International students, refurbishing, lobbying and hospitality

In this third episode of Housed: The Shared Living Podcast, Sarah, Deenie and Dan are talking about international student living - from the challenges facing universities and international students to innovative solutions in student housing.

They also talk about:

•  refurbishing and retrofitting
•  lobbying and the voices that need to be represented
•  hospitality as part of the wider industry

Plus, we explore how these topics connect with bigger issues like sustainability, affordability and community building.

Listen for insights, views and opinions based on the latest news and voices in the shared living sector.

Housed: The Shared Living Podcast aims to bring the latest news, views and insights to the shared living sector.

Each week, Sarah Canning, Deenie Lee of The Property Marketing Strategists and Daniel Smith of Student Housing Consultancy will be delving into a wide variety of subjects and asking the questions that aren't often asked. This podcast is for anyone who works in Student Accommodation, BTR, Co-living, Operational Real Estate or Shared Living - this podcast is for you!

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are the personal views of the individual hosts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of Housed, the shared living podcast. My name is Dan Smith from Student Housing Consultancy.

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

And I'm Dini from the Property Marketing Strategists. And I'm Sarah from the Property Marketing Strategists.

SPEAKER_02: 0:16

And we have plenty of topics to cover today in terms of what we're looking at and what we're working on and the big news across the shared living sector covering student, BTR, co-living, later living and any other areas of shared living. So, yeah, why don't we start with what's new and currently exciting? Sarah, what have you been seeing?

SPEAKER_00: 0:40

Been quite busy, I think, in the news, particularly, I guess, around the sort of the student demographic, really, who obviously contractually to a lot of the shared living demographic, really. So I think one thing that we've seen this week is sort of front headline news about kind of what's going on behind the scenes with recruiting international students. I know, Dan, that you've kind of focused quite a lot on this and it seems to me that it's been misreported. That's kind of my understanding of it. And lots of people have come out and kind of criticised the Times for their kind of shoddy journalism on this. Is that right, Dan?

SPEAKER_02: 1:16

That's exactly right. It was shoddy journalism. And I think one of the main issues is that the whole premise behind the story was that there's a real, or that there's been a bit of a concern that international students have a backdoor into degrees, undergraduate degrees, via various different sort of avenues ultimately and that these the great boundaries effectively are being lowered for international students where the problem sort of lies is that there was no real differentiation between the two sort of pathways one of which is the sort of foundation course that university students international students can take which gets their qualifications up to a similar level to the sort of a level equivalent in the uk and helps them with language skills and general academic skills And they're really valid. It's the likes of Kaplan and Intu and various others. And actually, universities offer these foundation courses direct themselves too. And those were confused with the likes of the International Year One, which I'll be honest, I didn't really know a huge amount about. But International Year One effectively is where an international student will go through a pathway provider, again, like a Kaplan or an Intu, and they they will then go through that first year straight onto the second year of a specific undergraduate course. Now, that first year, the international year one, will cover certain areas of that course, really getting their academic sort of skills up to scratch and also some of their language skills. But that is definitely seen as a bit of a backdoor by the industry. And I think that it was that that the Times were really sort of shouting about or should have been shouting about rather than the foundation courses, which seem, you know, genuinely more valid. But overall, and having looked at some of these international year one courses, most of them are for tier two universities, not really as much for the Russell Group unis. But there are definitely lower grade boundaries for international students compared to domestic students on these international year one courses. Now, the uproar is obviously around the fact that internationals therefore have precedent supposedly over domestics. Well, yes, they do in a certain extent because universities, there's a huge funding crisis. They need international students to get onto their courses. But in the grand scheme of things, and the bigger picture is that actually international students are propping up the domestic students and that cohort because internationally, universities make a£2,000 a year loss on a domestic student compared to an international student. So if you don't have international students coming in, then you've got a real problem. And I think a lot of these universities that have been pushing the international year one courses, they're the universities that have either been not struggling financially necessarily, but really focusing on an international recruitment drive. So I would expect with the government as they are at the moment, them to come down quite hard on these international year one courses if they can understand the difference between the foundation courses and those international year ones so that was the sort of the you know it's front page of the sunday times i've got a lot of messages on on sunday about that but yeah i think it's not necessarily a storm in a teacup i do think there's valid arguments against international year one courses but equally i think there are you know valid arguments for them too it's just a case of how low do you drop your grade boundaries and how open are you about that you know We've seen York University say that they will drop their grade boundaries for international students compared to domestic. So I would expect that to continue.

