How Blue Apple Beach Redefines Eco-Luxury & Regenerative Hospitality TSHS – 122 - The Social Hotelier

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
But I realized
I think I turned 30,
and Monaco is
a strange and wonderful bliss. And obviously, I
was deeply privileged to have spent a lot
of time there in my twenties. There was
a sense that it's not the real world,
and I had a feeling that I I
would either leave or I was going to
just turn into somebody who thought that the
only thing that mattered in life was the

(00:20):
watch that you wore and the car that
you drove. And a friend of mine married
a Colombian and said, I'm headed off to
Bogota to live with my wife, and and
I think I'm gonna start a company doing
anything. Do you wanna come and help? And
I thought, why not? You know, these opportunities
don't come along that often. I didn't speak
any Spanish at the time. I wasn't sure
what the company that he learned to start
would do, although he worked in property development,

(00:42):
which I thought didn't sound too dissimilar to
yachting. I arrived in Bogota with two suitcases.
I'd never been to Colombia before. And pretty
promptly, his wife realized that she actually couldn't
stand moving back to Colombia. And within six
months, they were gone. I believe they still
live in Monaco, but I was rather too
embarrassed to go home. I thought, well, I've
set myself up for this adventure. I've thrown

(01:03):
a leaving party. I've quit my job. I've
uprooted my life. So I'll hang around in
Colombia maybe for a year. Hi, everyone. Welcome
back to the Social Hotelier podcast with me,
Sam Erik Grootman.
Meet Portia Hart, a visionary entrepreneur
redefining hospitality with purpose.
As the founder of Blue Apple Beach, a
boutique hotel in Cartagena,

(01:24):
Colombia, and the Green Apple Foundation,
Portia has turned her passion for sustainability
into a powerful movement.
From pioneering
glassy recycling initiatives to championing re regenerative travel,
her impact extends far beyond her beachfront property
with bold commitment to environmental and social responsibility.

(01:44):
Porsche proves that business success can go hand
in hand with positive change. Join us as
we explore her inspiring journey of innovation,
resilience,
and creating a legacy that uplifts both people
and the planet. Welcome, Portia, and thanks for
joining us today.
Sameh, thank you so much for having me.
I'm always delighted to get to connect with

(02:05):
people on the other side of the world
as I'm mostly based on a small island.
It's wonderful to share our story. Yes.
First, for the audience to understand exactly where
are you located?
So my,
my primary hotel, Blue Apple Beach, is on
an island called Tierra Bomba,

(02:26):
which is about twenty minutes away from Cartagena.
I do also have a second property,
in Central Cartagena in the middle of the
UNESCO heritage wall city.
But I have to say I do spend
most of my time running Blue Apple, which
is a slightly more complicated operation.
Okay.
But very good. So,
how did you get

(02:48):
started? And and I'm so curious to know
that how in the world did you come
up with the name Blue Apple?
I mean, how I got started is I
wish I could tell you that, you know,
I had a plan.
I studied languages and linguistics at university,
and we were just talking about the weather,
you and I. I know you spent several
years living in Asia and got accustomed to

(03:10):
warm weather.
I studied in, Japan and in Edinburgh, Scotland,
and got rather too accustomed to cold weather,
and it finished me off.
So when I graduated,
my primary
ambition was to work somewhere where the sun
shone.
And I was fortunate enough, and this was
back in the day, which I now realized
my age,

(03:30):
when you used to send your CV in
an envelope,
to people that you'd never met with a
cover letter and hope that somebody might call
you back and give you an interview.
And I sent my CV off to places
all over the world with good weather. And
I was fortunate enough to get a job
working as a secretary in a yacht brokerage
company in Monaco.
And I didn't think twice, much to my,

(03:50):
father's chagrin.
He couldn't understand why he'd invested so much
time and money in my education for me
to to disappear and be a secretary in
the South Of France.
But I stayed there for eight years. I
started as a PA, and I ended up
as the COO of a a yacht brokerage
firm there.
But I realized
I think I turned 30,

(04:10):
And Monaco is
a strange and wonderful place. And obviously I
was deeply privileged to have spent a lot
of time there in my twenties.
There was a sense that it's not the
real world.
And I had a feeling that I would
either leave or I was going to turn
into somebody who thought that the only thing
that mattered in life was the watch that
you wore and the car that you drove.

(04:33):
And a friend of mine married a Colombian
and said, I'm headed off to Bogota to
live with my wife, And I think I'm
gonna start a company doing anything. Do you
wanna come and help?
And I thought, why not? You know, these
opportunities don't come along that often. I didn't
speak any Spanish at the time. I wasn't
sure what the company that he planned to
start would do.

(04:53):
Although he worked in property development, which I
thought didn't sound too dissimilar to Yossing.
I arrived in Bogota, my two suitcases. I'd
never been to Colombia before.
And pretty promptly, his wife realized that she
actually couldn't stand
moving back to Colombia.
And within six months, they were gone.
I believe they still live in Monaco.

(05:14):
But I was rather too embarrassed to go
home.
I thought, Well, I've set myself up for
this adventure. I've thrown a leaving party. I've
quit my job. I've uprooted my life.
So I'll hang around in Colombia maybe for
a year, I've got some savings.
And if at the end of the year
all I've managed to do is learn a
language, then that will have been something. And
I've been working eight years solidly since leaving

(05:36):
university, so I thought that that was a
pretty legitimate plan. And I traveled all over
Colombia, and I eventually arrived in Cartagena.
And at this time, it was 02/2015,
Colombia was really coming out of,
its civil war.
Publicly, it was becoming a place that was
considered safe to travel to.
And Cartagena, which is an incredibly special city,

(05:58):
was blowing up.
But one thing I noticed was that there
was no beach culture.
So there were beautiful boutique hotels in the
old city,
and people would hop on a boat and
they would go to the Rosario Islands,
where there are white sandy beaches and and
this turquoise ocean.
But there was no real sense of beach

(06:18):
club the way I'd lived it in the
South Of France.
And the the hotels there were were quite
basic.
You know, nobody had air conditioning. Nobody had
an auto.
A wine list was a distant dream.
And I I sort of thought to myself,
I have no idea how to run a
hotel. I have no idea how to run

(06:38):
a beach club, you know, or a restaurant.
I've never cooked anything in my life.
But I do know what the customer is
looking for. And I and I kept coming
back to Cartagena City after a disappointing day
in the islands
and bumping into other foreigners like me
who were enjoying the city but frustrated by
the experiences and the beaches.
And I met a chef at that time,

(06:59):
a Colombian chap, who was born in in
Ibiza
and had worked in in the Balearic Islands,
had worked in the South Of France, understood
European beach culture,
and was Colombian.
And we sort of got together and said,
let's try this mad idea of setting up
a beach restaurant and seeing what happens.
And, you know, here I am, ten years
later.

