a great evolution and extension of the project five years, five, six years ago. The Atman Mountain Spa. We really said, you know what, let's stop creating a spa that has, I don't know, 10 different saunas and five hammams and whatever, because at the end you're stressed in the spa to use all the saunas and all the facilities.

Matthias: Too many decisions again.

Daniel: Just really focus a mindful path through one hammam, one sauna. There's a fantastic natural pool outdoor where you can plunge in even in the winter after the sauna. There we do a lot of also ice bathing with breathwork. And we have a ritual room where we host yoga sessions, meditations, but also ceremonies. We work with traveling yogis and people come visit us. And it's not to say that we want to have a mixed match of different cultures. We want to have more great examples of how people can be mindful and recover and recharge and do that in a safe environment of a Swiss Alpine five-star hotel. And that's where we are a bit experimental at once, but also very, very, very easygoing. And we always say, you know what, if somebody wants to just do a sauna because he wants to do a sauna, then do a sauna. If you want to do a sauna with breathwork and jump in the ice bath and have an ice bath experience, then do it. And of course, a lot of things we do also guided.

Matthias: Yeah, I think that's such an... I had another conversation with Jana Zerns a couple of weeks ago about what does luxury mean these days. It seems to me it's a lot about, as you said, experiencing yourself and getting away from schedules and decisions, right? And basically have a set of resources but no pressure, right? So there's stuff you can do, but you don't have to perform leisure, basically, like so many people try to do, right? And I also loved what you said about Bazaar, but I think it's another example of the depth that I'm feeling when I look at your place, because again, you seem to not only... And also, it goes back to what you said at the beginning about people coming together and gathering, so it's not just, you know, let's do a little bit of Oriental dishes, because that's fancy right now. But it's about capturing the idea of being together to share a meal, to share stories and stuff, right? So the social aspect, much more. And what you just said about, you said Alpine a couple of times. And I had a conversation with Stijn Oyen from the MD of Design Hotels, who you probably know very well, because you're a member. A couple of months ago, actually, we talked a lot about authenticity and what does it mean to be authentic? And it seems to me that often in hospitality, we kind of misuse authenticity and say, this is like an authentic Swiss hotel or an authentic Italian hotel. And we stick to a very narrow set of what's always been there, right? As opposed to an authenticity where what seems like what you've been doing, right? So you build something with a sense of place and everything and then you basically absorbed new or ancient or whatever things from the past and created basically your own personal authenticity, right? Is that a concept for you? So is it important for you to... Or do you think it's an important success factor actually and also important for you to find your own interpretation of stuff and not just say it's always been like that and this is authentic?

Daniel: No, I totally agree. I think that's also part of our innovation we always have in CERVO. We do not stick stiff with a concept already the last 16 years and I think you explained it very well. Often authenticity is, you know, they want to have local charm and only local dishes and maybe, which could be nice, I don't want to say that's a totally wrong path, but I think authenticity is, for me, a more complex word, saying, hey, what you do as a team, but also as a structure, you make it the right way and very holistic. And I think then it becomes authentic, because a lot of authenticity has also to do with the staff, with the team, that feels comfortable in the environment, and when you're really part of the show, of the game, of the concept, of the philosophy. I think then it becomes a very natural environment. And I think then we go back to the Lebensgefühl, the way of living, then that's quite a natural... I think authenticity and natural should be very close. I mean, you can be authentic... I can be authentic... Let's say we would be very authentic Swiss traditional hotel with Loden and Trachten and yodeling. I think I wouldn't feel comfortable myself, because also Switzerland had a slight evolution over the last 150 years, and sometimes that authenticity is played in a wrong way. Doesn't mean tradition is wrong, don't get me wrong. I mean, also we have, sometimes we do have traditional moments, that's not wrong. But I think it's more complex than just being authentic, and I think the holistic approach definitely helps to define that and then do what you want to do in the right way and in a proper way, and then really be focused on that.