SPEAKER_01: 4:48

And like you say, Dan, it's so much about funding, isn't it? It's all being driven by money. And if you want to keep your university going, you've got to find the funding and that's the way to find it. And it's all part of the wider ecosystem and the problem, which, as we've discussed before, is probably not going to change until we see new government coming in. And even then, will we see it? Who knows?

SPEAKER_02: 5:08

Yes, we wait with bated breath for a new government, but who knows what will happen between now and the next election. So I do think that we just need to make sure that we're battening down the hatches. There's a lot of doom and gloom in the higher education sector at the moment, and that is being precipitated by, you know, a really hardline immigration sort of focus from the government based on the fact that they feel they can probably win the next election on immigration. So it's going to be really interesting to see that the context of the university funding crisis is, you know, is a really worrying one for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 5:41

We'll keep an eye on that one. Like you said, it's not over yet. And there's lots of things that can change in between.

SPEAKER_02: 5:47

What else have we been seeing in the news at the moment?

SPEAKER_01: 5:49

Well, I saw that you have been talking about kind of the ongoing, I guess, decrease of Chinese students. It might be interesting for viewers to hear about what you're hearing there.

SPEAKER_02: 5:59

Yes, it came from Jason Yin. If you deal with Chinese students, you'll know Jason. He is the founder of YouHomes, the largest international student accommodation marketplace, sending originally Chinese students into the UK, but more recently taking a bit more of a global approach. And he effectively raised a red flag saying that he thought February was going to be anywhere between 8% to 20% down year on year for Chinese student numbers. He did then follow it up, or YouHomes did then follow it up, then follow it up with a promotional email offering effectively joint promotions. But these weren't paid. So I don't think it was like a false flag to drive any revenue. The cynic in me maybe thought that first of all, but having spoken to quite a lot of operators since my post, I don't think that's the case. Jason's a really good sort of benchmark of what's going on. He is the canary in the coal mine, as it were, fully understands the Chinese market, what drives them, where they're going. You know, he's got the latest data and, you know, brings the largest number of Chinese students into the UK. So he's got his ear to the ground. on that for sure so it'll be interesting to see what happens whether or not that sort of comes to fruition but there's a few operators out there that are saying we're slightly concerned about China and the Chinese numbers but I don't think there's any major cause for panic at the minute.

SPEAKER_00: 7:15

It's affordability a factor because there is this myth in the market that Chinese students are super rich you know they can afford super high tuition fees and they'll you know always rent the premium accommodation which you know to be honest has driven a lot of the PBSA market and over the last kind of 15 years, really. And, you know, I think we've seen the product develop in line with potentially those myths. So is it a myth that they're, you know, super wealthy and can, you know, afford... level of rent at any cost?

SPEAKER_02: 7:48

There is no doubt that the Chinese students do pay a premium for their accommodation. They typically like or have liked in the past a good studio product and that suited investors in particular and developers down to the ground because numbers of Chinese students have been so high that that's kind of who we've built for, especially when we've had really studio heavy developments. It's an interesting one as to how much this comes down to affordability. But realistically, Chinese students are now very, very in that, yes, you have the sort of premium 0.1% But you also then have the families that have saved for decades to send, you know, the prodigal son or daughter to university to then hopefully come back and get a great job. I do think there's a bit of a concern about the high level of unemployment in China. And if you come across to the UK, then, and I'm hearing this from agents and marketplaces, if you then come across to the UK, you kind of lose touch with that career path within China. And you're seen as a little bit of an outsider to a certain extent. You know, I think that's that goes against the way that the pathway, the international student pathway from China has been seen previously where it was You go abroad, you go to a really credible university, and then you come back and bring your skills and your knowledge and your qualifications back to China. I think China's spent a lot of money on PBSA in particular. I think they built about 2 million beds during lockdown in a couple of years. And their universities are creeping up the global rankings. So it could be that this is a bit more of a long-term thing. trends that we see. We've seen the numbers drop off over the course of the last few years compared to what it's been. Now it's about what is that long-term trend going to look like? Have we now got a lot of stock that could become stranded? And by stock, I mean PBSA beds that could become stranded because not everyone wants the same sort of price or room type as a Chinese student. So it's going to be an interesting one to see for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 9:53

I'm sure it will be something that we're going to come back to again and again and see what those trends are and see how those international students change, I guess, over the next few years and what happens there. Moving on to kind of a different topic, what are we seeing in the way of kind of refurbishing retrofitting? You know, there's a lot of talk about development and there's a lot of older buildings. We talk in PBSA about the first generation stock. What is going to happen with stock? How are we going to retrofit it? How are we going to make it more sustainable? And how are we also going to hit the affordability button whilst doing all that?