(07:19):
So it was, it was a sort of
a completely unplanned, very organic,
I would say emotions led
journey.
The Blue Apple is a name
was really something that we came up with
in about five minutes,
because we realized that the task of setting
up this business was going to be so

(07:40):
difficult that we couldn't afford to waste any
time on things like names.
But we knew that we needed a name
in English,
because we knew that foreigners
don't speak very good Spanish and kept forgetting
names in Spanish. So every time I spoke
to somebody who was American or European,
who was traveling around Colombia, and I would
say, what have you really enjoyed? So you
stay in this great place. What was it

(08:02):
called? It was called kind of Casa.
And they kept forgetting. So I thought, if
I have a name in English, people remember
it. But I also really want Colombians to
come to our beach club.
So I better have a name that's simple
English
and doesn't exclude anyone. And I thought, well,
everybody learns the colors pretty early on when
they learn a language. I remember the first
word I learned in in French was green.

(08:25):
And we're by the ocean, so that's blue,
so that's easy. And I thought, well, Colombia
is really famous for fruit. So Colombia has
over 3,000 varieties of fruit,
but pretty much the only fruit that doesn't
grow here is the apple.
But everybody knows the words. And I sort
of wanted to choose a name that was
authentic
in its recognition that I'm not from Colombia,

(08:47):
and I wasn't starting something that was
particularly in homage to Colombian culture.
And so we sort of wanted to say,
well, yeah, we are, you know, we're a
couple of foreigners setting up this thing.
And that was really how we came about
with Blue Apple, something that was easy to
remember.
Wonderful. I mean,
it's, it's such a fascinating story that you

(09:08):
have,
almost several accidents happened in in a chain.
And then you hear you are many years
later sitting on having two properties. You have
you've done so many things. But it's always
interesting to find out of someone who like
yourself with that tremendous experience.
What was the moment you realized that what
seemed to be impossible could actually work?

(09:31):
It's a brilliant question. I and I think
it's a series of moments.
And I would encourage
anyone
who's considering
stepping into the world of of, you know,
being your boss, being an entrepreneur,
not to overthink it. And one of the
things that I I often realize now is
that if I'd known what was coming up
and if I'd given it too much thought,

(09:52):
I probably never would have done it,
because there are hundreds, if not thousands of
obstacles and reasons not to take the risk.
I think
the day I realized it was possible was
probably when I spoke to my father
and I told him before we'd opened,
look, pops,

(10:14):
I'm out here in Colombia. I still don't
really speak the language. I mean, I've got
a bit more Spanish than I had.
And I've I've met this chef who seems
to know what he's doing.
And I I've spent a lot of time
having lunch on the beach, you know, because
that's what we used to do from the
office. We used to get out to the
beach and have lunch
every day in Monaco.
So I I do really know

(10:34):
what someone's looking for,
but I've never run my own business, and
I have no idea what Colombia is all
about.
And my father, who I was expecting to
say, don't be ridiculous. Don't throw your money
down the drain.
Come home immediately. Go and get a normal
job. You know, do something sensible.

(10:55):
Said to me,
I can't believe
in the world today that you've managed to
find this opportunity.
It is so rare.
The barriers to entry are relatively low. You
know, back then, and I'm always very honest
about this, we we started Blue Apple. There
were three of us, three partners,
and we started Blue Apple with $25,000

(11:15):
each. So it was a it was a
start up cost of $75,000.
And my dad said, you can't start a
business anywhere for that amount of money today.
But you're telling me that there are people
who are willing to spend
$50 on lunch.
So you've got a a willing client base.
As far as I can understand, you've got
no viable competition.

(11:35):
Sure. You don't really know what you're doing,
but you know what you want to achieve.
And if you get it all wrong, it's
it's gonna cost you less than an MBA
would.
And I think, you know, when your 70
year old father tells you to go ahead
and do something that sounds completely mad,
it's a first sign that maybe it's not

(11:55):
as mad as it sounds. Wonderful. Wonderful.
Yeah. So,
you you I know you have been very
keen on things relating to sustainability
and you created all these,
activities and and it's as part of a
movement. If you could share a little bit
about,
was something that comes natural to you while
thinking about regeneration,

(12:18):
of an area. And how did you go
about thinking about those things, and how did
you incorporate this into your into your resort
at the time?
One of the first things that I I'm
always
keen to point out to people is that,
you know, I did used to work in
the yachting industry.
So that is servicing

(12:39):
shakers and oligarchs
and tech billionaires.
And the aussie industry is not,
and certainly when I was there, was not
known for its environmental credentials.
I certainly did not come into,
the world of hotels
with an idea that I wanted to do
things, in an environmentally considerate way. And if

(13:01):
I'm really honest, I'd never given much thought,
to my environmental footprint. I was fortunate enough
to grow up in The UK
where when I threw something away,
someone came and took care of it, and
I never had to to give it much
thought after that.
When I flicked a switch, the lights came
on. And when I opened it up, enough
water came out as as what I needed.

(13:21):
And then I I lived and worked in
the South Of France, and and it was
all about excess. And I and I remember,
you know, having conversations with charter brokers where
they would be frantically trying to ship
40,000
bottles of Evian
from France to Malaysia because they had a
client on a yacht that only bathed in
Evian water.
Or somebody who decided that he wanted to

(13:42):
propose to his girlfriend and he needed,
70,000
red roses so that they could fill every
cabin on the boat with roses in case
he decided to do it, you know, in
one of the cabins.
And
so shall we say that thinking about sustainability
wasn't in my frame of mind,
wasn't something that came naturally to me. And
living and working,

(14:03):
in Cartagena
and working especially on this island here at
Bomba,
it was a real slap in the face.
And the reason I'm honest about this is
because
one of the things that stopped me at
the beginning
from saying I'd like this hotel to be
an eco resort and I'd like to be
sustainable
was that I felt that it was all

(14:23):
quite difficult
and I and I felt it was sort
of unattainable and that you had to be
an expert and you had to be a
really good person and I was one of
these things.
But what happened within a few months of
opening was an irate neighbor came around and,
he was pretty cross and he was sort
of shouting in Spanish and my Spanish was
a bit better by then. I could tell

(14:44):
he was angry and he was talking about
rubbish.
And he was saying to me that I
was throwing, you know, the hotel was throwing
our rubbish into his land.
And I said to him, well, don't be
silly, sir. You know, I've got a, you
know, couple of chaps here you might pay
to take our rubbish away. We had no
municipal waste collection on the island at that
point.
And I could sort of see out the
corner of my eye some of my team,

(15:05):
I won't say smirking, but with slightly amused
expressions on their faces.
And pretty quickly, we realized that these two
blokes come around the village and taken my
money,
week after week to, inverted commas, dispose of
our trash.
And disposal meant, you know, chucking it in
the next door neighbor's garden.
And sure enough, the neighbor took me over
and I saw this sort of huge heap

(15:27):
of of really revolting rubbish. And it had
all come from my property.
And it was the first time in my
life
that I saw how wasteful,
firstly, this kind of idea of a luxury
first world lifestyle is.
You know, and secondly, just day to day.