Matthias: Yeah, no, I agree. I don't think tradition per se is wrong, but I think there's also a difference between tradition and being folkloristic or something, right? Because that again would reduce it to, as you said, to Loden or whatever, so it reduces it to surface stuff. And what Stijn and I also talked a lot about, obviously, because Design Hotels, people always talk about originals, right? It's their claim, I think, still, made by originals. And I found this also very interesting and it kind of resonates, I think, to what you just said, because if you look at great hotels of great brands, basically, in general, right, it always seems to me stuff works really well and people really get excited and touched and so on and so forth by concepts that really, let's say, spiritually align with the values of the person who does it, right? If you look at Instagram, Instagram became that mega thing because Kevin Systrom was obsessed about photography. And Ace Hotel became Ace Hotel because Alec wanted to have a place for his music friends to hang out. And it seems similar to what you just said. If you want to do a truly great hotel, is it important to not think of it as, I want to do a cool hotel, and more like, as you said, about things like connecting people or gathering people or stuff. So is it important that you don't think of it as a hotel, but more of a, I don't know, a social idea or a creative idea or whatever?

Daniel: I totally agree on that. I think if your objective is to create a cool hotel, then probably you won't achieve it. If your objective is to create a space where people can exchange energy and good moments and interaction and stories and you create a place for music and art and design and then you give the space also to artists and young designers that want to produce something for that. I think also if you have a more conscious approach when it comes to, let's say, sustainability or the use of fabrics or the materials that have maybe just not only the purpose to have a nice design but also comes from fair resources or from, like in the Bazaar, a lot of the design comes actually from Marrakech. So we work with young designers from Marrakech, we work with women's associations, you know, that have a social impact. And I think that's the end. I think at the end that's so important that you create those little tiny stories in between. And I believe those little tiny stories create then the authenticity, but also the energy. And I think that also attracts the right people that appreciate that hotel. They don't need to be cool. It's not always about coolness. I think it's also about having an audience, a clientele, but also a staff that really thinks, well, that's a place where the values, the design, the holistic approach is nice. And I think that creates a special ambience and moments or whatever presence that some people might say, well, that's a cool place, or that's a place that is whole. So I think the approach comes from inside to outside and not creating something from outside to inside.

Matthias: Yeah. Yeah, that's a very good summary. You just talked about the tiny little stories. You also do a lot of not so tiny little stories, right? Because there's a lot of hotels doing programming now, right? There's, I don't know, there's a yoga teacher visiting and you're doing that too, or there's a reading exclusive for the prestigious guests of a place. What you do is like big proper festivals, right? So for example, Love Beyond is something you've been doing, right? Explain maybe a little bit about A, the idea behind Love Beyond and then in general, why is that kind of event, is maybe a bad name but gathering maybe, is so important or a natural extension of your philosophy because it's not usual right that a hotel does something for the whole village and normally you keep that to the guests.

Daniel: I think it has a bit to do with the philosophy we have, you know, behind beyond exploring. We say we have also sub-pillars. One is beyond culture, one is beyond sustainability. So below, beyond exploring, one is beyond sustainability, one is beyond culture. We talk about beyond hospitality, and we talk beyond talent, and we talk beyond hotel. And maybe let's start a bit quickly from there. So beyond exploring is our vision to create a way of living, the Lebensgefühl, the place to discover inside, outside, inwardly, outwardly. And to have that, we need great talents. We want a great team. I think that's so crucial for us, and also, you know, give them a place to work and develop themselves. I think that's very crucial. And then, of course, the hospitality should always be a big part in our industry. So, I mean, that's part of also our DNA, hospitality should be. And as mentioned, culture is another big part. I think we believe that as a hotel you should create those moments of cultural happenings but also interaction towards the community and especially in an Alpine town like Zermatt we need to have that interaction with the community also that the community feels welcome in the tourism industry because I think it's a fine line and a very important balance. We all live from tourism, let's say that generic word, but if, let's say local people that maybe are not directly working in tourism, feel uncomfortable living in an environment where the major focus is tourism, then it gets difficult. So I think that's also something we as entrepreneurs, I hope we're not only charitable, I think that's what everybody should do. We need that interaction with the local community. So what is beyond culture for us? It's the daily music that we have, we create music also for the après-ski, we have DJs, we have live bands, but we also have the traveling yogis that visit us, we have artists in residencies, and it's a beautiful way of giving young artists a chance to work on a project, but it's also great as they interact with the team, so they have meet and greets with the team, I think a lot of the staff, they don't only work in the restaurant or maybe in the housekeeping. Some of them are very artsy as well in their free time and I think that gives them sometimes a nice approach to exchange with an artist that is in residency and also for the guests that have an exchange with them. And as this is pretty much every day something happening in CERVO, we said, you know, it would be nice to really make it even more dense essence of what all we do. Whether it's the yoga, whether it's the meditation, whether it's the mindfulness, whether it's the great food, the wine, the drinking, the party. Because we always say, you know, you can be Zen in the morning, but it's nice to have an après-ski in the afternoon. I think that's the life, at least for us. I mean, if somebody wants to do a retreat in the Himalayas, that's totally fine. I mean, I would even suggest everybody should do that once in their life. But I think if you stay at CERVO, you don't want to sit in the morning, you may all day long do meditations, you maybe want to do meditation in the morning or do some breathwork or do some ice bathing, but then you have a great ski day and you end up with a great lunch in the mountain and then you join us for après-ski. So I think that's the more, how we see a nice way of spending time in Zermatt. And basically it's also what we do in every life. I think most people do. We have moments where we want to be mindful and really zen and have a good moment of meditation, but we also want to have fun and enjoy and meet people and mingle. So, to come back to Love Beyond, the output that has an essence, Love Beyond is a retreat slash festival where we host 140, 150 people. We have a great collaboration there also with Design Hotels. So we do panel discussions, we do inspirational speeches. Each year has a bit of a different topic, sometimes around sustainability, sometimes it's more around art, then we do workshops also with artists that might be in residencies. At that time we also do have music, a lot of concerts during that time and we do a lot of breathwork and meditation, meditative walks. This year we had ice bathing on the glacier, literally just below the glacier where there's a big ice lake made by the melting glacier. And so it's a great festival, a great three days of music, mindfulness, but also hedonistic moments where you have great food, chefs coming, wine degustation. So it really reflects a bit what CERVO is in essence.