SPEAKER_00: 10:24

I think one thing that I spoke about on a panel on a Unite podcast a while ago was we talk about kind of sustainable buildings in the kind of, I guess, the building material and probably, you know, kind of scope two and three. But actually, when we talk about sustainability, it's kind of what's the longevity of it? of that building as well and certainly refurbishing is part of that is bringing new life into a building that would otherwise be derelict and you know we are starting to see that with kind of some of the conversions of kind of department stores and offices but actually one really interesting point that was brought up in this podcast is there might be kind of you know some wobbles ahead for pbsa for example so how could buildings that are built for one purpose be changed into another purpose to keep the longevity going so for example like if you build three and four bedroom apartments and you your student market drops out of that city, it's a real prime opportunity to turn it into family flats. And you can do that with a three, four bedroom or sharers. You can't do that very easily with six, eight, 10 bedroom apartments. And it then becomes really, really ineffective, particularly from from a cost and an ESG point of view to kind of then be chopping and changing and, you know, moving bathrooms around and moving walls around and, you know, fire safety and doors, et cetera. So I think that's one element of kind of, we've got to bear in mind when we talk about kind of sustainability is the long-term purpose, really.

SPEAKER_02: 11:44

I'd love to see a lot more refurbishment. I mean, there's no more sustainable building than the building that's already been built. So from a sustainability perspective, it's great that, you know, some buildings, investors, developers are looking at this. And StudyIn, they were famous for taking a grey building, an office block and turning it into PBSA. It's a model that has worked really well for them in the past. I think there's a bit more of a focus on development now, but I'm sure that they'll be looking at pretty much any opportunity for refurbishment as well, given the how, you know, how good they were at doing that previously. And, you know, the likes of Richard at Keckskill as well, you know, he's just, he's literally developing or refurbing an office block in Nottingham into PBSA. I'd just like to see a lot more of that. The margins are still there. The development margins are still there in refurbs. And so I think that there is a huge opportunity when you look at department stores and anything in a city centre where a lot of city and town centres are, you know, they're ghost towns in a lot of places and I think there's a real opportunity to bring the students into those areas and kind of regenerate and create a bit more of a vibrant student scene in a town or city centre where it's typically not as residential and therefore you're not sort of displacing local residents. So I do think that that is a huge opportunity that not that many investors are particularly interested in because yes the margins are much better in development from scratch from the I think it's one way of really solving the student housing crisis in terms of the number of beds that we have available and those locations are typically fairly central when you look at you know decent offices and and sort of the old department stores etc.

SPEAKER_01: 13:31

How kind of costly is it to bring those up to standards in terms of sustainability making the green buildings?

SPEAKER_02: 13:39

Yeah good question I mean case by case basis of course but but but yeah you've got so many different measures that you'll need to put in place a lot lot of the old heating systems within these offices just wouldn't be remotely suitable for anything residential and the same for for sort of retail etc too so you know the first thing you've got to go in and look at is is ripping out an entire heating water you know the electrics etc and and just starting from scratch so it's i think it does away with a lot of a lot of the more complex planning that you have when you're starting from scratch and there's a lot of fees that are saved there but it's you know it it It's still very labour intensive when it comes to the overall sort of structure and the schematics of the building.

SPEAKER_00: 14:25

What I really love about refurbished buildings is that they're creative. You have to be more imaginative with space. And I think that's one thing that as developers, architects and investors kind of need to get your head around. You're not going to reproduce your kind of six to eight bedroom cluster flat model off a corridor. I did some market research recently around the Midlands and I saw a couple of really, really great examples and they were quirky and every room was different. And yes, it makes it difficult to kind of price But there were these little nooks and crannies that had been converted into, you know, breakout spaces and different social spaces that, you know, traditionally in a new build you would see on the ground floor. But actually it made it really interesting. And, you know, for me, I feel like, potentially for a resident living in a building like that, it makes it more memorable. You know, you'd look back in 20, 30, 40 years time, and you'd remember living in that building because of its quirks. So I think it's kind of reimagining, I guess, what we know from the classic kind of, you know, BTR and PBSA building, really, that there can be, you know, a different way. And I guess, you know, the overall, I guess, maybe the the benefit, like you said, it's not necessarily financially, you're not going to save money by refurbishing a building. But if you're serious about ESG and, you know, particularly, like you said, breathing life into new places, it's about community building. And it's, you know, you're saving that embodied carbon by not, you know, not destroying an old building and the disruption you can imagine to, you know, to a city centre by building new, you know, you definitely get more of the local people on, you know, on side by refurbishing Yeah, like I said, breathing new life into an old building. No one wants a derelict building in their eyesight.

