# Asian Stocks Rise on Optimism Over US-Iran Talks

An episode of [Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia Edition](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1663863437), 22 May 2026, 21 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/58e85be7-dbb5-4043-afed-af80014dc0b3/733d63c8-5ada-4410-9645-b452002ad42a/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=27143354-63aa-4ac5-965d-af80014dc0d3

Business and finance news from the Asia-Pacific. Asian stocks and US equity-index futures advanced on optimism that the US-Iran talks could lead to a peace deal. However, concerns over a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz have unsettled investors, pushing bond yields higher recently amid fears high oil prices will fuel inflation and force central banks to keep interest rates elevated. Even so, traders have largely brushed aside those risks since the war began in late February, propelling stocks to record highs on renewed enthusiasm for the artificial intelligence trade. We speak to Paul Dobson, Bloomberg's Executive Editor for Asia Markets. And we go to Shanghai, where the JPMorgan Global China Summit is underway. Bloomberg's Haslinda Amin spoke to Benjamin Vuchot, The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels CEO about his company's business outlook. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:10] Speaker 2: Welcome to the Daybreak Asia podcast time, Doug Prisner. Time
[0:14] Speaker 2: and again we have seen how markets are at the
[0:17] Speaker 2: mercy of news headlines on the war in Iran. Now,
[0:19] Speaker 2: on Thursday, Tehran said the latest US proposal partly bridged
[0:23] Speaker 2: the gap between the warring sides. That would appear to
[0:26] Speaker 2: be a positive. However, at the same time, iran Supreme
[0:30] Speaker 2: leader reportedly issued a directive that the country's near weapons
[0:34] Speaker 2: grade uranium should not be sent abroad. And at the
[0:37] Speaker 2: same time, Iran's president said his country will never back
[0:41] Speaker 2: down and cannot be conquered with missiles, bombs or fighter jets. Now,
[0:45] Speaker 2: we also learned iranis in talks with Oman on creating
[0:49] Speaker 2: a permanent toll system for maritime traffic through the Strait
[0:53] Speaker 2: of Hormuz. That's according to the Iranian ambassador to France. Now,
[0:56] Speaker 2: President Trump rejected the idea. You take us step back,
[1:00] Speaker 2: and it appeared as though the negatives outweighed the positives
[1:03] Speaker 2: today and you might suspect that crude oil would have
[1:06] Speaker 2: advanced in that scenario. Well, as the saying goes, that's
[1:09] Speaker 2: what makes a market. Crude oil declined in New York trading,
[1:13] Speaker 2: WTI was down about one point nine percent, although now
[1:17] Speaker 2: in Asian trading WTI is higher by more than one
[1:20] Speaker 2: point seven percent. For a closer look at the price action,
[1:24] Speaker 2: let's bring in Bloomberg's Paul Dobson. Paul is executive editor
[1:27] Speaker 2: for Asian Markets, and he joins from our studios in Singapore.
[1:30] Speaker 2: Can you help me make sense of what's been going
[1:34] Speaker 2: on in markets?
[1:35] Speaker 1: Oh, the Doug.
[1:36] Speaker 3: I'm not inxieted sure that I can, other than to say,
[1:39] Speaker 3: as you said, the market is swinging backwards and fullwards
[1:42] Speaker 3: on the headlines and trying to read the lines, just
[1:45] Speaker 3: like all the rest of us are on Whether you
[1:48] Speaker 3: know this kind of narrowing of the differences between Iran
[1:52] Speaker 3: and US is real, and that there is some hope
[1:56] Speaker 3: that a resolution will come, or indeed you know, whether
[2:00] Speaker 3: whether you should fear the worst. And I think that,
[2:03] Speaker 3: you know, it's felt like we're getting closer to that
[2:06] Speaker 3: escalation moment from the US based on the rhetoric that
[2:08] Speaker 3: we've had all of this week. In some ways, I
[2:11] Speaker 3: don't even know whether financial markets would take that as
[2:14] Speaker 3: a particular negative. I think that something that forces the
[2:17] Speaker 3: issue and gets us closer to an end game and
[2:21] Speaker 3: a reopening of the strait might be more welcome than
[2:24] Speaker 3: the ongoing kind of stalemate that we have at the moment.
