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016 Quinta do Lago
79 Plays5 years ago
GUEST
Sean Moriarty, CEO, Quinta do Lago
https://www.quintadolago.com/en/
HOST
Matt Morley
Recommended
Transcript
Episode Intro & Location
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to episode 16 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we take a deep dive into the themes of wellness and sustainability in real estate and hospitality. Today, we're in my old home of Portugal, specifically in the idyllic Algarve region to the south, talking to Sean Moriarty, CEO of Quinta do Lago, a sustainably-minded mixed-use development with over 50 years of history behind it.
Resort Overview & Limits
00:00:40
Speaker
Today the residential resort focuses on outdoor living with two and a half thousand acres of land of which only 25% can be developed on. As well as being home to some, it's also a tourist destination in its own right with golf courses, hotels, a sports campus, restaurants and retail, as well as its own nature reserve and a white sand beach, even their own on-site farm.
00:01:07
Speaker
If you like this type of content, please hit subscribe. You can find my contact details and those of Kinta Dolago in the show notes. So let's
Sean Moriarty's Insights
00:01:15
Speaker
get into it. Here's CEO Sean Moriarty.
00:01:21
Speaker
Sean, thanks so much for joining me today. It's a real pleasure. There's so much we could talk about. You've got a huge project and a huge remit. Today, we're going to focus on more of the sort of green and health and wellness aspects, but perhaps just for those who aren't familiar with Kinterlago, just a very brief introduction to the project and its various components. Yeah, good morning, and thanks. Thank you for inviting me. It's great to be joining you. So Kinterlago is in the very south of Portugal.
00:01:51
Speaker
12 minutes from Faroe Airport. We really are spoiled with nature here. It's 50 years old now, Kinta Lago, since it was first founded. And it's changed a huge amount in those 50 years. And I suppose in the last number of years, really what we've brought new to Kinta Lago was, and some game changers for us, was the campus. That's one of the latest dimensions.
00:02:20
Speaker
We built new homes, but very much focusing on outdoor living, which is a huge part of Quinta de Lago. It's safety, it's nature, outdoor living, sense of community, which was a big element of what the campus brought.
Community & Demographic Shifts
00:02:38
Speaker
So it's built on two and a half thousand acres of land. We respect the green belt, so you can only build on 25% of the land.
00:02:50
Speaker
You know, there's no high rising buildings. All the buildings are all built at the same height. It is an architectural stream world because they can have different styles. But everything is built at the same height. Everybody's got big gardens. You know, it looks very good.
00:03:10
Speaker
So just to sort of put that in perspective then, essentially it is a residential community first and foremost, but you then also have the Gulf and you have the hotel components. So you're open to the public, there's interaction with the public, but you also have those who invest by and live on site for at least part of the year.
00:03:30
Speaker
Exactly. So residential is a big part of our resort here. So you've got a number of villas, mainly villas, and then you've got some condominiums which would have a mixture of townhouses and apartments. So over the last number of years, and now in particular during COVID, we're seeing residents living down here more often and for longer periods of time.
00:03:53
Speaker
But Kinta Lago, it's open. It's open for tourism. We get a lot of tourism. We get a lot of passing through traffic. But it's from generations of old. Right now, we're seeing some amazing things here of three generations of people that are staying quarantined in down in Kinta Lago. And the age profile is very much changing over the last 18 months or 24 months.
00:04:24
Speaker
Getting younger, younger, younger. So, you know, if you go back maybe six years ago, the average age of our real estate buyer was in the late 60s, late 60s, probably even early 70s. Now it's mid 40s, 85% for buyers.