SPEAKER_02: 16:12

Grayson's properties are just in the process of... taking over Jopling House in Sunderland which is the old Debenhams and that's been turned into PBSA effectively it's kind of a PBSA co-living mix but it's fascinating seeing how you know seeing the potential and you're right the quirkiness of those spaces it's they're really sort of really unique absolutely gigantic rooms so you know yeah the use of space if you were designing from scratch there's no way you'd build it like that but at the same time you know building with what you've got or working with what you've got. I think that's really important for the sector. And it's also a quick win as well. Refurb takes so much. It's typically a lot quicker than building from the ground up in terms of, you know, from, as I said before, you're planning and everything beyond that. So I do think that it's a really quick way to solve the student housing crisis, or at least alleviate to a certain extent, the student housing crisis for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 17:06

It also breathes some fresh life, as you say, into our cities and so many of our kind of town centres and cities are kind of, have lost a lot and they've lost so much retail, they've lost so much life. And, you know, it kind of feels that, you know, we've said before, it's like, working with the local authority, working with the university, this is a solution that hits lots of boxes and really should be encouraged, whether we'll see that or not.

SPEAKER_02: 17:29

Yeah, and what it means for the affordability as well, I think that's one of the key things. Yes, it is typically cheaper, but in terms of the development and refurbs compared to a development from the ground up, but whether that will translate into more affordable rents, that remains to be seen.

SPEAKER_00: 17:49

I think my view on that is, again, it comes down to imagination with that space. It might not be suitable in a refurb to create en suites in every bedroom. You might not have that kind of plumbing going on. So actually, can you create smaller units with shared space? We're doing quite a bit of research at the moment into shared rooms as well. So, like you said, you know, it might be because of window placement. You might end up with some like massive rooms, but they could be potentially shared rooms. So I think, you know, there are opportunities, if you think outside the box, to create a more affordable space. product because you can do something new you're not then kind of competing you know from a price point of view with you know with the standard kind of 13 square meter ensuite room or the you know 18 to 20 square meter studio but yeah i'm a massive architecture geek and seeing kind of old buildings and all the character in them i'm absolutely fascinated with this one

SPEAKER_02: 18:45

and the opportunities are out there because you know christ office office spaces are really having a tough time at the moment And so I think the opportunities are out there to repurpose a lot of these buildings. And if it's residential, typically councils are crying out for it. So the more that we can push that, the better. Will we see specific developers or operators or investors looking only to go for refurbs? I doubt it, but I'd like to think that rather than taking the sort of well-trodden path of, right, we get the planning, we build it from scratch, we run it. I'd like to see people being a bit more opportunistic about it. Is the planning

SPEAKER_01: 19:25

easier or harder?

SPEAKER_02: 19:27

It's easier, typically.

SPEAKER_01: 19:29

So that's another plus for it, really?

SPEAKER_02: 19:32

It would be, yeah. I mean, obviously, again, it depends on the council. It's very different from Newcastle to Camden to Southampton, etc.,

SPEAKER_00: 19:40

I think one caveat health factor that we need to consider that I don't think any of us would want to see, which we have seen a little bit of, is those older kind of first generation cheap buildings that they've been refurbished within an inch of their life and suddenly they're the newest, swankiest, most beautiful accommodation in the city. And whilst that's Great from a marketing point of view, you know, you get to show off a sparkly new building, but it's actually there's a real danger of taking out that bottom tier of PBSA in a city that is affordable for residents. And as the years go by, we might start seeing this in, you know, in BTR and co-living as well. It's like, you know, a building should be quality, good quality and run well. But that doesn't mean it needs to be the shiniest and have the most amazing facilities can actually, you know, retrofit. A lot of people, I guess, will be prioritising fire safety and ESG with these older buildings. Absolutely. But they don't have to be completely gutted and ripped out. and then the rent massively increased in order to do that.

SPEAKER_02: 20:47

The impact of the new sort of fire safety regs and building safety regs, that's definitely going to have an impact on, you know, what ultimately what developers are looking for. I think about the old fire station that you obviously dealt with, Sarah, and that's, you know, a great, great example of retrofitting into a, you know, not necessarily a derelict building, but one that was ultimately repurposed. And I know that did extremely well.