(15:48):
And I realized,
you know, we've got to we obviously we
can't carry on throwing rubbish in our neighbor's
garden. So I've got to get it back
to Cartagena because that's where the landfill is.
And getting it back to Cartagena is really
expensive and I don't have any money. You
know, the business is operating on a shoestring.
We've just blown all of our savings starting
it up. We've got absolutely no working capital.

(16:09):
And to put all of your rubbish in
a boat and drive it to the mainland
is a very, very expensive way of dealing
with it. Much more expensive, by the way,
than anybody in a hotel in London,
is spending to get rid of their rubbish.
And so we had to get smart. And
that was where sustainability really began at Blue
Apple. And it wasn't driven

(16:31):
by a desire to do things the right
way. It was driven by a desire
to solve a problem well, a need in
an affordable way, and that meant reducing the
amount of rubbish that we created.
And as we started this journey,
I realized
really how disconnected
my life had been from everything that makes

(16:52):
sense.
And I realized
it's not necessary to be wasteful.
I realized it's pretty silly to buy,
a plastic bottle that you're gonna use for
thirty seconds and then throw it away if
you have to buy the bottle and then
you have to pay to throw it away.
And I think that was really the
the the paradigm shift,

(17:13):
certainly for me and for our business.
It wasn't, you know, we want to be
sustainable because
we're kind of green heroes.
It was this just makes way more sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So,
what what were the things that you you
so you you had to kind of take
a look at the waste management of your

(17:34):
property radically.
How did did you go into some recycling
of things, or how did you go about
this? Because I think there's a I mean,
it's funny. I always end up talking about
waste management.
If you say to someone,
oh yeah, you know, I live in The
Caribbean and I run a hotel. People always
imagine that you must be sipping pina coladas,
and sunbathing all the time. Well, in fact,
I dedicate quite a lot of my time

(17:54):
to thinking about and talking about waste management.
So the first thing we did, we already
had,
a scheme at Blue Apple called our artist
residency program.
And artist residency was the world's biggest euphemism
for please come and help us do stuff
that we can't really afford to pay you
for.
And it started off when we needed art
for the walls. And we said to local

(18:15):
artists
and and traveling artists, you know, you might
not be able to be able to afford
to spend a night in a four star
hotel. We can't afford to buy any art.
But if you fancy doing an exchange,
we're up for it.
And, a girl called Caitlin,
applied to our artist residency program, and she
happened to be,
and the universe always gives you what you
need,

(18:36):
a waste management expert. And she had worked
on a team in Toronto,
in sort of establishing Toronto's municipal waste management
and recycling scheme,
Extremely knowledgeable,
essentially a waste engineer.
And Caitlin came down and spent a few
months with us,
and she taught us how to be, certainly
from the very beginning, you know, how to
not bring things onto the island that you

(18:57):
don't need in the first place.
So how to start with your supply chain
of just buying stuff that doesn't come in
loads of unnecessary packaging.
And then Caitlin did an audit around Cartona
of where all of the recyclable materials go
and if they end up really being recycled.
And this was a steep learning curve for
me. I learned that recycling is a business.
Nobody recycles out of the goodness of their

(19:19):
own hearts.
Recycling makes money.
And if it doesn't make money, people don't
do it. So we discovered that electrical goods,
most
hard plastics,
metals,
were all recycled in Cartagena. And actually, Colombia
has quite an informed
network of recyclers.

(19:39):
And so that was really good. We were
able to get rid of paper, cardboard,
plastic types one and two,
any metal tinfoil
that we were able to cut quite a
lot out. And at the end of the
month, we were left with these kind of
two big heaps.
And one was, food waste,
which you can imagine working in a hotel
and a restaurant. You've got a lot of
it. And one was glass waste. And the

(19:59):
thing about grass and food is that they're
very heavy, which makes them expensive to transport,
and they're quite
dangerous or unwieldy. So food rots, it smells,
it gets rid of flies,
It can be a source of disease if
it's not managed properly.
And glass breaks and it cuts people.
And they both make products when they're processed

(20:22):
that aren't particularly valuable.
So glass turns back into sand,
and food obviously turns into compost. And essentially,
once you do the maths, if you're putting
glass or food onto a boat and then
into a lorry and you're transporting it hundreds
of kilometers away,
your end product will be a loss maker.
So no one was willing to take it

(20:42):
off us. And we went to Cartagena's recycling
center, and we saw a massive pile of
glass there. And we said, you know, what
do you guys do with all this glass?
And they said, well, we're sort of supposed
to recycle it, but we can't find anyone
to do it. It makes us a loss.
So we leave it here until the room
gets full,
and then we send it to landfill.
So we decided not to send our glass
there. But at this time, the minimum wage

(21:04):
in Colombia so this was 2,018.
The minimum wage in Colombia, which is monthly,
I'm sorry. I can't do it annually because
we do everything monthly here. Was 650,000
pesos, which back then
was a little bit over $200 a month.
And and that was easily what we would
be spending to put all this glass onto
a boat and send it to landfill.

(21:25):
So as we looked around with Caitlin and
we found this company in New Zealand, a
beer company of all things,
and they again had had a problem which
they needed to solve.
And it was what to do with the
beer bottles that they said they had a
beer company, they would sell the beer and
then they would take the bottles back and
they would refill them. But if a bottle
was chipped, it was broken, it was useless.

(21:45):
And they developed,
a little machine, which is really not much
bigger than the stool I'm sitting on now.
And you sit at the bottom in the
top, and it's kinda like a bottle blender.
And it's got a rotary blade, and it
crushes the bottle into sand. And then they
had another amazing machine, which is centrifugal
force, and it spins all this sand around,
and it has six different levels. And you

(22:06):
end up with six different grades of of
gravel and sand.
And they were selling this gravel and sand
to the construction industry,
who were using it for building. And this
is where I learnt,
that construction uses sand. Actually, the construction is
just the biggest consumer of sand in the
world. And in certain parts of the world,
there's actually a shortage of sand. You have
to use freshwater sand. You can't use sand

(22:26):
from the beach to make good quality concrete.
A lot of that comes from quarries, not
great for the environment. A lot of it
comes from riverbeds,
not great for the environment. So this was
a really, really neat solution. And we said,
you know, I think it's Picasso.
Good artists don't copy, great artists steal. So
we got in touch with them. We said
we absolutely want to steal your idea. We
bought a machine.

