Ep. 2187 Rocco Forte at the Verdura Resort | On The Road With Stevie Kim

How do you define luxury in hospitality? Luxury is is about making guests stay as comfortable and as seamless as possible. You have to try and interpret the guest's needs before he actually asks, ask for everything. Welcome to another episode of On The Road Edition, hosted by Stevie Kim, each week Steve travels to incredible wine destinations interviewing some of the Italian wine scene's most interesting personalities, talking about wines, the foods, as well as the incredible travel destinations. Alrighty. My name's Stevie Kim, and this is the Italian wine podcast in this wonderful resort, which is called verdura. That means vegetables. And but well, I have it. Verdura as well. Yes. Okay. And I have the greatest honor of the the Surd, Rocco farte, next to me, and we're going to ask him a few questions. When I say that. Okay. So first of all, Rockco farte, Is that so you're Italian as well? You're English or Italian? Well, I was born in England, but, both my parents have Italian origin. My father arrived in England when he was three, three years old with his father. And my mother was born in England of, and her parents came between them after the first world war. Oh, I see. So, so my my grandfather's name was Rock. Okay. Cool. So you're a third generation in hotel business? Yes. So my grandfather wasn't in hotels, but he had sort of, restaurants. Okay. Yeah. And then my father Whereabouts? On the south coast, actually, of, of England. Okay. I'm just going to ask you some random questions because we don't have that much time. How do you define luxury in hospitality? Luxury, is, is about making, guest day as comfortable and as seamless as possible. And you have to try, and interpret the guest needs before you actually ask, ask for anything. And, and, you have to personalize his his day. That's what luxury is about. If, obviously, you have to have a nice, a nice environment, you have a have a nice decorated hotel, you have a most beautifully decorated hotel. And if the services wrong. It's not good. Then the guest would come back. Okay. So what, first of all, you have many hotels have you got? I've got fifteen now. Fifteen. Which one is your favorite? I didn't have a favorite. Oh, I know you would say that. It's like when I asked the winemakers, which one is your favorite wine? I have, no no wonderful. All my hotels are individual. They all have their own personality. There's a strong sense of place with all of them. I always say my most beautiful hotel is Villageair, which is in palermo on on the water on the waterfront, and that's a building that was built in nineteen o three Cicilian liberty style. Oh, I see. And it's a very, very special place. This is a wonderful place because you have fun. Oh, it's fantastic. It's it's acres of land. It's amazing. I've been here only, couple of times, but it's amazing. And I always relax when I come here. Do you come here often? I come sometime. I come in, in August for usually a couple of weeks holiday. So you're truly an Italian at heart. Yeah. Well, I mean, I sort of my wife's Italian. My Oh, your wife's Italian. My children speak Italian. So So there's a lot of Italian Right. In me, and I always kept my links with it to be very strong. So a man of your experience, right, in life, and in business. How do you handle stress? I don't, you know, I sort of you get used to. I mean, if you you almost miss stress, to to some degree. And I think the, you thrive on on stress to to a great degree in that, you know, you get a buzz out of it and a buzz out of, of doing things and solving problems. And so I don't look at stress of something particularly bad. Obviously, you can get tired. You can have periods where you're working very hard. You know, you don't, you don't pause, you don't relax, and then you get very tired at the end, and sometimes when I go on holiday, I sort of just crash out for three days. Until I until I recover. So I'm not a very nice person to be around on it. When you're nasty. Good thing you're in a good mood to that. On those on those occasions, I always am in good woodbram with a beautiful woman. Oh, thank you. Okay. So, I want to ask you a little bit about the travel destination. So how do you decide when you are choosing a hotel? How do you decide that is the place I would like my next resort to be? What is the criteria in your mind? You know, a lot of my hotels, the city hotels, and so, you know, the city is our destination in their own right, and then you have to find the right location in the city. To do your hotel or to convert an existing building or take over an existing hotel. It has to be a location which is very well situated. And, since most of our customers are leisure customers, some, an area which suits the leisure, leisure traveler. Here at the Dura, I I needed I needed a lot of land. I wanted to be by the sea, because I wanted to build two eighteen hole golf courses. I would say it was all about golf and and, so You were driven by