SPEAKER_01: 21:12

And I was just going to say it goes back to the whole HMO example. You know, I lived in an old Victorian building when I was a student and it just gets repainted and you put a new bathroom and kitchen in when it needs it. It kind of it doesn't need to have all the bells and whistles. It just needs to look clean and tidy. And I was fortunate enough that I did live in a and it wasn't damp. It wasn't leaking. I know some people had worse experiences in their HMO back in the day when we were studying. Yeah, you can get you don't need to. refurb to the hilt it's just keeping it clean tidy simple nice to living

SPEAKER_02: 21:44

so uh if we can all be aware of the opportunities and be as opportunistic as possible from a development to an investor standpoint. And also for operators to be sort of proactively thinking, right, okay, well, there's a building there. If I can take that to a developer or an investor, there's a real opportunity there to turn that into student accommodation. The opportunities are definitely out there. I see them every day walking down the street. I'm sure everyone else does too. It's just about time we made all of this real estate work for us, whether it's student accommodation, co-living, BTR You know, as I said before, there's no more sustainable building than the one that's already been built. So hopefully there's there's more opportunities to come. So the next the next topic is one very close to my my heart. And it's it's about lobbying. Now, lobbying can come in various different forms, but lobbying. do we think ultimately that there is a need for more lobbying within student accommodation? Also, I suppose, within co-living and BTR, et cetera, given there's a housing crisis across the board. But yeah, what are we thinking about student accommodation and the way that we're lobbying at the moment?

SPEAKER_01: 22:51

I think overwhelmingly, yes. I think we do need more of our voices being heard. And I know there's lots of people doing it. I know, Dan, you've done your bit of trying to get that voice heard. And I'm sure, you know, Unite are working on this. And Unipol and there's lots of people doing their thing but it feels very much from I've been in the sector for years but it feels very much that it's not it's not loud enough it's not collaborative enough it's not actually bringing everyone's thoughts and voices together to really drive that change that we need I think it's something that we all feel really strongly about and I think one of the things that Sarah and I are always talking about and something that in our travels to Europe we see is that in Europe the our sector sees themselves very much as part of the housing crisis. And we don't talk like that in the UK. And I feel that if we did think like that more actively and actually had that lobbying voice and went to the government with that, and we're all part of the solution. And actually, we need to realise that and actually realise the power of that and the influence of that. And I just feel that working together more collectively more louder and more collaboratively would have a great impact, not only on our influence on governments in the sector, but also just on the actual housing situation we find ourselves in across the board.

SPEAKER_00: 24:08

Dean, you talk about being collaborative as part of the housing sector, but I think the other missing piece specifically is the education sector. and that it's a you know it's a three-way prong really isn't it it's like you know we've got got pbsa here and we've got the housing crisis but imagine a triangle and we've got education and we've got housing and we've got pbsa and they're all part of the same same loop so i know that there's amazing voices in education from a kind of you know lobbying and you know you know there are ministers about education there are ministers for universities so you know that's kind of being done but like what if if we don't have good quality accommodation and enough of it in the right places for the right people then that education piece will will be be missing and then the housing piece is well actually you know you know creating homes for people it doesn't doesn't don't know that there should be such a distinction between students as some kind of other population. They are people that need housing. And I've never, ever heard it being discussed by any housing minister