(22:47):
And that was where it began.
We hired a person to run the machine,
and we went from there.
And today,
seven years later,
we now have a couple we've got an
industrial machine. We've got three glass recycling
centers around Cartagena.
We employ 12 people.
We've
processed over
500 tons of glass waste.

(23:09):
We've built things. I mean, it's really taken
on a life of its own. We work
currently with about 30 to 40 businesses,
and we're looking to scale up to work
with about 200 businesses in Cartagena to recycle
their glass waste. So that was sort of
how we pivoted. Yeah. And I now don't
know if that answered your question, but Yes.
You did. Now you know more about glass
waste than you ever did before. Well, I'm

(23:30):
learning all the time about you, but, you
know, quite a bit about waste management and
also about this recycling.
Also, I mean, one the two things I
have in mind I want to ask you
as a follow-up. One is relating to some
your suppliers. Another one is the the guest
perception.
First is the the suppliers. How did your
suppliers,
did you find a way to educate the

(23:50):
suppliers how they should, you know, what kind
of format they should sell the bring the
goods to you, or were they all wrapped
in plastic? Or how did you go? What
is the system in in in in Colombia
or Casa Jena?
The funny thing is,
and this is something else that I've I've
I've learned
time and time again living here.

(24:11):
Generally, when you work with someone local
and small,
they tend not to be wasteful.
They're not sending products
for thousands of miles, so they don't need
to fill them with preservatives and wrap them
in loads of
EcoPour or loads of polystyrene.
They don't need to put them in loads
of packaging. Quite often, if it's somebody in

(24:33):
your community,
they send you something and you can send
them back the empty packaging or you could
work out between you or hang on, I'll
buy a cool box,
and and I'll give you the cool box
and I'll buy another one and we'll just
sort of interchange cool boxes and that's how
you'll deliver me fish.
And we went through an exercise. So the
pandemic, we were closed for seven months. That

(24:54):
was government decree. Colombia had one of the
the harshest lockdowns
in the world.
So we were sitting there on the island
sort of working out, well, firstly, if we
could survive.
But secondly, if we were to survive financially,
if we were to reopen,
working out how we could be a better
business. And I stumbled across the B Corp
framework. And I don't know how much you
know about B Corp, but essentially,

(25:15):
it is a set of criteria rules, a
framework
to apply to the capitalist model
in order to harness,
all of the good things about capitalism.
So efficiency, innovation,
profit driven,
and and use them to solve problems which
capitalism otherwise might ignore. So I started reading

(25:37):
about B Corp, and I thought, would it
be really fun,
to to start the process of turning global
into a B Corp? And a lot of
it is about supply chain.
And I realized that, you know, every time
we ordered something on Amazon,
which might have been easy because it was
one click,
we were giving power, money is power,
to someone in another country,

(25:59):
someone with whom we didn't really have very
many shared values,
someone
who we didn't think really needed to have
any more power.
And we were also taking money out of
our economy,
the Colombian economy, and we were sending it
to another one.
And we thought, well, hang on. Wouldn't it
be better if we spent all of our
money? And, you know, I'm I'm quite open

(26:19):
with numbers. I mean, we're not a publicly
traded company, but at that point, pre pandemic,
we we were doing revenue of a little
over a million dollars a year.
And
if a million dollars a year stays in
Cartagena and there are a thousand businesses in
Cartagena doing that, well, that's a lot of
money staying in Cartagena.
If all of us are buying 40% of
our stuff on Amazon, that's a lot of

(26:39):
money going to Jeff Bezos.
So we started,
to look for suppliers that were local,
and we started this, point system
where we would allocate points to the supplier
based on lots of criteria,
such as where they were. The closer they
were to our business, the better. So if
they were on the island, maximum points. If

(26:59):
they were in Cartagena,
pretty good points. If they're in Colombia, not
bad. And if they're overseas, you know,
And
we also analyzed, you know, are they independently
owned? We sort of realized that the world
looks better when a more diverse group of
people have power because they're able to represent

(27:20):
people that look like them and live their
lives. And when I say diverse people, I
do also include women,
people of color,
people from less,
less socioeconomic developed backgrounds,
people perhaps who haven't been to university.
So we gave points if the business was
run by anyone from those groups.
We gave points if the the business owner
was able to, you know, visit our establishment,

(27:41):
we could have a chat with them,
because that meant, to answer your question, that
we could have conversations with them about the
kinds of products that we wanted to receive,
how we wanted to receive them,
why we were doing things the way we
were doing.
And we were able, you know, within about
a year after reopening
to get to the point where we were
spending in 2021, I think it was 85%

(28:02):
of what we spent, was staying in Colombia.
60% of it was going to independently owned
businesses. 30%
of those 30% of our spend was going
to businesses that were owned by other women,
people of color,
people from lower socioeconomic
groups.
And
and what I discovered is obviously it's easier
to have a conversation
with a bloke down the road,

(28:24):
about how you want to receive your fish,
for example, than it is to pick up
the phone and convince Jeff Bezos to do
things differently.
And we've had chats with suppliers where we've,
you know, asked, are all of your employees
on proper contracts? You know, do they all
earn at least the minimum wage? Do they
have health care?
And I can say
every supplier that I work with

(28:45):
pays their employees fairly.
And I couldn't get Jeff Bezos to do
that.
Yeah. So so that was kind of that's
where we were with suppliers. And then and
then with customers,
I have to say I was hesitant.
And I say this because I remember when
I
worked in Monaco and then I remember going

(29:05):
to a travel show,
in Marrakesh A Couple Of Years before the
pandemic
and hearing people say
sustainability
means
not luxury.
So people hear the word sustainable eco, they
just instantly imagine it's gonna be uncomfortable, it's
gonna be dirty, these people don't clean their
sheets, they don't have air conditioning,
and they're gonna lecture me, and it's probably

(29:27):
gonna be vegan,
you know, and everyone's gonna be wearing hemp
clothes.
And and I was sort of like, I
don't wanna talk about sustainability. And I remember
at the time,
my PR company was pitching us for a
story for The Telegraph newspaper in The UK.
And The Telegraph said, whatever they do, just
tell them not to talk about sustainability.
Nobody wants to hear about it.

