Turning to travel, and really this is the reason why we wanted to highlight travel this particular week. We're seeing a real discrepancy between high end travelers and low end travelers in terms of their.
Position to spend.
Is there a change in that four season? CEO Alejandra right now saying his company has seen in strongest year ever, writing this short term uncertainty given the current geopolitical and macroeconomic pressures are impacting traveler sentiment, but the luxury segment is more resilient, Alejandro joins us. Now, Alejandro, thank you so much for being with us. Pleasure to have you here in studio. I want to start there. Is it true that you're not seeing any slowdown whatsoever in the luxury element?
Good morning, Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. And I love the fact that we're talking about luxury hospitality. Yes, I mean, we had a really strong first half of the year compared to last year, much better. When I look into the booking trends for the second half of the year, even going on into twenty twenty five, they look very strong as well. You know, I think there's two things that are happening there. First, and for most is that the luxury guest or a
luxury consumer continues to be very resilient. They continue to spend, you know, that desire for experiences to explore continues to be there. But also I would say that from a four seasons angle and from a four session's point of view, we do offer a very clear value proposition to our guest. I mean, we do have very proud to say that we have the very best hotels in the best locations
and we provide the best service to our guests. And when you have that as the brand proposition, and that's what we do at four Seasons, there's a demand for that. And by the way, this is not new of this year. We've been operating down for sixty years and has been the constant all throughout the period.
So what has changed? And I'm wondering not just from the consumer who is able to spend, but also from the employees and who you're able to recruit. For a long time, there is this earth of people willing to work in hospitality in the direct aftermath of the pandemic. Do you see it as being much easier now to hire people and sort of easier to also retain them without massive price increases wage increases.
Yes, I mean, obviously, for us, a key component of what we do is through our people. I mean, we are a service company and the most important asset is the people that we have with us. So we place a lot of emphasis in making sure that we are the employer of choice in every single market that we operate. We do spend a lot of time training people, developing them. For us, we do measure employee engagement twice per year. We are at the two percent across all industries in
terms of employee engagement. So it's a topic that we spend a lot of time because we do believe that we need to have the best and most engage employees with us. We haven't had. I mean, obviously, right after the pandemic there was a little bit of pressure from a labor point of view. We don't see that anymore, but again it's because of the force that we place in making sure that we are the employer of choice in the marketing where we operate.
I want to know about more about your customer, but specifically like the ultra luxury and there, I know you have a private jet service something like one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars for charter a day. How much demand is there for that?
Yes, you know, it's interesting. And just to give you the context of this is, obviously Four Seasons started as a hotel and a resource company, and we are now the leading luxury hospitality company and that's where our guests experience the brand. What we found over time is that because our second business is the residential brand, the residential so guests they stay with us, they experience the brand, and then they are willing to buy a residence with us.
So that's sort of the journey that they start experiencing with Four Seasons. And then the third piece is what you just said is the journey's experience based travel that we prom as a third line of business. So if you think about the whole analogy, guests they stay with us,
they live with us, and they travel with us. They developed such a comfort with the brand and with the brand promise and the brand proposition that they're willing to spend that amount of money in traveling for twenty days through ten four Seasons in Africa, in Europe and so forth. So for us, it's been more around creating this luxure ecosystem for four seasons that our guests are eager to travel.
By the way, we have all the intineraries for this year sold out for the rest of the year, so it's a very successful property and it taps into that desire to experience, to explore that we find in our guests.
You're saying we're too late for it, then yeah.
Twenty twenty five, we're opening the.
Good To keep in mind, I mean, just talking about the different mix of your businesses, You're not the only one doing in this space, and it obviously is an exclusive space of those who can offer this, but you think of the online resource trying to give also experiences to what does competition look like right now?