Health, Wellness, & Education
00:04:43
Speaker
I think that's one of the things that really interests me most is just how
00:04:48
Speaker
Obviously, the project's got 50 years of history behind it, but it does seem to now just be hitting that this sort of unexpected crest of a wave, right, which is suddenly there's this turn to
00:04:59
Speaker
healthy living and health has become the new wealth and it just feels like you guys are just so neatly positioned to capitalize on that but clearly it wasn't the case necessarily as i understand it 50 years ago right so i mean you must be are you seeing that are you seeing the effects of that yourself tangibly for sure you know on it's
00:05:19
Speaker
You know, you see a lot of marketing throughout the world of trying to get on the buzz of, you know, it's a healthy place to be and invest in your wellness and this kind of stuff. Because of working to the Lago situation and situated on the National Park on the Ria Formosa, which is an amazing place. If you haven't been there, you need to take a walk or a cycle along and it really is mind-blowing.
00:05:44
Speaker
So, Kington Lago has probably been saying this for a long, long time of the kind of environment that it is. Low density, you know, clean air, and now it's really become more important over the last two years, and in particular in the past 12 months for
00:06:04
Speaker
for the reasons that we know, but it really is top of mind, I think, for people. And it's a top of mind for younger generations. I think schools now in most parts of the world, and better parts of Europe in particular, they're really getting behind the whole sustainability piece. My nine-year-old can have conversations with me about sustainability that I don't fully understand, I have to admit. And that's a great, great place to be.
00:06:32
Speaker
So clearly, in one sense, there's wider external factors that are turning in your
Sustainability Investments
00:06:38
Speaker
direction. But how have you as a team strategically had to respond to what's going on around over the last two years? What has it been a case of new packages, new facilities? How have you tweaked or adapted the offer? You know, we really want to be the leaders. We want to be the leaders of change. And that's been a part of our journey for the last number of years.
00:07:01
Speaker
And that's why we invested so much in our resort. Over the last eight years, nine years, we've invested over 70 million in just the resort in revamping it in various different things. And during this lockdown pandemic, we said, let's now take advantage of this time and start on our golf courses. Our golf is a huge part of our business. And we've number one golf course in Europe for a number of years.
00:07:29
Speaker
You know, it's no longer about having great greens and clean bunkers. You also have to have really play a huge part in the environment. And we went on a heavy audit on the machinery we were using on our resorts in our golf courses.
00:07:47
Speaker
in particular our water pumps and how accurate these guys were. And it was a surprise to us. There was huge improvements to be made. So that got us then on the movement of investing in our golf course and South course in particular. We're putting in seven million into that at the moment.
00:08:04
Speaker
But one of the big results out of that is we've completely changed the water system that we've put in. We've redesigned our pumps because they weren't efficient enough. And at the end of this, with the new grasses we're using, the new pumps we're using, we're going to be using 30% less water consumption per annum, which is massive in an area like this, where water is so important in a warm weather environment.
00:08:33
Speaker
So that's one piece of it. I have hundreds of pieces I could speak to you about including our farms and everything else. You mentioned the farm and that was going to be one of my questions because it just looks like sort of this idyllic setup that you've got. Is that more of a, if you like, a sort of soft marketing piece or is it literally a functional working farm that contributes to the restaurants? How have you structured that investment and ongoing maintenance of the farm?
00:09:02
Speaker
Well, to be honest with you, we had that piece of land a number of years ago and we really wanted to get into, we want to involve our restaurants quite a bit and to buy local is very important for us.
00:09:16
Speaker
To buy local is actually harder than it seems, even though we've got amazing fresh markets here. I think there's still quite a bit of work to do in local, which I support, by the way, on local governments and food safety controls of how they can help the local food market producer and the restaurant owners.
00:09:40
Speaker
to get that traceability of food product from A to B. I think there's still quite a bit of work to do and that will be a game changer for everybody when that happens.
00:09:50
Speaker
So, you know, we really wanted to, we found it hard to get certain types of vegetables and certain types of products. So we said, let's use this piece of ground and grow our own. And it started from there. It then became a wish list for the chefs. I want this and I need this. I can't get this anywhere. And it evolved from there. Then we have another couple of acres of land out the road that wasn't being used. We farmed that and we've that turned into
00:10:18
Speaker
five acres of farm now where vegetables are grown and we've got greenhouses in it. And it's, to be honest, it's only right now in the past couple of months, two years later, that I'm really seeing the impact of this of when you're getting, we do a lot of takeaway food now and home delivery food for customers because of lockdown.