(29:47):
So we didn't.
We just did all this stuff in the
background.
Yeah. But then
customers started sort of seeing what we were
doing. They were like,
you know, why are all these bottles coming
off this boat and going into the back
of it? Oh, well, actually, we crushed the
bottles into sand and, yeah, the cabana that
you're saying was actually built with cement made
from recycled bottles and,

(30:08):
you know, yeah. And then we've got a
little herb garden at the back. Yeah. Because
all the food waste, we compost it. And,
oh, yeah. No. No. Those over there. Those
are pigs because we couldn't find a pig
supply that met our criteria, so we just
brought our own.
And people were like,
this is amazing.
And we realized that there was a consumer,
not all consumers, but at that point, there
was a consumer

(30:29):
that was actively engaged in this kind of
business.
And they could be comfortable.
And they trusted us to provide the hospitality
at the level that they were looking for.
But they were fascinated by what we were
doing. And not only were they interested, they
were going and staying in other hotels.
And when they were served a cocktail, you
know, with let's say with a plastic straw
in it, they were saying, actually, no, I

(30:50):
don't want a plastic straw. Thanks. And then
they were saying to themselves, you know what?
You probably shouldn't automatically put a plastic straw
in the drink unless somebody asks you.
And we realized that our customers are the
best
weapon
in spreading the word about good business practice.
Because if they see something they like, the
nature of the traveler is they travel all

(31:10):
over the world and they share.
And so that was when we started to
talk a little bit more.
We started talking about it on social media
and on our website. And I would say
we've kept
this idea that we're not here to judge.
We've got loads of things to do better.
You know, I still use lots of boats.
We burn fossil fuels in our boats to
get to and from the islands when we're

(31:30):
far from perfect.
But the idea is to get a little
bit better every day and to really enjoy
it. And then what you're sharing is joy,
not criticism.
And we're not trying to make anybody else
feel bad.
So that's how we approach sustainability, how we
talk about it with our suppliers,
with our customers, and also I have to
say with,
what I could refer to as my competitors,

(31:52):
but what I try to refer to as
my peers. So we've actually helped two other
beach clubs, in the islands of Cartagena
to start their own recycling centers. Wonderful.
I know a little bit about b corp,
and I know there is a,
quite a stringent requirement
to qualify
to be a certified b corp.
How long did it take you to become
a part of a b corp?

(32:14):
We
applied
in,
I think it was February or March 2021
and certified in December
2021.
So it took us nearly a year. Yeah.
It is
very stringent.
Honestly, we weren't really planning to apply. We

(32:34):
applied by mistake.
One of my managers got a bit overenthusiastic
when he was going for the self assessment
and he hit the apply button.
We originally were using it as as a
means or a tool
to analyze every area of our business,
because I I really enjoyed the fact that
it divides your business into five areas, and
it asks you to consider

(32:55):
what your values are, firstly, with regards to
each area. So how do you treat your
customers? How do you treat
your your workers? How do you treat your
local community, your neighbors?
How do you treat the environment?
And then interestingly, and this was the one
which I think,
was toughest for us, and I think it's
tough for a lot of small businesses,
How do

(33:16):
you administer all of this? How do you
bake it into your corporate governance
so that all of these practices aren't just
the whim of one person in the business,
but they're kind of baked into the way
that you do things? So how do you
come up with policies and make sure those
policies are shared among your your team?
So it's kind of the slide that you
could call bureaucratic. We we've tried to make

(33:37):
it always useful.
And and, you know, and I sat with
a lot of
the questions that B Corp asks.
And what I find interesting about B Corp
is it doesn't judge you.
So,
okay, if you get fewer than 80 points,
you don't qualify.
But it isn't really about pass or fail
if you get more than 80 points. And
Blue Apple, I think, hilariously, the first time

(33:58):
we certified
was the lowest qualifying B Corp in the
history of of the organization.
We certified with 80.1
points.
So I'm proud of the fact that we
were the first time in resort in the
world. And I'm also proud of the fact
that we managed to scrape in with 80.1.
I try not to be embarrassed about that.
No. No. No. I think we just recertified

(34:19):
a couple of months ago, and we certified
with, you know, with about 126
points, which now puts us in kind of
the top five hotels in the world.
And I love the b corps that it's
it's a journey.
And it asks you questions like and this
is the one that stuck with me.
As a multiple
of the lowest

(34:40):
earning person in your business,
what does the highest earner take home?
And
for a lot of founders,
some of us are employed in our businesses,
some of us aren't.
Some of us are employed with, you know,
sort of a a nominal wage, and then
we take dividends.
And the first thing I thought when I
saw this question was, like, I wonder if

(35:01):
I say, you know, based on my wage
or if I say based on the dividends
that I take out plus my wage. You
know?
And then I realized that what B Corp
isn't doing is giving me a set of
criteria. It's asking me to think
about fairness.
So it's asking me
to consider what were the risks when I

(35:21):
started my business? You know, what was I
jeopardizing?
And after a certain amount of years running
it, have I recovered those risks? Has that
risk gone away? What are the responsibilities
I'm carrying
as the highest earning person in my business
in relation to the lowest earner
who I know perhaps is not carrying a
lot of responsibility and perhaps is not taking

(35:42):
a lot of risk, but they're certainly giving
me a lot of time.
And they are fundamental to my success. If
I didn't have them in my business, something
wouldn't get done and I wouldn't be able
to operate.
And then Beagle gives you a, you know,
a multiple choice. And I can't remember exactly
what the answers are, but it says, you
know, is it one to five?

(36:02):
So, you know, let's say your lowest earner
earns one.
Does your highest earner earn somewhere between two
and five? You know, is it six to
50?
Is it 51 to 200? And it went
on.
And I think the top answer is, does
the highest earner
take home a million times more than the

(36:24):
lowest earner? Which to me was laughable.
And then, of course, I went back to
thinking about my friend Jeff Bezos.
And I thought, how do I go to
sleep at night?
What's the number for me where I feel
comfortable?
And I came to a conclusion. You know,
for us, that number is 20. So at
that point, I made a commitment

(36:45):
that in a year,
I would never
benefit from Blue Apple
to a multiple of more than 20 times
that that the lowest earner in the company
benefited.
Because I felt that I could then sit
down and talk to that person and tell
them how much I earned and not feel
embarrassed or ashamed or like I was taking
advantage.
And those are the questions that Beacore puts

(37:06):
to you as a founder.
And they're challenging.
But I like that you get to come
to your own conclusion. Look. 20 is the
number for me. Yeah. For Jeff, it's a
million. Yeah. For somebody else, it might be
five. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. I mean, I
I think this is very fascinating, and I
think the audience will appreciate. And I, I
hope they will
who who you are or who are listening

(37:27):
to this that you send some questions because
I think this is very important that if
you don't know anything about b corp, I
think they say
it gives a credibility to your,
hotel organization. And because it's quite,
as you as, Portia now mentioned, it's it's
quite stringent, and you have to really know
what you're doing, and you have to do
a lot of thinking to make things right.