Matthias: I actually so much agree to what you just said, that normally if you look at life, you know, you do, as you said, you do the Zen mornings and the après-ski evenings, the hedonistic evenings and stuff. And actually if you look at life, or at a good life, it's so full of contradictions and stuff. And when we do hotels, we try to be just something, right? We try to be either just mindful or just that. And we say it doesn't work together. And also you do, I think you also do the Unplugged thing, right? The music festival in the mountains, which I think it seems like, is it part of the fun for you to kind of break what people would originally think something looks like and then reassemble it differently? Because if you think music festival, you think about, you know, hot summer stuff and you put it into this Alpine kind of scenery and you kind of seem to...

Daniel: Well, the Zermatt Unplugged is definitely a great festival for Zermatt. It wasn't created by CERVO, it was created by Thomas Stierli, a great Zermatt fan, together with Marco Gross, which is also a friend that created the festival. Pretty much since the beginning, we support the festival on different levels, whether it's launching of sponsors or artists, but we also have one of the bigger stages during the festival, in the afternoon. I think sometimes we have 800, 900, up to 1000 people coming to CERVO for the afternoon concert.

Matthias: But again, that's normally, if you think luxury hotel...

Daniel: No, they wouldn't do that. I remember 16 years ago, when we had the opening of the hotel, there was a GM from another beautiful five-star property in Zermatt, nice gentleman, and he came and he said, this hotel, that's never gonna work. I'm sure within three months you will stop après-ski. Your guests will never allow that. And I said pretty much nothing, and today we have one of the biggest après-ski scenes in Zermatt. I would say quite sophisticated, it's definitely not a Halligalli, as another German word would say, hard to translate. It's more sophisticated, it's loungy, sometimes of course there is dancing, there is also party, but it's always on a good level. And yes, it is part of, it became part of our DNA. And if you would look at that on a normal approach of creating a five-star hotel, you would never do that.

Matthias: Exactly.

Daniel: It wouldn't work. But it works. And the nice thing is because we do it holistic, we do it also quite sophisticated and very well planned also when it comes to the music. And that's why the people enjoy it to stay there. And the nice thing also, what I realized, often they enjoy staying in the après-ski, and if they have enough of our hotel guests, they just go to the spa, to the room. And yes, we stop it at a reasonable time around 6, 6:30 p.m. So, it's a short time where it's really fun and people enjoy it. And it's also the hotel guests, sometimes I even feel they're proud to be part of that après-ski scene and also to stay there. So it shifts that, it's nice. And I think probably since the beginning, we always tried to do things not on purpose differently, but maybe with a different approach. And I think that probably we broke some rules of classic luxury in the five-star. But maybe those rules were in the minds...

Matthias: Needed to be broken, right?