00:10:40
Speaker
and the colors of the different vegetables, the freshness of it, it's really amazing. Now we're going to expand on that quite a bit. I've got some exciting things happening this year, I hope, on the farm.
Community Engagement & Feedback
00:10:52
Speaker
But yeah, it's not something that we're making a lot of money out of, but it's making a huge change in our footprint, of course, but also the quality of what we're providing.
00:11:05
Speaker
You mentioned then the idea of the connection and your relationship with the wider community. And obviously we talk now about community often in the same breath as sustainability and wellness. Just wondering if there are other things that you're doing, how else you're engaging with the community. Has that been a piece of your CSR plan from the beginning or if you had to up those initiatives?
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, we've always had a great connection with the community here, with the residents and guests that we come in. We've got quite a large database. We've got a lot of golf club members in the campus. Games like Paddle, it brings people together. You've got various different groups.
00:11:53
Speaker
I think what really stood out very quickly here last year when the pandemic started off, we had this flatten the curve thing that was going around the place and ourselves and the residents very quickly within one week pulled together at the very beginning to raise funds for the local hospital.
00:12:15
Speaker
And I think it took nine days and there was a half a million donated to the local hospital to get some machinery that they really needed. And that, how quick that pulled together was amazing. That was really, and the residents just grabbed it
00:12:33
Speaker
let it i didn't have to be very much involved and got involved a few times and it was just completed and i was just looking at my whatsapp groups lately they're still talking on it and there's still pieces going on it and that showed a sense of community you know whereas
00:12:51
Speaker
At times it seems it's very transient here. People plugged in very fast. So, you know, we look for feedback every now and again from residents and different things. I spoke to seven or eight residents this week about a new restaurant. We're opening up and bounced a few names off them to get their feedback. Funnily enough, all seven of them had different opinions, but it didn't make my life any easier. But you know, we do engage quite a bit.
00:13:18
Speaker
So there's that interaction then with your key stakeholders effectively. I'm just wondering then within the context of sustainability and your efforts there.
Internal Sustainability Drive
00:13:28
Speaker
have been putting out a lot of content recently around your new sort of eco strategy and it's you know there's clearly a lot of thinking that's gone into that and I wondered if that has come, has that been driven if you like by those residential stakeholders or has that come from above from from sort of the boardroom level and obviously that's an extra benefit for the residents or what was the genesis of that?
00:13:53
Speaker
I have to admit the main driver is probably from us within. It wasn't pushed upon us to say you should be doing this. The basics of sustainability is a giving. It's frowned upon if you're still talking about how are you getting rid of forced-use plastic.
00:14:15
Speaker
That's like in retail in the 90s when we had some great customer service people going around saying, I can really train your staff to be the best trained people ever. How are you going to do that? I'll train them how to say hello, please, and thank you. That's a given. That's the basics.
00:14:32
Speaker
We were getting, you know, if you put out a plastic straw, it's just frowned upon. That can't happen. But we really need to take it way above and beyond that and how people can enjoy it. And food is one of the quickest and easiest ways for people to realize that what you're doing and why we're doing it and eventually we want to have
00:15:00
Speaker
carbon menu so that you understand where host the carbon footprint from the food that you have on that menu. Where does it come from? And I think it's eventually that's where we'd like to get to in one or two of our locations and explain if we look you really love figs. Figs are out of season now so I had to get them from Brazil and that's the impact. It's a delicate balancing act.
00:15:24
Speaker
I guess between providing transparency and information and honesty and delivering a luxury experience. So yeah, I guess you're just you're just trying to find your way through on that and but whilst leading within the market, right. So it must it can't be easy.