motivated by golf. In this in this particular destination. I want to create a great golf resort in the Mediterranean, but it's not just a golf resort. It's very family orientated. And we have the great the best kids club in Europe. Yeah. A lot of activities for young children. Oh, I didn't realize that. As well as as well as a golf. So, it's a very special place. So, you know, I'm very vertical. Our audience, they're mostly about Italian wines. Because it's called an Italian wine podcast. Do you know anything about wine? I have to On a level on a level from one to ten, what is your level of wine expertise? Be fair, be generous to yourself? Well, I'm probably by the six. The the I know what wines I like, what wines I don't like. And So let's go through some of those. What wines? I've been I've been brought up in England. Yeah. And now you drink French wines and you drink good French wines. They're very rounded and they're very smooth. They have fantastic nose and so on. And if you get used to that sort of wine, it's very difficult to drink any anything else. A lot of Italian wines are drunk very young. Mhmm. And so they're quite tannic and quite hard. And my palette isn't really used to that. And so So you're more Bordeaux, burgundy and Champaign? Well, I don't, yeah, I can't, I don't think This is a confession. I drink champagne. But, I mean, I'd like good wine, you know, and, and, you know, you a a French, a white burgundy, is very difficult to to beat. Mhmm. And whoever, you know, whoever it's made, of course, a lot of chardonnay, made in, in Italy now and, and other parts of the world. Very, very few will come to have the quality of a good French bearing business. You know, you've made so much huge investments in the hospitality. Have you ever thought about investing in the wine business? No. It's a different trade, quite difficult and very, and I have no expertise Right. In it. And it would probably take ten years of my age. It's probably too long. Okay. And lastly, what type of advice would you give a young person who wants to get into the hospitality business? Well, first of all, work working it, see if you like it. Mhmm. Because a lot of people think of it. This is very glamorous and so on. Right. It's very hard. It's been a lot of hard work. You're working. You have an operations working twenty four hours a day. You have, you know, huge demands placed on you and time demands. So you have to be able to enjoy enjoy that sort of atmosphere. But also, many people, you know, say I'm gonna do a hotel because they've stated hotels. They don't understand the professionalism that's required, and they end up doing very badly. So you've got to know, work in the industry for a while and understand it and know it before branching off onto your own. Is it more difficult in the UK right now? To have a hotel or in Italy. It's more ch there are more challenges, in UK or I mean, I I don't I I think the the the thing in Italy is that, there's so many different destinations where you can achieve very high prices. Mhmm. And you have to achieve high prices to be able to give luxury service. In England, you know, once outside London, it's quite difficult to achieve high prices. That's interesting. It's the only major city, international city in the UK. Eddemories to set degree, not at the same level as as London. Otherwise, you know, the the other big cities is is is it's all commercial business. There's no tourism business. Then you go into the sort of smaller hotels in the cotswolds and so but it's, that's a different different type of business. So Italy, you know, there's huge, huge opportunity in Italy, and that's why I have so many microtales here. And also, I mean, operating it is not the easiest place in the world. It's a very sort of, very bureaucratic. I I call it the chaotic charm. Yeah. There's an element of chaos. But, I mean, if you, you know, you've gotta know your whereabouts. Mhmm. And sometimes it's not always you don't get to a destination by going in a straight line. So that's that's the difference between Italy and the UK. But but it it italy has, you know, the tourist destination is unique in the world. So my last last question is do you feel more Italian or do you feel more English? Well, I'm easily actually very English. When I'm, when I'm in England, I feel it's a bit Italian. Alrighty. And that's a wrap from the Valle Duda Resort in Shaka. Is that correct? We're officially in Shaka. Yes. In this amazing breathtaking place with none other than Mr. Rocko Forte himself. So Chinchin. Sir. Sir, Rocko Forte. Okay. I have some I have some very bad news. This is Italian wine. Okay. Cheers. Thank you for joining us on another episode of On The Road Edition, hosted by Stev Kim. Join her again next week for more interesting content on the Italian wine scene. You can also find us at Italian wine podcast dot com or wherever you get your pods. You can check out our YouTube channel, mama jumbo shrimp to watch these interviews and the footage captured at each location. Changing.