[2:28] Speaker 3: And even that being said, though, yes, you know, we
[2:30] Speaker 3: have worries about inflation the economy, we have worries about
[2:34] Speaker 3: food production and fertilizer, but financial markets have more or
[2:38] Speaker 3: less whether this okay despite all of that demand destruction
[2:42] Speaker 3: and the lack of supply coming into the market. So
[2:47] Speaker 3: how important and significant it is for the sort of
[2:52] Speaker 3: short to medium term pricing of other assets is still
[2:55] Speaker 3: you know, kind of remains to be seen a little bit.
[2:57] Speaker 2: So let's stay with this theme of surprises speak. Because
[3:00] Speaker 2: Japan's core consumer price index rows just one point four
[3:03] Speaker 2: percent in April from last year, that I believe was
[3:06] Speaker 2: lower than every estimate in the Bloomberg survey of economists.
[3:11] Speaker 2: What is to explain this? I mean, you would think,
[3:13] Speaker 2: given everything that we're talking about as it relates to
[3:16] Speaker 2: energy and things commodity wise that flow through the straight
[3:20] Speaker 2: up formos have been pushing inflation higher, and yet we
[3:24] Speaker 2: get a reading like this that seems very tame.
[3:27] Speaker 3: Again, it's difficult to pass that one. We did have
[3:30] Speaker 3: quite a big jump in the producer price indexes for
[3:33] Speaker 3: Japan not too long ago as well, and the government
[3:36] Speaker 3: has been trying to find ways to moderate the impact
[3:41] Speaker 3: on the consumer. So maybe it's slow passed through rates
[3:46] Speaker 3: of those costs into the economy. That doesn't mean that
[3:49] Speaker 3: it won't come eventually, though, And I think, you know,
[3:53] Speaker 3: while this may take a little bit of the pressure
[3:55] Speaker 3: off the BOJ in terms of when it needs to hike,
[3:58] Speaker 3: really all the signs there that it needs to get
[4:01] Speaker 3: on and raise interest rates and get the future inflation
[4:04] Speaker 3: expectations under control, because what we've seen at the back
[4:08] Speaker 3: ends of the Japanese bond yield curve has been rising
[4:11] Speaker 3: yields signs of concern that if the BOJ does get
[4:14] Speaker 3: behind the curve, inflation will be hard to inflation and
[4:18] Speaker 3: inflation expectations will be hard to control.
[4:22] Speaker 2: And right now I'm looking at a pretty strong rally
[4:24] Speaker 2: going on in the NIKE at around the level sixty two,
[4:27] Speaker 2: eight hundred and seventy. But let's talk a little bit
[4:30] Speaker 2: about what happened in the Thursday session in Seoul where
[4:33] Speaker 2: the cost be exploded. I mean it rallied eight point
[4:37] Speaker 2: four percent. I think we're trading at record levels right now,
[4:40] Speaker 2: if I'm not mistaken, is that right?