Daniel: Maybe, yeah. Maybe they were in the minds of the hoteliers and in the minds of five-star tradition, but not necessarily in the minds of the guests, because the guests... I mean, come on, if you want to stay, if you go one week to a ski resort or you go one week hiking in the Alps, you want to have not a stiff classic five-star hotel. You want to have something with that service level, with that attention, with that definitely all the amenities you want, but in a very low key way. And I think that's for me the new quiet luxury that instead of having that overwhelming, which has also certain people enjoy that as well. But our success, at least I can say there was a big need from the guest side to have something a bit different.

Matthias: Yeah, absolutely. And as you said about it's time to rethink certain notions. I was, as you maybe know, I was also working at Design Hotels like 15 years ago or something. And it seems like in the beginning of the century, the bolder or fresher ideas of hospitality could actually work or look or function or flow or whatever, back then predominantly an urban context. And lately it feels like whatever happens in cities in a hotel context is kind of stagnant and people are busy either replicating each other or acquiring each other or whatever. And it seems like the interesting stuff since a couple of years seems almost exclusively happening in countryside hotels. If you look at CERVO, if you look at some of the things that are done in South Tyrol, if you look at I don't know what Klaus Sendlinger did with like Raùl in Ibiza, which is also 3META, which you've worked with, I guess, right? So why is the good stuff now always in the countryside? Is it about the slowness of those places or is it about, I don't know, is it about if you're so close to the elements and so close to stuff that's always been there, you don't just follow the superficial shit every day? So why that shift? Do you have an explanation or do you see that as well?

Daniel: I totally see it. I don't think necessarily it has to do with location. Of course, it helps when you're maybe in a more natural environment to create spaces that are maybe a bit more holistic and more mindful and more really push that approach for a new way of luxury. But I totally could see that also in a city as a hub or even as a refuge, as a shelter where you just, you know, escape that whole...

Matthias: Well, I could see it, but it doesn't seem to happen.

Daniel: Well, I think Klaus, you mentioned Klaus, he's doing that in Berlin with his Ritz House. I think that's a beautiful approach of doing this. I see it also on the spa side, or maybe New York, if you see Othership, the great sauna concept they do where you have saunas with Aufguss and breathwork and then you go to an ice bath, I mean a super zen environment and in one hour you are recharged and go back to work if you work. I wasn't working, I was running through New York. But no, I totally see that in both worlds and I think that's doable, definitely a more natural environment helps you maybe but I think at the end it's probably also a demand or let's say the need for a clientele to have more concepts where they can have a beautiful place to stay when it comes to design, that they have a holistic approach of the concept, that they have all the amenities and the service that they want to have, that they are maybe used to for more luxury experiences, but at the same time also want that more mindful approach. Yeah, I think people more and more are getting conscious about what they want and what they want to be and what they want to become. Not only as a, oh, I'm feeling bad, I want to do meditation. No, that they probably more and more include the meditation as a daily routine as billions of people did that before. The West started to do that and I think that's the nice thing. People are waking up to discover a bit more than just, okay, I do one week of vacation, I sit in the lobby, I drink margaritas and that's it. Which is nice. I think it's nice and I think at the end... That's the simplicity of a hotel. I think a hotel is a very simple concept. It creates a space. Whether it's beautiful or not beautiful, that's a question of design. Of course, for me, design or a curated experience is very important. But at the end, and I said that quite in the beginning, the beauty of a hotel is to create the space for people, I mean guests and staff, so everybody. It's not only one way towards guests. I think it's more, it's more three dimensional with the staff, with the team, with the local community that they can be there and having moments of a great time, of energy, of interaction and I think that's probably also always, but at least I believe, well, I'm a hotelier, I have to say that, but I think that's where we always win against Airbnb. A lot of hoteliers are afraid of Airbnb, I don't get their point. Airbnb, nothing against Airbnb, but vacation apartments never can create what a hotel can offer, giving that space where people can meet. It's a whole different approach. So why should we be afraid? We have something different where we have quite a USP as a hotel if we do it the right way.

Matthias: If we do it the right way, I think a lot of hotels are afraid of Airbnb because the advantage that you just mentioned, a lot of hotels lost actually the capacity or the motivation for doing that. So hotels or many hotels have been gradually shifting towards an experience that wasn't much more than an Airbnb. And then you can just as well go to an Airbnb, right? So if a hotel doesn't have this, I mean, I just like what you said about the people because I'm also, you know, I also come from the Design Hotels world and obviously design is important and stuff, but in the end, design and even like scheduled rituals and stuff are just the props, right? So at the end, the people are the point and the purpose and the beauty and everything, right? So at the end of the day, that's what hospitality is for. The rest is just hotels. I think there's a difference between hotels and hospitality.