SPEAKER_02: 25:11

ever. I've been quite vocal about this. It's such a frustration trying to coordinate or get any answers out of the government or have any sort of impact. But I think I've been frustrated by what I'd perceived as a bit of a lack of action on behalf of students, universities, etc. And so I kind of took it into my own hands to just reach out to my local MPs. There's no secret to how you lobby. You effectively just contact as many people as you can and see who can then get you into the right door, in through the right door. And so I've met with housing policymakers in government. I've met with the shadow housing department as well. There's no coordination across the board with higher education departments housing etc and any other areas and i think one of my goals eventually is to help to create a national student housing strategy that can be rolled out across each local city or town or whatever it might be that would coordinate the university the private sector Most importantly, the planning department, albeit that needs complete root and branch reform to make it more amenable to creating the kind of developments that are needed across housing in general, not just student accommodation, co-living or BTR. I think being on these calls and meeting these people, I could just see that there was a huge amount of frustration that they didn't feel like they could coordinate the other departments. What was really clear when I met the government housing policymakers was that the Home Office were ruling the roost at the time Suella Bradman was in. And it was very much, you know, there was a lot of eye rolling when it came to thinking about, you know, immigration targets and international students and where they were going to live, etc. But there was definitely a willingness to to listen and engage. It also fed into some of the renters reform bill, you know, with them wanting to understand what that would mean for students in particular. And Again, I just don't feel like the HMO sector has really been listened to. And I think it will end up being pretty catastrophic for the student HMO sector, for the sort of individual landlords. There'll be some landlords that, and I think the slightly larger landlords will do quite well, albeit there may be some increases in prices, et cetera. But yeah, ultimately the lobbying that I've seen from the likes of Universities UK and Unipol in the past, maybe hasn't produced the results that we've wanted but I think that part of that is that you know the government just haven't listened this is a government that does what it wants and typically at the moment from what I've seen governs by headlines you know you just look at what Robert Harford the higher education minister came out after after that article on in the Sunday Times on the front of the Sunday Times saying we're going to sort it with you know we've got this we're getting to work well you already knew this was going on, just because it's in the paper doesn't mean that you should then action it. You should be proactively looking at what the opportunities are to improve the higher education sector anyway. So I'd like to think that after the next election, a new government, if that happens, from a personal standpoint, fingers crossed that does happen, that there will be, again, just a complete look at how we can interact as a sector with the government, both in student accommodation, the housing sector as a whole and really drive meaningful change. I think it's, Looking at Unipol with Paddy Jackman going in as CEO, I think that will start to shake things up a bit. Paddy's well known for saying what he thinks. And I think that's really, really important in that kind of role where he's representing the PBSA sector as a whole. And it's not that we've been missing that representation. It's that I think Unipol has had various different areas that they've focused on. But I think with Paddy kind of galvanising the sector's voice, that will certainly help us get to the heart of government at some point.

SPEAKER_01: 29:18

That's great. And let's watch this space. And I think I know it's something that we're all passionate about. seen changing and I guess if anyone wants to come and talk to us about any of that then please do because I think it is so desperately needed and as you say a great impact not just on the housing crisis but actually what we can actually build and move that innovation forward and solve some of those barriers that we've got to actually create more affordable buildings because of the challenges that are faced in planning so it's a really important thing.

SPEAKER_00: 29:44

This ended up being a really political episode didn't it? I don't think we intended that at the beginning but we've gone that way so we'll try and bring some some lighter topics to future episodes.

SPEAKER_02: 29:55

Sarah what was the Recharge 24 event like in Belfast that you've been to recently?

SPEAKER_00: 30:01

So that was hosted by International Hospitality Media and I was asked to be a speaker and I kind of thought is it the right audience you know I'm not you know massively involved in in hospitality but actually they were trying to bring together part of the rented property sector and try and be more collaborative and it was really really interesting you know I loved hearing about some of the the challenges but also some of the progress that is being made in the hospitality industry and also it was in belfast and i hadn't been to belfast for a few years um it's a city i absolutely love and hearing from some of the government people some of the people from the titanic water about kind of their vision for the city was absolutely inspirational um you know they're they're actively trying to get people to live in the city center they've got a great setup for employment and jobs and industry and particularly media and tech and now they want people to actually live there and that was so refreshing to to hear and there's also you know really kind of, I guess, bringing back what we've been discussing today, a real focus on preserving those gorgeous Victorian buildings that they have in Belfast. And they've got a real focus on conservation and refurbishment as well. I talked about Gen Z and what they want from accommodation and kind of linked that to anyone that's building hotels, co-living, BTR, you know, needs to look at what the youngest generation are doing, because that will certainly influence their decisions. Also, just a quick mention to Room 2, which is where the event was hosted and where I stayed. And they talked a lot about kind of their ESG vision, and it's evident everywhere. I've never stayed in a hotel that felt like it had thought through the guest experience, but, you know, not at the expense of the environmental focus of their their net being net zero so yeah it was a really really interesting all-round experience you know recommend it as an event really great people and you know we talk at you know the three of us at a lot of events possibly one of the most engaged audiences that i've spoken in front of there were lots of questions afterwards lots of interest on the topic and you know very open welcoming audience so yeah thank you international hospitality media for including me

SPEAKER_02: 32:13

great i think that wraps up the episode so thanks ever so much for joining us we are really keen to make sure that we we look at the topics that you guys want us to look at so do please you know write in send us a message find us on linkedin and and we hope to see you next time we'll catch you soon for episode four