[4:43] Speaker 3: It costpy just goes from strength to strength, and well
[4:46] Speaker 3: with global markets. It had a little bit of a
[4:48] Speaker 3: knock in recent days, we're back up there again. There
[4:51] Speaker 3: was quite a lot of concern about this labor dispute
[4:54] Speaker 3: between Samsung and its workers, and the pay that they
[4:57] Speaker 3: were demanding and the on sessions that the workers were
[5:00] Speaker 3: able to extract seemed pretty phenomenal. And yet you know,
[5:03] Speaker 3: the Samsung agreed to pay out all of this extra money,
[5:07] Speaker 3: diluting the sock a little bit as well, because some
[5:09] Speaker 3: of the payment is in shares, and nonetheless, the shares
[5:13] Speaker 3: of the company absolutely boomed higher. So people were much
[5:16] Speaker 3: more worried that they wouldn't be able or they'd have
[5:18] Speaker 3: to stop production for a short while than they were
[5:20] Speaker 3: about wage control at this moment. I think that's interesting
[5:25] Speaker 3: because as we know, the memory chips are such a
[5:27] Speaker 3: sickly called product, and we're in a real boom time
[5:30] Speaker 3: at the moment, and it's important to cash in. But
[5:33] Speaker 3: then if you lock in your future costs at much
[5:35] Speaker 3: higher levels and there is a downturn, then maybe that
[5:38] Speaker 3: those chickens will come home to roost at some point,
[5:40] Speaker 3: so a little bit of concern there. There was some
[5:43] Speaker 3: other buoying news for career right at the end of
[5:47] Speaker 3: the day yesterday, one local report was talking about the
[5:50] Speaker 3: idea that the domestic pension funds may be able to
[5:53] Speaker 3: increase its allocation to the home market, which would obviously
[5:58] Speaker 3: give another kind of prop there. And so we're seeing
[6:01] Speaker 3: kind of smaller companies within South Korea also having a
[6:06] Speaker 3: good day to day kind of propelling those games right
[6:09] Speaker 3: across all all the different sectors.
[6:11] Speaker 2: So in the New York session we had word that
[6:14] Speaker 2: the Trump administration is awarding a billion dollars to IBM
[6:18] Speaker 2: to build a foundry for producing quantum computer chips. IBM
[6:23] Speaker 2: shares are up twelve percent. What's the conversation like in
[6:26] Speaker 2: the Asia Pacific when it comes to quantum computing?
[6:29] Speaker 3: Great question. I think that a lot of excitement across
[6:32] Speaker 3: the technology sector and personally, you know, I think that
[6:36] Speaker 3: there's a lot to be excited about. Just in the
[6:38] Speaker 3: last twenty four hours, you know, we have SpaceX talking
[6:41] Speaker 3: about its IPO, We have decent news from anthropic from
[6:47] Speaker 3: open Ai, which is helping SoftBank really boom higher. And
[6:52] Speaker 3: the comments from Jensen Huang, where he's talking about other
[6:55] Speaker 3: uses for the chips and the technology beyond simply the
[7:00] Speaker 3: AI programs, talking about robotics, talking about real world uses
[7:06] Speaker 3: and that kind of thing helped propel different parts of
[7:09] Speaker 3: the technology sector higher as well yesterday. So I think,
[7:14] Speaker 3: you know, there's a lot of reasons to be excited.
[7:16] Speaker 3: I mean, this is a far fetched scenario, but you
[7:21] Speaker 3: saw that in part of the SpaceX terms and conditions.
[7:24] Speaker 3: You know, Musk would get a big bonus if there
[7:26] Speaker 3: were a million people living on a colony in Mars.
[7:29] Speaker 3: That's a real thing that's written into the terms. You know,
[7:31] Speaker 3: it's not complete fantasy. Well maybe it is, depending on
[7:36] Speaker 3: your view. But I think the fact that we were
[7:38] Speaker 3: speculating about the possibility of those kinds of things really
[7:41] Speaker 3: opens up a lot of new and exciting avenues. And
[7:45] Speaker 3: that's why I think the market is performing so strongly.
[7:48] Speaker 3: People that are buying into all of these narratives and excitement, yeah,
[7:53] Speaker 3: pushing things higher.
[7:53] Speaker 2: I guess I'm trying to understand what's happening with the
[7:55] Speaker 2: semiconductor industry locally in China. It was late last year
[8:00] Speaker 2: year that President Trump announced that in Nvidia could sell
[8:02] Speaker 2: one of its most powerful chips to China, and there
[8:05] Speaker 2: doesn't seem to be any evidence that Chinese customers want
[8:09] Speaker 2: these chips. Is that to say that increasingly the semiconductor
[8:14] Speaker 2: industry in China has been able to meet domestic demand
[8:18] Speaker 2: well enough.
[8:19] Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it's a case of them not
[8:22] Speaker 3: wanting them. It's more a case of the government not
[8:24] Speaker 3: wanting them to have them so small new once there.
