Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another SLD meetup. Today I have a really special guest, and who does it enjoy going to the south of France in the summer? Well, we're getting a little piece of that with today's conversation. His name is Justin Garizon, and he's the managing director of Riviera Luxury Rentals.
What time does it happen? How are you? I'm doing Riviera see. So it's sunset time in the Langalang?
Is that what it is? It's always sunset time in the Langalang. But no, it's October, we're still having a wonderful Indian summer. The sunsetting right there, I'll show you guys in a minute, and it's the best backdrop in the world for each other.
I gotta say that. I'm very nervous. You've been here at the moment. Of course, I've been in the Langalang, and it's one of my favorite villas in the entire world.
I mean, when you told me that you were going to be joining us for villa Langalang, I was like, wow, what a privilege. I look, I cannot complain. I'm giving Miami also a beautiful city, but a Langalang? Tafo, so tell us a little bit about it.
We'll do a spot for these next. Okay, that was good. Well, I mean, it's going to start getting a little bit cold, so I'll obviously be my army. But for sure, in the summer, now Justin, thank you for joining us.
I really wanted to talk a little bit about what's going on in the French Riviera, because everybody dreams of having such an amazing summer vacation there. And you and your company, Riviera Luxury Rentals, have some of the most extraordinary villas, not only the villas, but also the experience. So tell us a little bit about it. Well, look, we've worked very hard.
There's a great team behind me who maybe are getting to see, you guys aren't getting to see today, but to serve as much credit as I do for anything else to have gotten us here. But yeah, we've worked hard to build up a great, but select portfolio of some of the most beautiful homes of the Riviera. Langalang is certainly our flagship, it's an exclusivity. I've worked with the owner for 10 years, so I know it inside out.
I remember what it was a building site, and we were scrapping about six hours before. I was working up stuff because clients were coming and it wasn't quite ready. So I remember all those crazy stories. And yeah, we cover central pay over to, we jump over a lot of gold.
We don't work in Monaco itself. Right over to the detailing border. We have just over 200 homes, so we did our best to hand pick the best. We don't go under a certain number.
And then we have, Langalang again is our flagship, and it's not our most expensive. We have one home here, which rents for almost a million euros a week, which is new to the market. And it's a whole nother level of crazy. What way is that one located?
It's in Cannes, actually. It's a refurbished castle. And it's one of those places that when you hear about it, you see pictures, you think, yes, I kind of get it, and then you walk around and just go, oh my god. I had to come.
I had to see it to sort of understand what this is talking about. Tell me about, obviously, how you market this property, because it's not something that everybody else can afford. So how do you reach this particular audience? It's not.
We do it off to Instagram, actually, in social media. We have the web, the website has its own dedicated website. Afterwards, you know, I've been doing this for 20 years. My team has been doing this for a long time.
My business partner's been doing this for a long time. We have very good internal networks that with certain homes, we work as much as we can. And we have one or two sort of key partners in each destination. So for the states, for Asia, well, Russia is obviously a question market at the moment, but it was obviously a very good market for everyone who helped us get market penetration in those sort of countries and markets where we're not sitting there.
It would take us 20 years and 50 million dollars in operation in some of our partners. So very carefully hand picking some of those for the really high end properties and then making sure that the right people see it without it being everywhere and sort of losing that era of accessibility that hopefully trusts. Yeah, he's kind of people. There's a huge amount of trust.
And their assistants are looking after a lot of the travel and then they're coming here, and the systems know if they make a mistake, they're going to get assassinated. The guests have very, very particular requests and wants. I mean, I've had people fly over from, I've had an assistant fly over from LA and spend probably six minutes in the house just because she wanted to check the master bedroom for her boss to make sure it looked and was exactly what we sort of said. Super great.
She flew home. She signed a contract the next day. So these people are particular, but like you said, you know, once they sort of get to know and trust you, they'll stay with you forever. I wanted to ask you about obviously some of the most difficult things that you've encountered in this business.
2020 was a tough year for everybody. You know, the travel industry in particular, I think, travel and tourism was one of the industries that got hit the hardest. Obviously by the nature of the fact that no one could travel, as we all know. And then the higher you were on the luxury side, obviously the fewer and few people that were actually traveling.
And the rules at one point, as they sort of eased, but COVID was still around. I mean, I remember we could only do two visits per day and we had to have paper signed and we'd have to go to the house and our early and disinfected and signed papers and give it to the guests saying we've done that and rubber gloves and masks. And it slowly loosened. We got through 2020, which I think was all everyone was sort of aiming to do.
And again, the team stuck together and everyone really supported each other. And it was a time where I think teams really needed to do that. And I hope they're all watching and thank you for that. It was a tough time.
2021 was different. It was a very good year, but it was very, very condensed. It was sort of July and August only, whereas especially in Canada, season only starts really in April. And then we have MIM, which is the Big Ridicidicic Congress and the Film Festival on Cannes Lions and then that sort of flows into the summer.
I mean, the weather is so great at the moment. I mean, I'm sitting here at a world of T-shirts. I think it was 78 degrees today. I mean, it was great.
Wow. And then this year was really that year where everyone was like, right, we couldn't travel or we didn't travel last year. Let's go. How important is for you to tie in those experience and those events with me there?
Well, the nice thing with the Congress is, especially for the Cannes market, is it just extends out the season so much. I mean, don't give your own, talk about refocus on Cannes so much because it's where the highest cluster of Villas for rent is. We do a lot of rentals in Central Pay, July and August. It's packed.
There are, of course, people there in June. There are people there in September. When you have, in, let's say, an off month like March or May where the season is really starting to get going, you have an extra 100,000 people coming down. It's great for the market.