(37:48):
How is it apart from the customer point
of view?
I mean, there are people talking about travelers
are now seeking experience that align with their
values.
Do you think or are you witness witnessing
any true shift in consumer behavior,
or is it just a particular
group of people who are
traveling to places and appreciate
the type of things,

(38:09):
such a such a sustainable travel, or is
it still a kind of a niche market?
It's difficult for me to to
answer,
you know, really truthfully in terms of data
backing
because, obviously, I only have 11 rooms. So
I'm a pretty niche product.

(38:30):
What I can say that I think
indicates a trend that's wider than my own
niche
is that
whenever I speak to,
a journalist and I've I've worked in hospitality,
obviously, you know, through yachting as well
for more than twenty years now.
And I've I've worked with PR companies

(38:50):
throughout that time.
And and twenty years ago,
journalists
wanted to know what are the luxury features,
you know,
what carat gold is the plating on the
tats,
and tell me all of the mad and
amazingly innovative ways that you guys can get
your clients to spend money.

(39:12):
And today,
when I talk to a journalist, be it
a travel journalist or even a design writer,
mostly what they're interested to know is,
what are your values?
How is your work aligned with them?
How can you when I write this piece,
how can I demonstrate that you're a legitimate

(39:32):
business,
and that you really care about the environment
and the local community?
And so I would say that
there will always be a market for comfort
and luxury, I think.
And and we see that, you know, everywhere
in the world.
But certainly,
in my experience,

(39:53):
sustainability
and regeneration
are no longer considered that sort of hemp
wearing
avoidance of laundry.
It is now, I think, seen as completely
legitimate that a property
can provide a high end experience and at
the same time operate in a responsible way.
And certainly,

(40:14):
whereas
six, seven years ago at Blue Apple,
very few of my customers chose us for
our sustainability credentials.
Today, I would say 80 or 90% of
the customers with whom I speak
have chosen us because we're female led, because
we're black owned,
because of our B Corps certification,
because we're members of regenerative travel,

(40:35):
because of the work we do with the
local community,
because
they would like to enjoy themselves and at
the same time not feel guilty about it
and not feel exploitative.
And I think in that sense, it's not
so much a trend for the sake of
fashion.
It's that consumers,
all of us, we're waking up and saying,

(40:58):
why should my pleasure come at somebody else's
home? So when I buy a product, when
I travel, when I eat in a restaurant,
what's the best way that I can do
this for my own enjoyment at the same
time,
hope that it has a positive impact beyond
me. And I really hope that that's here
to stay. I don't see how it wouldn't
because it's a bit like, you know, you
discover that you're doing something nice. Why would

(41:19):
you go back to not being nice? Yeah.
Exactly.
So, I
mean,
it seems to me that you have kind
of sparked an entire movement in Cartagena
Cartagena
with your initiatives.
How has that kind of developed over the
years? And what is the,
the community and the how are they responding
to this?
And what do you see going on in

(41:41):
in in your community and also in the
greater let's say, does it spread out to
other parts of Colombia or any other areas?
You never really know,
quite how far, you know, impact travels.
You know, data wise,
our foundation is operational on several sites in
Cartagena,

(42:02):
and we sell our our products. So we
make, I should have got one right here.
Feels like blue pizza. So we make glassware
out of old bottles.
We have a team of, artisan
women who do that, and they sell their
products now all over Colombia.
We're quite regularly asked to consult on projects
around The Caribbean

(42:23):
and in other countries, hotels that are thinking
of implementing some of our procedures.
Our supply chain assessment tool has been used
by hotels all over the world.
I've traveled to I was in Copenhagen in
November
teaching,
a module on on sustainable food supply chains
to
a group of chefs that work at the
Marriott Luxury Collection.
So I'd say in that sense, our impact,

(42:45):
is spreading
slowly.
In Cartagena
specifically,
what I am absolutely
thrilled by
is
that good
sustainability
practice or regenerative practice or responsible practice, however
you want to call it, I'm now very
agnostic about vocabulary,
has become
something of competitive advantage.

(43:07):
And this, you know, I'm
thrilled. We're all in WhatsApp groups, you know,
with other businesses,
you know, and there'll be people in the
islands, who have hotels all over the islands.
And we used to, you know, used to
be competing about, well, I've had the most
clients or I did the biggest sales or,
you know, I've got the most famous chef.
And now I quite often see, you know,
last month we recycled a hundred tons of

(43:28):
glass and then someone else will be like,
well, we did a 10.
And and that's really exciting to see because
it means
that there's a capitalist
reason to do the right thing. Yeah. It
means that other businesses are seeing that their
clients like it. It gives them content for
social media.

(43:49):
And so I guess if I'm if I'm
proud,
which is a strange
feeling because, you know, most of us have
been appreciative,
but if I'm proud of one thing, it's
it's that.
And and this year, which has been super
exciting,
we started,
a group of businesses in Cartagena. It's called
Nuestra Cartagena.

(44:10):
And and there are 16 of us so
far with a bit of a waiting list
to join in. And we've started an international
PR campaign,
to promote
Cartagena
because there are so many businesses doing things
the right way, and I've got my fingers
up in inverted commas,
operating in a responsible way, serving food that's
really healthy,

(44:31):
avoiding,
processed foods,
operating with really,
contributive supply chain models,
treating their staff with respect and paying fair
wages,
that we've now formed a little club.
And we just had our first FAM trip,
and we had
journalists from The US. We had three journalists
from Mexico.
And, you know, they all left saying,

(44:52):
it's a long time since I've been to
a destination, not just one property,
but an entire city where I see this
attitude and this philosophy and these values
permeate across the hospitality industry. And so that's,
I guess, where I am now is how
do I make sure that that spreads
really profoundly across Cartagena, and how do we

(45:13):
get that message out to the world? Right.
Okay. Excellent.
Let's move over a little bit to the
social media because that is something that,
obviously, you we both know we know a
little bit about, and we both like it
because we enjoy
having some presence. But I know that I
know as a business owner, you might struggle
with balancing the day to day operation and

(45:34):
the demands
of social media marketing. So how do you
balance your this act yourself, and how do
you navigate that challenge?
I should caveat my answer here
with the introduction that I don't think that
I do a particularly good job.
So whatever I say, probably do the opposite.