[8:28] Speaker 3: But basically the Chinese authorities haven't licensed or allowed the
[8:33] Speaker 3: sales off than the video chips into the mainline because,
[8:35] Speaker 3: as you say, it's so keen to get its own
[8:39] Speaker 3: domestic stack established right across that supply chain, and the
[8:43] Speaker 3: best way to do that is, you know, to take
[8:46] Speaker 3: a little bit of pain and be a little bit
[8:47] Speaker 3: of be a bit behind and on a lag in
[8:50] Speaker 3: order to catch up and potentially move faster over time.
[8:53] Speaker 3: And the Chinese technology innovation has been there. You know,
[8:58] Speaker 3: we saw with deep seek feels a long time ago now,
[9:01] Speaker 3: but when that came through, that was really a big
[9:04] Speaker 3: wake up call about the idea that China is finding
[9:06] Speaker 3: ways to catch up. And I think that there's a
[9:09] Speaker 3: lot of excitement about mainland companies if you look at
[9:13] Speaker 3: the China's Index, which is a little bit like the
[9:16] Speaker 3: equivalent of the Nasdaq for China. That's at a record high,
[9:20] Speaker 3: and a lot of those companies have been really booming
[9:23] Speaker 3: to the point where, you know, they look like they
[9:25] Speaker 3: might be overheating a little bit. But that's where really
[9:28] Speaker 3: that sort of domestic ball of money and enthusiasm seems
[9:31] Speaker 3: to have rolled at this moment in time.
[9:33] Speaker 2: So let me use another old saying, Necessity is the
[9:36] Speaker 2: mother of invention. I mean, it's possible if you're not
[9:40] Speaker 2: able to access that cutting edge technology, let's say from Nvidia.
[9:44] Speaker 2: It's a way that maybe Shi Jinping is accelerating the
[9:48] Speaker 2: domestic semiconductor industry to get its act together and to
[9:51] Speaker 2: produce maybe a chip that can rival the Age two hundred.
[9:55] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the plan, that's the long term vision to
[9:58] Speaker 3: be domestic independent. You know, this idea that Chinese and
[10:04] Speaker 3: US technology and in other developments as well, are kind
[10:09] Speaker 3: of on two parallel paths but without so much crossover,
[10:15] Speaker 3: seems to be something that both administrations are very aware of.
[10:21] Speaker 3: And you know, the US is equally trying to find
[10:23] Speaker 3: alternative rare earth production in order so that it can
[10:27] Speaker 3: separate itself away from the Chinese supply chains there. So yeah,
[10:33] Speaker 3: I think it's a top down push for independence and
[10:37] Speaker 3: for domestic innovation.
[10:39] Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that, because back in November,
[10:43] Speaker 2: the Pentagon announced an agreement with a company called re
[10:46] Speaker 2: Element here in the US, and the Pentagon offered a
[10:52] Speaker 2: conditional loan worth about eighty million dollars. This is part
[10:55] Speaker 2: of the Trump administration's push to develop domestic production of
[10:58] Speaker 2: rare earths, and it appears as though that deal is
[11:04] Speaker 2: maybe a little in doubt. Officials who have vetted this
[11:07] Speaker 2: company have raised oubts about re Element's ability to scale
[11:10] Speaker 2: the technology, and from what I understand, Paul, there are
[11:13] Speaker 2: also questions over re elements long term revenue forecast. So
[11:18] Speaker 2: this is another area, kind of the flip side of
[11:20] Speaker 2: the coin that we were talking about, where China has
[11:23] Speaker 2: a distinct advantage and it may take a while longer
[11:26] Speaker 2: for the US to catch.
[11:27] Speaker 3: Up one hundred percent. And I guess the Trump administration
[11:31] Speaker 3: has now made it very clear that it's fully aware
[11:33] Speaker 3: of that and is searching all around the world for
[11:36] Speaker 3: those viable alternatives. But China really does have an edge,
[11:40] Speaker 3: not in terms of just access to the resources, but
[11:42] Speaker 3: it's also about those refining processes and how difficult it
[11:45] Speaker 3: is to you know, isolate the elements and put them
[11:49] Speaker 3: into usable forms as well.