Well, competition because of the attractiveness of the luxuries space, there's a lot of competitors coming in. I think we have as a four seasons the advantage of the brand. I mean, we are the most We continuously measure brand preference, brand awareness in terms of our brand and we continue to be the number one luxury hospitality brand, and I think that carries a lot of weight, but it's because at the end of the day, we're able to deliver
that value proposition to our guest. I mean when it's interesting because I do interact with a lot of our guests and when I ask them what do they like about the four Seasons, the first thing they tell me is that I know what to expect and I've been able as a guest to explore remote destinations. So for example, I've been able to go to Garabora. But because there's the four Seasons, I feel comfortable because I know what to expect, and to have that level of consistency and
that brand power is very, very unique. So I think we're uniquely a very well positioned.
Where do you see demand right now in terms of the hot spots top five people are traveling too.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting because and I'm gonna say something which is a little bit of contrariant. When I look into the history of four Seasons over the last years, travel patterns haven't changed much. For example, fifty five percent of our revenues come from the Americas, the majority of in the US. More than fifty percent of our guests they are from the US. And whether they travel to the US right now during the summer time, they travel
to our South Florida collection, they go to Hawaii. Beyond the US, they go to Mexico and then Europe. The fact is that this has happened for many, many years. Americans are going to go to Europe probably once a year every summer. I mean, that's so we're seeing that again this summer, but it happened last year, prior year,
prior year. But again, America's representing fifty five percent of revenues for US in the Europe, and the Middle East represents twenty five percent of the revenues, and there the dynamics are similar. Europeans they mostly stay within Europe. They ventured into the Middle East or Africa. And then we have the APAC, which is twenty percent of our business. Three percent is only China and that's mainly regional travel.
Do you still see the Chinese consumers spending as much in luxury hotels the same way the US consumers.
No, they have not come back. I mean when I look into what was the spend prior to the pandemic, it's less. It's interesting because they are spending less in China, so we still don't have the same race that we used to have prior to the pandemic in China, but they're starting to spend more internationally, but internationally within the region, meaning Japan for the most part, because of visa issues and many other things. They still have not come back to Europe or the US, which is where we saw
them prior to the pandemic. There's a real.
Question here about how much and towards this lack of Apollo called us out for us this morning. He said, all you people in media, and I'm paraphrasing, just keep using everyone as an anecdote to try to paint the macro picture. Your company has been around for sixty years. How independent of the macrocycle, is it?
Right?
I mean, we're talking about something that is a complete microcosmon to itself of people who have disposable wealth and are going to travel no matter what, versus a company that does have some sort of sensitivity to what's going on in the underlying consumer centivacy.
I mean, I would be lying if I would say that we are immune to any microeconomic geopolitical impacts, because we are. I mean, at the end of the day, that uncertainty impacts travel or sentiment, and people don't travel because of that. But obviously we've been operating for sixty years.
Have we've gone through these cycles and they go away, and at the end of the day, what we see in is year or a year that the market continues to grow in travel and tourism has been growing for many years now, that desire to experience, to explore continues
to be there. I think it's really interesting when you look into the luxury consumer that our composition of about twenty percent are boomers, forty five percent are Gen X, thirty five percent already our millennials, so that transfer of wealth is starting to happen, but we're not losing the boomer so it means that the market is expanding. So always year and year there's going to be more demand,
more growth. And at the end of the day as well, we as as a hotel and resource company, need to be at the forefront in terms of creating amazing experiences, so we can't satisfy the demand. So I don't think at the end of the day that the demand just comes by itself. We need to have, like we do, a very special product, a very special service proposition to our work guests, so at the end of the day, they are eager to come to a four seasons.
So you're doing great with the baby class. I hear that you really crushing it, you know, particularly south of the US.
Paid actor. No, it wasn't, you know, But that's one. It's a tremendous learning experience because sometimes we spend so much money on marketing that doesn't provide any outcomes. But then these special authentic moments are the ones that the consumers value the most. This was a complete viral moment, but it was completely authentic. We had nothing to do
with it. In the end, we have more than three hundred million views through various digital platforms on the four Seasons Baby Obviusly we got a spike on on searches on four Seasons Orlando, so it was very good. But again it was very authentic, which ultimately is what people like. I love it.
I wonder how many board meetings for about the four seasons Baby all right now four seasons c H. Thank you so much for being with us.