(45:56):
We've been quite slow with all of my
brands with social media.
I actually I've really struggled with it.
I I love websites. I love text.
I like static information.
I find
social media to be a greedy beast,
that you're constantly having to feed.

(46:17):
And actually a couple of days ago, I
interviewed,
to to recruit to the business somebody to
help us with social media.
And she said to me,
it's rare that I sit down and talk
to a business owner who has so much
content
and communicates
so little of it across their social media

(46:38):
channels.
I was very focused when I opened Blue
Apple
on making sure that we were really walking
the walk
before we talked the talk.
And I think
I possibly went a bit too far in
the sense that I built a team of
people who were so concerned with doing it

(46:59):
and getting it right and being authentic and
not greenwashing and not brag bragging,
that I've ended up with a team of
people that are essentially quite social media shy.
And so sometimes I think we do need
a bit of a kick up the bum.
And so maybe if I answer that question
in a year's time, I'll tell you all
the amazing things that we're doing. But something

(47:19):
that has worked quite well for us, I
think, has been that we've always been very
authentic and very honest, and we've never talked
about things that we don't do. And one
of the comments that I hear
most frequently from guests
is,
I honestly don't know why we didn't come
to Brew Apple first. And they've been to
lots of other beach clubs. And

(47:39):
they said, well, we looked at everyone's social
media. We looked at the pictures, and, you
know, the other place kinda looked a bit
sexier than you guys.
And then we got here. Firstly, it looks
much better in real life than it does
in the pictures.
Secondly, the service is brilliant. The food is
fabulous.
We can see that you guys are focused
on actually doing the job. And we just
sort of feel a bit sad that we

(48:00):
didn't come here straight away.
Now that is on the one hand, extremely
gratifying.
On the other hand, of course, especially if
you're a social media manager, that is incredibly
frustrating.
So that is that's an area of focus
for us now is how to strike that
balance
and how to tell our story without lagging
without bragging. Yeah. And the

(48:22):
the the audience will really, really see through
that if you're if you're trying
to sell something.
Basically, the idea is that you should,
in a one way, solve a problem that
the customer has before they travel somewhere, and
then they start to see that, well,
you know, let me take it back to
the our
glass crushing machine. You know, even that five

(48:43):
minute story makes an impact of what you're
really doing. And because you're telling here and
now in in in our conversation here, a
lot of things that you're doing, you can
also
by whoever does that,
have a mobile device in their hand, and
and they walk around just showing it for
five minutes, and that goes a long way.
And once that distributed
to to those usual suspects,

(49:05):
in the social media, then it will spread
very quickly. And then there are also
channels, platforms that has been growing that are
not bound to algorithm because the challenge is
that how do you make sure that it
it is, distributed.
So now there are platforms which,
don't don't use,
but are only a subscription based and not

(49:27):
using
algorithm. That means that you have a captured
audience, whatever. If they're if they like what
you're doing, they will also subscribe to your
content. And that's the way I think,
there are people are growing into finding out
another ways how they can
benefit for this. But because you have such
a compelling
story. I mean, since we've been speaking here
for almost an hour, you have every minute

(49:48):
you have shared something that could be a
five minute video about what you're doing on
daily basis or what your team is doing
or what the community is doing. So there
is a,
it just takes it's a lot of effort
for the person who has to do it.
It's not
and to hire an agents agency to do
it, I think that they don't quite get
it because you has to be somebody who

(50:10):
is in that operation.
That's my 5¢ all about this.
You're hired, Samiric. You've come to Colombia.
Got it. But you're absolutely you're absolutely right.
And I think we we are now at
the stage where
I finally feel confident and comfortable enough
to put a phone in someone's hands and
say, you know, go off. And the other

(50:30):
thing, of course, is that, and I think
you you'll agree,
Certainly with Instagram, and I think a little
bit now with LinkedIn, content
no longer has to be as polished as
we thought it had to be. So we
used to think, well, you have to have
a professional video and it has to all
look really beautiful.
And something that I now see is that
actually our customers respond better to something that
looks real.

(50:51):
Yeah. And things that are almost too staged,
they belong on the website. So they understand,
you know, that's you wearing your makeup and
your ball gown and presenting your best self.
But your social media, that's you going to
the gym and walking about, doing your groceries.
And that's who you really are on a
day to day basis. And I think as
a brand, it's really it's nice to have
both of those sides out there. Yeah. So,

(51:12):
watch this space.
And I think and I noticed it changed
in in
like, radically, it changed during the COVID, pandemic
where you you start to see,
all these videos or or conversations,
where,
you have, the dog crossing the the the

(51:32):
room where the interview is happening and nobody
photos anything
special with that or or and then or
somebody walked in or the baby walk and
crawls in, and it was quite normal. There
was nothing wrong with that. Before that was
absolutely a huge no no because you had
to have a, like, a TV studio perfection
with a great black lighting and so on.
But now it's the

(51:54):
the content that matters and and, how it's
presented in in a in a way. Let
me take you in in another part of
hospitality,
which,
is interesting to get your views on is
that
there's a lot of technology
in in,
hospitality and hotels mainly. And the the techno

(52:14):
what I mean with that is that people
had particularly during the pandemic, people got used
to having,
self check-in, digital concierge, and keyless entries, and
all that stuff. What is your thought on
that? I mean,
does that fit into what,
the Blue Apple bitches doing, or is it
a very distant

(52:35):
thinking that you should have that technology in
place?
Tech is so interesting, and and I had
a a bit of a discussion with a
friend the other day. He was talking about
progress and how exciting it is and innovation
and blah blah blah. And I said to
him, do you ever ask yourself if this
progress is really necessary and this this innovation
is is really useful? Or is it just

(52:55):
innovation for the sake of it? And that,
you know, that is really my my philosophy
when it comes to tech in our businesses.
I absolutely
love tech.
I don't have
keyless entry and humanless check-in because one of
the reasons that people come to Grapple is
because they love people and they want to

(53:16):
meet my team.
And we still have old fashioned keys because
it's an island and anything electronic is bound
to rust,
or oxidize or get too salty.
But that said,
I mean, we since day one, when we
couldn't afford to put telephones in the rooms,
have been using WhatsApp for room service.
Very popular with our customers. So when they

(53:39):
check-in, we give them a link. And if
they want to join the room service group,
they do. And then 95
of our customers join, and then they can
just do everything they want via WhatsApp.
We use AI. I am a I'm a
big fan of AI.
I've done a little bit of research into
also how what the environmental
impacts of AI are because I know there's

(54:00):
a lot of stuff out there about AI
using a lot of water and using a
lot of energy.
And
as far as I understand, without having kind
of
dived really deeply into it,
AI on the scale that most of us
use it is no more water and energy
intensive than watching YouTube videos or binging a
series on Netflix.