00:15:42
Speaker
You mentioned the campus and that would be perhaps another example of where you really push the boundaries you know when I visited and that for me is genuinely a sort of let's call it semi elite level or pro level sports facility that you just do not find in hotels let alone residential development. So the question
00:16:05
Speaker
it begs asking again did that come from demand from the market or did you just say you know what we're not going to do a standard gym we're going to completely raise the bar on that and set a new standard for hotel or residential gyms i think to to be fair um our shareholder no matter what he does it's not going to be standard it has to be above that and i think that's what the demand is if you're going to
00:16:35
Speaker
if we're going to maintain this leadership role of resorts and this where we want to be, it's expected that it's going to be above and beyond what the norm will be. And, you know, we really wanted it to be a game changer. We're
Sports Campus & Development Rules
00:16:52
Speaker
in King to the Lago. So the campus ideally in our mindset, when we set it out, we wanted the campus to become a flight to destination.
00:17:01
Speaker
not just Portugal to be a fly-to destination, King to the Lago to be fly-to, but the campus. Not very much happened because we eventually, you know, after it being built, it took two years to build it. Our first teams, they came from Beijing. They came from the premiership in the UK. They were traveling from all over the world with PSG. We had various different teams here, football teams, and they haven't been in King to the Lago before.
00:17:29
Speaker
A lot of those players have never been here, so they came here because of the campus. And that's really what we wanted to do. But the important thing about the campus is it's built to the standard for the elite athletes. But our tagline is very clear, be elite whatever your level. And so it's open for everybody. So you can train with the elite athletes at your side. We don't close off parts of it, you know, unless there's a big football team here and they need some privacy.
00:17:59
Speaker
We've got all the machinery, all the techniques and the coaches that will train an elite athlete and it's open for everybody. It's open for residents and guests. I use it every day and I'm elite at my level. I'm not at somebody else's level and that's what we want it to be. We're a big believer in backing the underdog if that fits in.
00:18:27
Speaker
just sort of dig into that because it is an interesting topic. I mean clearly you know the temptation with a gym is to say okay we'll put in some hardwood flooring, put some mirrors on the walls, put some lighting in perhaps a plant in the corner and then boom you get techno gym in and and they just kind of do the rest right they just fit it out with all that the usual gear and sell you lots of strength machinery.
00:18:46
Speaker
At some point, you said, OK, no, we're going to we're going to do it differently. And there was financially. Did you then have to factor in the additional revenue streams around bringing in and attracting the pro teams? Because there's a gap, right? There's a big step to go from your standard investment and your kind of classic technogym to what came out the other end in the form of campus.
00:19:08
Speaker
Did you know how it was going to bring secondary or tertiary benefits or was it a bit of a leap of faith that there was just demand out there and that if you built it they would come?
00:19:22
Speaker
You know, we were lucky enough. We met a lot of contacts and we've got some, we've got some friends in the LMA, for instance. And we were able to speak to some football teams and managers and ask them, you know, of the places you go to, where's the best? And we didn't want to know why it was the best. It's what was missing from it. And we ended up with a list of things that was missing. And that's what we went after.
00:19:52
Speaker
is those things that was missing because the rest of it will pull together. But if you have stuff that nobody else has, that's unique selling point, right? So the pitch was the biggest and probably a big game changer and a big investment. It's a decimal pitch. It's 95% natural grass and the rest of it is made up. We're the only one in Europe that you can hire that pitch from, but yet that's the pitch that
00:20:19
Speaker
PSG will play on, that's the Pitch Man City play on in their stadium. And everywhere else they were going to have their camps, didn't have that pitch to train on. So we invested in that and that was a huge investment compared to the normal pitch that we could have put in, a huge amount, a huge difference. But the difference on that is, you know, we can
00:20:41
Speaker
If you get the stats, if you've got a big game coming up, a Champions League game coming up, you'll get your stats of the pitch of how much water they're going to have on it, what's the role of the ball going to be, the distance of it, what's the bounce going to be. We can replicate that pitch in three days. And that was unique. So that clearly was a decision. The hope that that would be hugely important, we believed it would be important, and that was what we were gambling on.