[11:52] Speaker 1: And so.
[11:54] Speaker 3: You know, well, China may be trying to catch up
[11:56] Speaker 3: on the tech front, US may be trying to catch
[11:58] Speaker 3: up on the rare earth front, and there's other areas
[12:01] Speaker 3: like biotechnology where there's also extreme competition. I remember three
[12:05] Speaker 3: or four years ago, now maybe a bit prematurely, we
[12:09] Speaker 3: were writing about the idea that there was a bit
[12:11] Speaker 3: of a Sputnik moment, so you know, a new space
[12:14] Speaker 3: race between the US and China for all of this
[12:17] Speaker 3: sort of like technological developments. But that really does seem
[12:20] Speaker 3: to be where we're at right now, and it's beneficial
[12:23] Speaker 3: for both sites. And so you know in terms of
[12:25] Speaker 3: it's spurring and fueling innovation and competition, and that is
[12:29] Speaker 3: really you know, helping to propel the equity markets in
[12:32] Speaker 3: both nations.
[12:33] Speaker 2: Now higher Paul will leave it there, Thank you so
[12:36] Speaker 2: very much. It's always a pleasure. Bloomberg's Paul Dobson. He
[12:39] Speaker 2: is executive editor for Asia Markets, joining from our studio
[12:42] Speaker 2: in Singapore here on the Debreak Asia podcast. Welcome back
[12:52] Speaker 2: to the Debreak Asia podcast. I'm Doug Krisner. The Hong
[12:55] Speaker 2: Kong Shanghai Hotels Limited owns and operate some of the
[12:59] Speaker 2: world's finest properties under the Peninsula brand. The company has
[13:03] Speaker 2: twelve properties in Asia, Europe and the US, and we
[13:07] Speaker 2: had the opportunity to catch up with the company CEO
[13:10] Speaker 2: Benjamin Vouscha. He spoke with Bloomberg's Hustlin to armand from
[13:14] Speaker 2: the sidelines of the JP Morgan Global China Summit.
[13:17] Speaker 4: These are really uncertain times, as in the certainty of
[13:21] Speaker 4: when the Iran wo will end. We have fuel shortages,
[13:24] Speaker 4: we have volatility in the for X space. I mean,
[13:29] Speaker 4: how is your business being impacted by it all?
[13:32] Speaker 1: Well, hospitality and particularly luxury hospitality is a very resilient business.
[13:37] Speaker 1: We've been operating in luxury hotels since one hundred and
[13:40] Speaker 1: sixty years with the Hong Kong and Shangai Hotels, and
[13:43] Speaker 1: in fact the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong will be
[13:45] Speaker 1: celebrating one hundred years in twenty twenty eight. I think
[13:50] Speaker 1: the recent expansion of the Peninsula Hotels in Europe, for instance,
[13:53] Speaker 1: with first our Paris Hotel, our London Hotel, in our
[13:56] Speaker 1: Istanbul Hotel has been able to give us different avenues
[14:00] Speaker 1: to mitigate some of geopolitical tensions that we have. So
[14:03] Speaker 1: today we have travel hotels twelvel peninsula hotels around the world.
[14:07] Speaker 1: Fifty percent are in Asia. We're rooted in Asia, in Beijing,
[14:11] Speaker 1: in Shanghai, in Hong Kong, and in Southeast Asia or
[14:14] Speaker 1: in Tokyo. And then we have three hotels in the
[14:17] Speaker 1: United States and then now three hotels in Europe.
[14:19] Speaker 4: So did you see a slow down initially, you know,
[14:22] Speaker 4: from the impact of the year on war.
[14:23] Speaker 5: Is it picking up now? What has been happening.