Daniel: Well said. I think that's well said.

Matthias: As we mentioned Design Hotels a few times and you just mentioned Klaus again, and I did too. Of course, CERVO is a lot about your DNA and your intrinsic motivations. As you said, it's a lot about the team that you're doing with and the capacity to find people who share your passion and your view and everything like that. How important is it actually to be, I don't know, embedded or connected in such collectives like Design Hotels and Klaus Sendlinger and Stijn and maybe Armin Fischer from 3META? How important is it to be embedded in a broader, creative, not so hotel-focused, but more Lebensgefühl-focused community for you?

Daniel: I think the community is definitely an important part of it. I think for many people probably Design Hotels would be a, they would see it as a marketing affiliation or they would see it as a distribution channel per se or a PR company or whatever. Like Leading Hotels or like Relais & Châteaux. And I think there again, I think the difference of Design Hotels is that they also create a space where people can meet. And I think if I think of the Arena, the annual Design Hotels meeting, it's a beautiful way how they connect hoteliers. And the nice thing is still a lot of, I don't know if it's a majority, but a decent number of Design Hotels are owned independently, are run by the owners or at least the owners are very close to the product and I think that's a great interaction. And I think that pushes definitely a creativity. I think the name Design Hotels probably it's almost a bit outdated because I think it's not the design we focus on.

Matthias: No, it's not at all.

Daniel: But I mean, of course, you have to keep a name that's so strong. But it's more the content that we create together, the stories, you know. If I imagine a Love Beyond, Stijn himself, he comes and he's a beautiful gentleman. And I think it's so important that Stijn took over Design Hotels because he comes from the operation. So he knows the needs and also the troubles and sometimes the challenges we hoteliers face in daily life and operations. It's not only marketing and everything is nice, sometimes it's also a challenge and he was running hotels and he feels us and that was fantastic and I mean to work with him it's a privilege and he comes for instance to a Love Beyond and he has a speech there and other fellow hoteliers join the Love Beyond as well and it's a part of the Design Hotels community where we meet, chefs from other hotels come and do a chef's night and I think that whole interaction is fantastic and that's something you can't measure in occupancy or ADR. Of course at the end we have to have a certain occupancy and ADR but it's that essence between. So the space between zero and one, it's not one, it's infinite. And I think that's a bit what's the difference of maybe an approach like Design Hotels.

Matthias: That's very well said, yeah. I also think, as you just talked about Stijn, he also, I think, if I remember that correctly, has a strong F&B background, right? And if you look at all the people who really had, let's say, revolutionary ideas for hospitality in the past, be it Ian Schrager, André Balazs, or be it Klaus Sendlinger with his event background, or be it the Experimental guys from Paris. It seems to be, if you're coming from F&B, if you're coming from bringing people together to share conversations and meals and drinks and stuff, that seems a pretty good background for doing hotels, right? If you come from that.

Daniel: Yeah, and I think the F&B part is sometimes the toughest part and maybe not where you have the biggest, well, you might have a good revenue, but maybe not the biggest margin, like in a hotel. But I think a hotel without a restaurant has no point. I mean, that could be convenient.

Matthias: As simple as that.

Daniel: If you're in the city and you just want to sleep, but what's the point? You want to have the bar where you maybe have a drink or an espresso in the morning and have a chat with your neighbor. Imagine, CERVO has 54 rooms, we have a few more apartments nearby, so we have like 60 rooms and suites, slash apartments. Somewhere 120, 140 beds, depending on how the suites are used, and we have three restaurants. Again, on paper, everybody would say this is silly, this is stupid. One restaurant would be enough, maybe one bar, that's it. And yes, we say, you know what, we want to have this space, three complete different concepts, the hotel guest can pretty much stay one week there, doesn't need to go out. But still, we think it's great when he goes to town, because the town of Zermatt has such an amount of great restaurants, so I think it's also nice that they go to town and enjoy other restaurants. But we get a lot of other guests to our restaurants, and I think that's again where we are in the mix, that creates that lively atmosphere, whether it's après-ski, whether it's dinner time, and I think it's very important.

