My morning fix is a cup of freshly boiled water. Sounds strange, I know, but I find a taste in it and consider it cleansing. I'll go through e-mails for about an hour, by which time I've woken up.
I use e-mail a lot, but I don't use a computer. I'm no good with typing - hopelessly slow - so wherever I am I speak to my secretary in Bangkok six days of the week. She then takes my e-mails, cuts and pastes the messages and sends them to me; I get about 100 e-mails a day, condensed to two or three messages a page, and those pages are printed. I write brief replies longhand, which I give to Tony, my assistant in the Maldives, and a great typist, or to the general manager's secretary if I'm at another of our properties.
My wife Eva and I spend about four months of the year - but only a month at any one time - living and working at our villa on Soneva Fushi, our resort island in the Maldives. I have to do 20 minutes' exercise a day, so if I'm somewhere like the InterContinental in Hong Kong I'll go on the cross-trainer in the gym; on Soneva Fushi I'll run round the island. It's about two kilometres long and 500 metres wide and I run barefoot: running on sand is good for the knees.
When I arrive on the island I take off my shoes; I feel very lucky to spend four months in a place where I don't have to wear them. I enjoy what I do but the only thing I'd like a bit more of is a balanced lifestyle. It can be quite a stressful life: the hours are long and I try to have a day off, but sometimes it doesn't happen. We don't have children and Eva almost always travels with me, so that's how we manage our schedule. Eva is the company Conscience [a title coined by the firm]: she takes care of the interior design and creative development of our properties.
When we left the Maldives a few weeks ago we had a day in Bangkok, then drove to Hua Hin, where the Evason Hideaway resort is about to open. We had development meetings there for a few days - 'quick wins' we call them, where we can thrash out ideas with the management team and implement them without much debate. A few days later we were back in Bangkok, then I spent two days in London before going to a trade fair in Japan. We held 'repeater parties' there for our repeat guests: the Japanese like it a lot if you honour them in such a way.
I like to see what's going on in the industry - that's why I go to the fairs - and, unlike many CEOs, I spend a lot of time on sales and marketing, not just things like corporate finance. In the leisure business, PR is much more important than advertising. If you're selling a 10-day experience, someone spending US$30,000 is going to be much more convinced by a report saying, 'Heaven must be a two-star place compared to Soneva Fushi', than by a glossy ad.