[14:26] Speaker 1: There's no doubt that we all the industry suffered some
[14:29] Speaker 1: cancelations in March particularly, I think it was a result
[14:32] Speaker 1: of less airlift, less ability for people to travel, so
[14:36] Speaker 1: count travel you have to cancel your states. But we've
[14:39] Speaker 1: seen now a ramp up, particularly over the last three
[14:42] Speaker 1: to four weeks, put on both from people being able
[14:46] Speaker 1: to travel back to the original destinations that they have
[14:50] Speaker 1: but also a bit of a shift of destinations. I
[14:52] Speaker 1: think safety is very important for the leisure sector, so
[14:56] Speaker 1: Greater China has been a great beneficial of that. We're
[15:00] Speaker 1: seeing more people traveling into Hong Kong, even into Beijing
[15:03] Speaker 1: and Shanghai and Tokyo has been incredibly resilient and at
[15:07] Speaker 1: the same time we're seeing a bit of a shame
[15:09] Speaker 1: change in the pattern. It's much shorter booking period, which
[15:14] Speaker 1: forces our teams to be much more agile, to be
[15:17] Speaker 1: able to react to last minute decisions. That impacts you know, staffing,
[15:22] Speaker 1: but it's also in fact pricing. But overall, I think
[15:25] Speaker 1: we are able to mitigate now the bump that we
[15:28] Speaker 1: all suffered in March.
[15:29] Speaker 4: Aprol Asian travelers choosing to travel within the region.
[15:33] Speaker 1: Now. Yes, indeed, I think we're in China today in Shanghai,
[15:37] Speaker 1: and it's very interesting to see that. First of all,
[15:40] Speaker 1: there's continued travel domestic travel within China. Our hotels in
[15:45] Speaker 1: Beijing are performing actually very well combination of local international,
[15:49] Speaker 1: but the Chinese are traveling to start starting to travel again.
[15:54] Speaker 1: Hong Kong, Korea, Bangkok are the top three destinations, and
[15:58] Speaker 1: we're seeing that they're traveling outside but not too far
[16:02] Speaker 1: and safety is a big concern. So our business actually
[16:05] Speaker 1: in Tokyo and our business in Bangkok and Hong Kong
[16:09] Speaker 1: has benefited from this uptick in travel.
[16:12] Speaker 4: And would you also say that luxury travel, luxury hospitality
[16:17] Speaker 4: is pretty resilient despite the uncertainties and the challenges.
[16:21] Speaker 1: Indeed, I think both from a business travel and a
[16:24] Speaker 1: leisure travel, the higher end segment is more resilient. We're
[16:29] Speaker 1: seeing in the luxury industry. I come from a luxury
[16:32] Speaker 1: retail background. We're seeing a big shift from buying goods
[16:37] Speaker 1: to buying into experiences and luxury hospitality and the Peninsula
[16:41] Speaker 1: in particularly is providing more than a bed. It's providing
[16:44] Speaker 1: an experience, it's providing emotions, it's providing shareable experiences that
[16:49] Speaker 1: really are making our guests come back, can bring their families,
[16:53] Speaker 1: bring their friends, and this segment has been much more
[16:56] Speaker 1: resilient than the regular hospitality segment.
[16:59] Speaker 4: The thing is, when it comes to hospitality, menpower is
[17:01] Speaker 4: a huge issue, especially for hotels. How are you coping
[17:03] Speaker 4: with that? And you know, where are you seeing the
[17:05] Speaker 4: biggest challenges in terms of the region's US, Asia Europe.
[17:11] Speaker 1: I think that you know, for a company like ours,
[17:14] Speaker 1: we provide careers to people, we look after people very well,
[17:17] Speaker 1: and we provide a lot of training. There's no doubt
[17:20] Speaker 1: that there's a bit there will be a shortage in
[17:22] Speaker 1: the hospitality world in the long term because those careers
[17:26] Speaker 1: have been suffering a little bit from an appeal.
[17:29] Speaker 5: But it's for us percent shortage just conser mentally.
[17:32] Speaker 1: I think there's a there's a statistics from the World
[17:34] Speaker 1: Travel Organization that that says by twenty fifty that would
[17:39] Speaker 1: be there would be a significant shortage.
[17:41] Speaker 4: I see, I could come to sell.