Matthias: I mean, everybody always asks, so what's next, right? So is there in your mind, is there the idea to kind of scale CERVO, to do more CERVOs? Can it be scaled even if it's that intense and personal, like Christoph Hoffmann, for example, takes Bikini, 25 Hours of Fame, takes Bikini to Zermatt, I think, right? So would there be a CERVO by the sea, maybe, or something like that? Do you have any intention of doing another one, doing more of that? Or is that not even scalable because it's one of a kind and it's good that it is one of a kind?

Daniel: I mean, you can scale everything theoretically.

Matthias: Does it remain good if you scale it?

Daniel: Does it remain good? Does it remain the philosophy? Does it remain the purpose? And I think that's a great question. Of course, we had those thoughts and we also had guests coming, you should do a CERVO by the beach, we want to have a concept like CERVO by the beach. And I think, as I said before, I think CERVO was always growing organically from inside to outside, also with the concept of the philosophy and also the facility. I mean, we started with 16 rooms and now we have almost 60 rooms. We started with 30, 40 staff, now we have 140 staff. So, you know, we were growing quite organically over the last 16 years. And I think to create a concept like CERVO from scratch as it is today, it's hardly, I mean, everything is probably possible. I would say it's very difficult to achieve because it wouldn't grow organically. You would just make from scratch a hotel and maybe very hard to copy that. And maybe nothing we want to do. But however, we could envision that with the philosophy that CERVO has, we could grow differently. So instead of creating really a second CERVO, copy-paste, I see that hardly possible, but I could imagine or envision that maybe we create somewhere a very nice, small, tiny restaurant that has the philosophy of CERVO in another location, or maybe it's a shop experience. It could be maybe even a mini spa that always plays them back to CERVO. So that could be an option. Let's see.

Matthias: Because again, it's the experience and the philosophy.

Daniel: So I think the experience should be always in the center and the philosophy. And then whatever, maybe it starts with a, it could be, you know, it could be a barbecue happening on the mountain and maybe at a second step there are tents around and then people start to sleep in those tents and then you create another hospitality concept. So I see it more that way. I think our next biggest step is definitely accommodation for our team. As many regions and especially also Alpine destinations, we're struggling with affordable housing. At the moment, we are quite covered with different options we have, but we want to really create more like a campus, community-wide feeling. So we have a beautiful project in the next village. It's called CERVO Refugio. So Refugio, it's a mountain hut, it's a shelter. So we want to really have a cozy place where people can stay and including coffee and bakery and spa and so on. So that's the next big project that will include a small hostel as well, because we believe that it's nice that there is also a bit more affordable lodging options in the region for people traveling. And again, it's the same concept. We want to create a space where people can meet, our staff, staff from other hotels, but also young people that travel maybe on a more affordable budget and having those common spaces again with a ritual room where we have breathwork and we are going to include a spa and we are also going to include some larger apartments for families and more affordable housing for the region. So that's the next big approach I do have.

Matthias: Next big approach. How much do you personally travel and where do you go to when you travel and is there anything that you've seen lately?

Daniel: I'm a bit spoiled when it comes to travel because I really enjoy traveling and I also believe that it's very important for my soul and also cultural exchange with other people wherever on the planet, so I probably combined, not at once, sadly not at once, I'm not yet able to do that, but combined probably I travel two to three months a year.

Matthias: Okay.

Daniel: Partly it's definitely also sales, it's not always a leisure, I'm part of the sales, I do it myself, but also there it's always a great moment to connect with people. And I don't necessarily have a favorite destination, I think it can be from Nepal to Colorado, well, both are mountains, definitely. Mostly it has something to do with mountains, because I enjoy skiing and I enjoy trekking. And then maybe I end up a few days on the beach. Or I like cities. As I live year-round in Zermatt, which is a beautiful mountain town, sometimes I need also a bit of contrast of a larger city. And definitely, I mentioned that earlier, the last I think really nice, inspirational, nice concept I really saw was Othership, how they made that quite holistic yet simple approach towards a very reduced to the max one hour session of recovery or recharge depending a bit the program they have with the breathwork and also with the sauna and the ice plunge. That was really nice to see. It's something I also see more and more probably become popular in Europe.

Matthias: Cool. Thank you so much for being on the show, Daniel. Great pleasure. Great fun.

Daniel: Thank you, Matthias.