(54:21):
We have AI
assisting our front desk team,
and that doesn't replace a person. That facilitates
a person being able to leave the desk
and go and have more human interactions with
our guests.
So there's definitely been tech
that has been extremely useful for us.
We have,

(54:43):
Colombia is famous for its
absolutely absurd bureaucratic systems. And, you know, one
of the things that Colombia likes to do
is to track the locations of foreigners,
wherever we are.
And, you know, there's an amazing
tech app that lets us do the online
check-in and automatically register anyone with immigration so
that we don't have to have a person
doing data entry. So I'm always open to

(55:05):
new forms of tech like that. In Townhouse,
I have smart rooms.
So you can turn the AC on with
your voice.
You can turn the TV on. I absolutely
hate it. Every time I go into a
room, it starts talking to me. I freak
out. I just want a light switch. You
know, I'm very analog.
But a lot of our customers really love
it. So now we've set it up so

(55:25):
that you could choose, do I want my
room to be smart, Or do I want
to just be able to touch the light
switch and the remote control myself?
So, yeah, we're open to it. And we
enjoy it. But we never let
it take over the original vision. And for
me,
hospitality,
in our sense, I'm not an airport hotel,
I'm not a transit hotel.
Hospitality for us is about experiencing new cultures,

(55:48):
meeting new people.
It is about creating temporary communities wherever you
are in the world and feeling connection.
And I think tech can help with that,
but I don't think it's going to replace
people. We will have no robotic waiters anytime
soon. Good.
I'm glad to hear that. They would rust
before that, for not too long.

(56:09):
So Good evening.
I have two more questions before we wrap
wrap up, and I think you have touched
on many of these things. But one question
that I like to ask all my guests,
besides what we talked about, what other trends
do you see
happening in hospitality that hoteliers should take note
of
now? The one that I I talk about
all the time with my own team,

(56:31):
and I see happening in other countries, and
and quite often, I would say, you know,
Cartagena
is a small town. Colombia, it's a relatively
small country
in the world of tourism. You know, our
numbers are nothing like the numbers that you
see in Italy, France, The States.
So we're not always at the forefront of
trends.
The one that I'm seeing

(56:51):
is,
alcohol
and generations,
newer generations that aren't looking to drink in
the same way,
if at all.
But it's no longer acceptable to just palm
them off with a Coca Cola
or or a concentrated orange juice. So I'd
say my bar staff are getting way more

(57:11):
creative.
We're making our own kombuchas. We're making our
own kefirs.
We've got, you know,
cocktails, mocktails, but that are not
an afterthought. They're actually, you know, designed from
the base up to not have alcohol in
them. A colleague of mine who's who who
works in another company, so I say an
industry colleague,
she's creating already in Colombia her own alcohol

(57:34):
free cocktail. So she's taking things like the
agave plant and she's making alcohol free tequila.
So that's that's a trend that I'm seeing
and I think it's because we are,
seeing people who are more perhaps health conscious.
And the other one which goes hand in
hand with that is food.
And there I am really pleased to say
that we were ahead of the curve. But
this idea that a kitchen shouldn't really have

(57:56):
if you're
paying for professional staff
to make your food, there shouldn't be any
processed products in that kitchen.
There shouldn't be a bottle of ketchup,
you know, or barbecue sauce,
or processed bread. You know, everything should be
made from scratch. And that's something that I
advocate quite
strongly for. You know, if I travel, I

(58:17):
will not go to a restaurant now where
they're serving me supermarket bought food.
I expect everything to be made from scratch.
I expect them to know the origin of,
for example, if they're serving animal protein, I
don't want to be vegan.
I don't want to be
vegetarian, but I want to know that the
meat that I'm
eating is ethical. I want to know that
the animal didn't suffer unnecessarily before its death.

(58:37):
I want to know that it wasn't fed
antibiotics. I want to know that it wasn't
fed corn that was, the cause of deforestation
in the Amazon.
And I think that
kitchens
and therefore hoteliers
now have to have much much more robust
answers,
when they talk about the origin of what's
on the plate.
And certainly that's something that I I see

(58:58):
from our clients, and it's something that I
do when I travel. I now
ask. And of course, this isn't new.
You know, this is going back fifty or
sixty years,
to food chains that were more simple.
Wonderful. So lastly, if people are interested to
find out more about Blue Apple Beach and
the Green Apple Foundation and all the work
you do, how where can they find you

(59:20):
find you?
We are on Instagram,
even though I'm not very good at it.
So that would probably be the easiest, at
Blue Apple Beach. You see? Very easy to
remember. At townhouse galtahena,
greenapplectg.
And then, we also obviously have websites,
or you can find me on LinkedIn, and

(59:40):
there's a link to everything that I do
there. Honestly, if you just pitch up to
Cartahanna
and say Blue Apple, to almost anyone in
the street, they'll know that there's that bonkers
English girl that showed up ten years ago,
and started a hotel on an island with
no water, and she's still here. Wow. So
they'll probably put you in the right direction.
Wonderful.
Yeah. And, also, I mean, this episode, I

(01:00:01):
will be promoting it to Instagram. So they
will find you through my channel also and
and and YouTube and and LinkedIn. So we'll
make sure that,
I do my little share to to get
the word out about you and and your
wonderful organization. So, Portia, I really appreciate that
you have joined today. I had a lot
of fun having this conversation with you, and
I cannot wait to do it again. I

(01:00:22):
mean, because I think we have something more
to talk about in the future. There are
so many,
initiatives that we can have, another conversation. So
I hope you will accept my invitation to
join me as a guest again.
Summer, it's always a pleasure,
Steve, to talk to you, and,
it's not one-sided.
The reason that I'm able to give interesting
answers is because you ask all the right

(01:00:44):
questions.
So thank you. Thank you for tuning in
to The Social Hotel Year. If you enjoy
this episode, please take a moment to leave
us a review, give it a thumbs up,
and don't forget to hit the
as a podcast,
please write the review in the apple podcast.
It would really mean a lot to me.

(01:01:04):
And also if you write about this particular
episode with Porsche Hart mention it was Portia
Heart, who was my guest. And this would
also,
I will make sure that she will know
about it also. So we have a lot
of guests coming up in the future and
we will have a lot of stay tuned
for more thought provoking conversations. And until next
time, take care and keep exploring.

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How Blue Apple Beach Redefines Eco-Luxury & Regenerative Hospitality TSHS – 122

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}How Blue Apple Beach Redefines Eco-Luxury & Regenerative Hospitality TSHS – 122