00:21:09
Speaker
and it has turned out that it is quite important for people.
00:21:13
Speaker
So there's in some cases where you make these interventions and you make a bet on there being demand out there for it. And other times, clearly a large part of your strategy is just to leave nature where it is and to not intervene. You mentioned the low density strategy. So how do you sort of plan ahead in terms of leaving certain amounts untouched and encouraging people to connect with nature? Because clearly there's this big shift now towards not spending more time outside in the fresh air.
00:21:43
Speaker
You've obviously got commercial demands on the one side, but then at the same time protecting your future by allowing enough nature to remain untouched. So how do you juggle those two? Well, you know, there's a master plan in place for almost 50 years now since the Kingdom of Lago was founded of protecting that amount of greenbelt. And we've never moved from that.
00:22:11
Speaker
And in fact, we're extremely strict on it. So when people are building houses when they're buying plots here, there's only a limited amount of plots left and there's a huge demand for them. The buildability per plot is clearly marked out and that's your maximum. It won't budge from that. If it's over that,
00:22:33
Speaker
You know, you might be living in it. You just won't be living in it. In fact, it just doesn't happen. And everybody in these areas know that architects, municipalities, designers, they're all clear
Future Plans for Expansion
00:22:46
Speaker
about that. And that's what that's very unique for us. That'll never change. We will never be going back to redesign the master plan to say, can we have a bit of this green belt back or take a bit here or take a bit there?
00:23:01
Speaker
So your role clearly then is to steady the ship and guide it on that path because you sort of know where you're going to some extent. But then within that, obviously there's lots of room to experiment and to do what you're doing, which is innovate and create new products and services. So looking ahead to the next one, two, three years down the pipeline, what do you have coming up? What are your next new launches that you have coming?
00:23:27
Speaker
Well, my next immediate one, which is quite exciting, and then in a lot of places, it might seem like a small thing for us. It's a big piece. It's extended, continue to expand the farm we have, but we're going to build a beef farm. And we've got a number of guys that work for us that are very qualified in this field. So.
00:23:50
Speaker
They're very excited to get into a new project and a new role. And that's, I think, going to be exciting for us. I see this as every customer that comes and rents a villa from Oz or stays in our hotel will get a jar of honey leaving and it'll be another unique piece of Quinta Lago and the Algarve.
00:24:13
Speaker
We're going to continue to evolve that. The outdoor living is huge. You mentioned that and the whole health and wellness piece of it, we're really starting to become comfortable with that and providing a good service on that. We've got good golf, we've got good paddle, we've got good tennis. We're evolving our cycling routes.
00:24:36
Speaker
Right now we've got, since you were here a couple of years ago, we've got a new nature trail all along the Rio Formosa where it's really, it's linking up different beaches and you're off the sand dune. It's amazing and you can see everything that's going on around you. It's great when the tide is in and you've got all the boards around you and flamingos there. It's an amazing place to be. We're very much going to push out on that.
00:25:04
Speaker
It's a lot of things now, it's about packages. I think people like decisions to be made from, or at least to be guided into, I'll take care of it. What do you want to do? If you're going to travel for the first time, you want clean living, open spaces, what kind of food do you like?
00:25:25
Speaker
What kind of exercise do you like? Do you not exercise? And we'll create that whole piece for them. Right down to, we will label the shelves on your fridge that that's dad's shelf, that's mum's shelf and this is the baby's shelf of what you've told us and what feedback you've given us. And plan
Podcast Conclusion & Appreciation
00:25:43
Speaker
out your entire week if you want to de-stress and relax or you want a fusion and lots of activity.
00:25:50
Speaker
Yeah, and already we're getting lots of great feedback on that. So I think we're going to continue to expand on that. We will look at developing more real estate. We're just looking at plans on that at the moment, but we're looking forward to getting people back here. Well, you've got plenty going on. It's impressive stuff. So thank you very much for your time. It's been great. Thank you, Matt. Thanks very much.