You know, Mipin is less, let's say, relevant for villa rentals because the weather can be a bit hit in this and March and people don't necessarily want to commit to renting a 100,000 euro villa for an event when they're not positive they can do everything outside. The front festivals are front festivals, but like being in England, if it rains, they're not normally really cares what they want, which is true. And then we roll into Lions, which is in June, and that July and August tends to be when people travel down for a month. Right.
And then we'll tend to come for a little bit less. So again, we have that premium week, which is great for the owners too, you know, on their side, not for the clients side, of course, because it is more expensive when you come through. That's a simple spine to end question. But it's a great and unique market in Cannes, especially for that.
Afterwards, like you said, the Formula One, there are lots of people that will come for the Formula One and then stay, sorry, come to the Film Festival and then stay on for Formula One weekend. The world luxury, right? Like it's been used so many different ways. But what is it really for you?
You know, we have smaller villas, but there's that certain point where, yes, you pass into the luxury or super luxury or super prime or whatever sort of term you want to use. I think down here, it's a house over a certain size. It's a house with a certain number of services minimum. I mean, things like cleaning, you know, daily cleaning, made service, all that.
That's great. But that's standard ish when you're paying over a certain amount. You want to start having a concert, you want to start having a private jet, you want to start having for the managers. You know, you want to have, it's not necessarily a bedroom counts because it's one of those things where you can have a five bedroom house, which is 2000 square meters and you can have a five bedroom house, which is 200 square meters.
But over a certain size, the view plays a huge factor. And I really want to spend the camera around right now and show you the sort of sunset over the water at the moment. But you know, things like that are what play into it. And then to be honest, the staff of the house make all the difference.
But why is the biggest lesson that you've learned about all your years in this industry? Shut up and listen. Oh, that's good. No, I think we all have a tendency to impose what we want on people, which as much as, you know, we're all sales people, we think we can bend people to our will a little bit.
At the end of the day, these are, you know, even when you're spending five, six hundred or whatever a month, these are people's holidays. It is their time to relax. It is emotional on that side. It's not buying a house, so the emotions are different.
But it's just trying to be quiet, listen. And then this is what you want. This is what we have. Let's try and put those two together.
Sure, I would love to see the sunset because now it's at magic hours. So this is what we're talking about, guys. This is a little bit of a cloudy day. When you come on a clear day, you sort of get that beautiful orange red ball that descends over the sea and sets the mountains on fire.
And then I'll drop down a little bit. So we have another minute. I can show you guys. Yeah, please, of course.
I mean, this is what we're talking about. I mean, come on. Here's the pool. We talked about it, so I'm going to have to show you the beach.
Exactly, yes. And there's a crocodile there as well. There is the sunset all the way around. Look at this.
I've been coming here for 10 years, I think, on and off. And I still can't get over this view. Every time I see it. How could you?
This is something that you don't see anywhere. This is just unique and magical. A nice shot of the pool in the house there. The whole garden was carved out of this sort of rock wall here.
So if you want to come and have a party or a wedding or do whatever you want, I don't want to say no sound restrictions, but you can really have fun before you bother anyone. So the barbecue is out the owners, not in the house at the moment here. So it's set up a little bit for him, but we got the crocodile. Yeah, there it is.
And then we got our waterfall and our beach. It's not a good spot to fall into water. So I think that's what you're going to relax for the rest of the afternoon, huh? I'm going to try and get a class of rosans in here.
Wow. Listen, that sounds too bad. So I got to say, this is by far one of the best properties I've seen. And the nice thing with it as well is it's not sort of overly vulgar or anything like that.
They're houses and it's not, it's not overly sterile. We have homes where you walk in and they're beautiful, but you can see that the guests, not that they're uncomfortable, but you don't want to sit down. It's a little bit of, not a museum, but it's beautiful. Everyone walks around, but it's very delicate.
A Lang Lang is just something about it. When you come in, it's very warm. You just want to sit down, relax. You feel at home immediately.
And no one ever wants to leave. No, I mean, fantastic. I really appreciate you showing us the beautiful side of the house and also the views, because those are just spectacular. I mean, we're going to keep that in our mind as an inspiration, you know, and manifest it, because this is definitely the type of house where people dream of.
Well, look, for the moment, no bookings for next year. So anyone who wants to come, it's free all 20, 23. Perfect. Let's make it happen.
Let's go. And the inside is just also phenomenal. Yeah, this is the living room. So come on here.
I can't take you into the bedrooms. Oh, the jeans? No, no, it's all good. And those I want to see more about this feel like check it out on their Instagram.
I mean, we're talking about it. It's just fantastic. This is just a sneak peek to make sure that people get a taste of it. Nick, please, but definitely take a look.
I've got it. And I'm sorry. The last thing I have to do is check out this. I've never seen a chandelier that runs three stories.
You know, up and up and up and up and up. That's just incredible. And then the last thing, just because you mentioned it, we have to say hi to Stan. Yes, please.
Our friend Stan, Stan the dinosaur. So this falls down there. That's the main staircase. We'll be super round.
And here's Stan. What's up, Stan? Hey, man. What's up?
Really nice. And I really do the conversation. There's great points that I'm not sure people will take in consideration for whatever they do, especially the shut up and listen, because we forget that quite often. So...
My mom sold it to me once when I was a kid and it sucked in my head. It's a good lesson. It's a good lesson. But I appreciate your time.
I look forward to seeing you soon. And if you get too tired of the cold and the winter, you can always come to Miami. My pleasure. I'd love to come.
So I'll take you up on that. Sounds good. Well, just it's all right. Thank you.
Take it easy, man. Okay. Bye, bye, bye. Bye, bye, bye.
And thanks again for everybody tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it. And remember, embrace its beautiful success in life. My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time.