[17:42] Speaker 1: I think it's it's there's two things that we have
[17:44] Speaker 1: to do in the Hong Kong and China hotels. It's
[17:46] Speaker 1: focusing a lot on that. First of all, we have
[17:48] Speaker 1: to make sure we continue providing great service to our guests.
[17:50] Speaker 1: So with service you have to have the human touch.
[17:53] Speaker 1: So we need to continue recruiting. We need to work
[17:55] Speaker 1: with hospitality schools and create those careers for the young
[18:00] Speaker 1: leaders of tomorrow. And secondly, how do we embark and
[18:03] Speaker 1: how do we adopt AI to do some of the
[18:06] Speaker 1: things that you know we're done manually before, but can
[18:09] Speaker 1: now allocate this time to the frontline staff and create
[18:13] Speaker 1: this relationship and those experiences.
[18:15] Speaker 4: What do you CEI doing for you to help counter
[18:19] Speaker 4: the resources shortage?
[18:20] Speaker 1: I think there's a there's very simple things which already
[18:23] Speaker 1: are in place at the dependency line. The group in general, emails,
[18:28] Speaker 1: email bookings, number of inquiries for emails. You don't need
[18:31] Speaker 1: to have someone out checking this. This can be very
[18:33] Speaker 1: much automated. The response and the and the connection is
[18:37] Speaker 1: done personally. But filtering all this is it thens a
[18:40] Speaker 1: huge improvement and pricing as well as making the experience
[18:45] Speaker 1: more personal and knowing better your your guests thanks to data.
[18:51] Speaker 5: I think it's going to be a big shift.
[18:52] Speaker 1: And even in luxury hospitality, you can use data, you
[18:56] Speaker 1: can use AI, but then bring back the emotional connection
[18:59] Speaker 1: and bring back the human touch and deliver exceptional service.
[19:02] Speaker 4: And in terms of expansion, where are you looking at
[19:04] Speaker 4: expanding within the next twelve twenty four months.
[19:06] Speaker 1: In thirty seconds, we've just embarked into a strategic review.
[19:11] Speaker 5: It's perform and transform.
[19:12] Speaker 1: Perform is doing better with what we have and transform
[19:15] Speaker 1: is how do we take the brand to.
[19:16] Speaker 5: The next level.
[19:18] Speaker 1: We believe in Asia, we believe in Great China and
[19:20] Speaker 1: Japan in particular, but I think Europe.
[19:22] Speaker 5: Expustion will be asi ed or so. I think it's
[19:25] Speaker 5: going to be a combination.
[19:26] Speaker 1: We believe in Europe, our guests want us to travel
[19:28] Speaker 1: more to Europe and to get out of the cities,
[19:31] Speaker 1: so more results, more branded residences, which is incredibly important
[19:34] Speaker 1: for luxury hospitality, so more to come that Let's do
[19:37] Speaker 1: better with what we have. That's a performed plan, and
[19:40] Speaker 1: let's continue to transform. Let's take our guests to new destination,
[19:43] Speaker 1: Let's create new experiences, and that's that's going to be something.
[19:47] Speaker 2: That was Benjamin Vushad, CEO of the Hong Kong and
[19:50] Speaker 2: Hung Hi Hotels Limited, speaking with Bloomberg's Hustle and to
[19:53] Speaker 2: Amen from the sidelines of the JP Morgan Global China Summit,
[19:57] Speaker 2: bringing you their conversation here on the Daybreak your podcast.
[20:04] Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Bloomberg Daybreak
[20:08] Speaker 2: Asia Edition podcast. Each weekday, we look at the story
[20:11] Speaker 2: shaping markets, finance, and geopolitics in the Asia Pacific. You
[20:16] Speaker 2: can find us on Apple, Spotify, the Bloomberg Podcast YouTube channel,
[20:20] Speaker 2: or anywhere else you listen. Join us again tomorrow for
[20:23] Speaker 2: insight on the market moves from Hong Kong to Singapore
[20:27] Speaker 2: and Australia. I'm Doug Risner and this is Bloomberg

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