Jan Jaap van der Wal's hotel speech
What an incredibly great honour that I get to deliver the 2019 Hotel Address for you in this, may I call the word atmospheric, atmospheric venue. It is also a funeral. I don't know whose but will be something from the Bastion Group, I think, something like that. But you may all lay down your wreath. Take a picture of that too.
I enjoyed Stef, where are you, your speech. AH Stef, very good. I did have one more question Stef? And surely that's what we're all wondering you know, why would you if you're going to talk about what people are worried about, why would you put a picture of someone being thrown in the air at a festival with that slide? But anyway, those are the kind of things where then I just... That you think of well, I'll just do this picture. But you can choose all sorts of things you know. You can also put down Donald Trump. That's also someone who has something to do with hotels.
And yes, it's just always special because I've been here the whole time, I see you coming in, of course, all with big smiles on your mouths and that you think of well, I'm nice and busy, you know. No, but still you all think that. And in fact, you also have no reason to think you're not nice. And you have a nice job, you have nice buildings where you can work, where you are the boss. And then you come here, you know, and a guy from ABN AMRO comes and says: yes, more senior citizens, we need more senior citizens in your hotels. Yes, and by the way don't come and ask us for money anymore, do that to the government.
In short, you have every reason to get completely drunk in a moment, and rightly so. But well apparently they have other problems in Zaandam. That is also what we have learned. How high can you raise your tourist tax in Zaandam? For what actually? For Zaandam. That's also clever. Anyway.
No, it is indeed true, I was born a hotel in that sense. If you wanted to say that my professional life, my life as a comedian, was indeed born in a hotel. And indeed not just any hotel. The Hilton hotel. And it was late September of the year 1997 when I entered the Hilton hotel on a Friday night, at least in Toemler, in the former bar Juliana, which was also a kind of comedy club actually lol. Anyway, I walked in there and I remember it very well, I was seventeen and I had just been hired as a comedian with the Comedytrain. And in those days we were still allowed, Raoul Heertje had arranged it, in the basement of the Hilton, so behind the scenes shall I say, we were given a small cubicle in between all the technology rooms and all the kitchens and all the rinse kitchens. A small dressing room was for us and we had to go through all kinds of doors and with passes and codes and uh... And I remember very well that on that Friday evening, I entered the room with my knees trembling and that Theo Maassen and Hans Teeuwen were sitting there fraternally and that they said to me: ah, you're the new one. Well, that's how it started.
In the end, of course, like yours, my life is wonderful huh, otherwise we wouldn't be here at this funeral. But my life has also often and much revolved around hotels. I am no longer a resident now. I lived back here on the Nieuwmarkt. I now live in Antwerp. Also gorgeous. My love for Flanders was actually born in a hotel. And when I was asked to do this hotel speech for you today, I thought: for these people I would like to speak. Because to me you are a symbol of creative people. Your heads work differently than normal people's heads work.
This was in a hotel in Ghent, ladies and gentlemen. And this is, why I fell in love with Flanders. I was sitting in a room and I wanted the internet. I wanted the code. And as you know, that's not a password, that's a password paragraph. I don't know who came up with that, but you guys come up with all kinds of weird codes with letters, exclamation marks, hashes, a Q, an X and a big 2 and then something with a P. Well anyway, this guy who read it to me, it was a passphrase, and he said to me: and it ends sir, it ends then at BCCK and then he said: that's B from Barcelona, C Cuba, Cuba Coconut Milk. But seriously, and I thought: what is going on in this man's head? Right? That who thinks: I need to come up with a mnemonic, here we go. Topography, I can't keep it up, ku..., food. Well fantastic.
And it's often things like that that I experience in a hotel. I remember very well. I was just announced, and rightly so, as someone born in Leeuwarden. Are there any Frisians in the room by chance? Yes, a few anyway. But I was in Leeuwarden, I slept in hotel Het Stadhouderlijk Hof, beautiful, in Leeuwarden. I'm from there. I knew the place too. It used to be a beautiful Provincial House, Municipal House and now it was a hotel and I arrived there, it was late at night, I had performed there and I had booked a room. And as it goes with Frisian people, well good evening, good evening, hai, hai, how are you? Yes, fine, fine, well fine. And there was a problem. Which was no problem at all namely only the bridal suite was still available. I said: well that's no problem at all, I'll do that. I arrived at the bridal suite and the beauty is of such a bridal suite, it's big. You all know that. It's also a bit of a ridiculous suite you know, everything is too big. The bath was too big, and I think: yeah, I want to take a bath anyway. I was a bit drunk, I should have added lol. And I thought: I want to take a bath anyway. I let the bath fill up and two and a half hours later I could get in and I was tired. So I think I spent five minutes in the bath. And the great thing about this hotel, again I was in the honeymoon suite, this is what happened. The next morning seven o'clock, seven in the morning, housekeeping came in, and housekeeping was not Polish, Romanian or anything like that, no was Frisian. Housekeeping was Frisian. So what happened, I hear the door open, I see a head going around the door and I hear a woman say: he's still asleep. That you think: okay. It's the bridal suite you know. But what is the policy of the bridal suite? Just at seven-thirty: guys have breakfast, it's okay now and that was the wedding night.
It's bright in hotels. That's what k like. It's clear. When you go into a hotel, the deal is clear. You are well looked after. You have private space, people leave you alone. And in the end you pay as much as parking fees in Amsterdam, we just heard. And that's a good price. And that's so nice about it. That's so nice. And all the messages, and I also like that as a comedian, all the messages you get from staff, from hotels, it's never direct, it's all polite, it's all via a diversion, it's a bit Flemish you could say. You never quite know where you stand. Kruisherenhotel ladies and gentlemen, Maastricht, you all know it, it's a beautiful hotel, the entrance is magnificent, that gold, that copper, I don't know what it is, it's magnificent. And I made a show there, wrote it. Regularly when I had to make a show, I would go into a hotel room for a few days, then lock myself in with all the articles, jokes and things I came up with, and eventually a show would come out. This show I had made in Maastricht, at the Kruisheren Hotel. And I had arrived there and two days later I came to the reception and there was someone who said: sir we have washed your car for you. See that's nice isn't it? That's nice. We washed your car for you. And I checked and it turned out that my car was just actually too dirty to be allowed in front of the entrance to the Kruisheren Hotel. And that's nice, you know. Actually, they want to say: sir, your car that actually makes no sense at all. But that's the beauty of hotels, then they wash it, you know. But then you still feel a bit guilty afterwards. Fantastic hotel.
No, it is clear in that sense. You know where you stand. You know what peace you are getting into and you know there is no pressure for anything else. And in that respect, I would like to ask you - a number of you will probably never do this or have never done this - that we should really stop this in the hotel world, that as a customer, you enter a hotel room and after about three minutes a TV switches on that says: Hello mister Van der Wal. We have to stop doing that. I don't know, I can see you all thinking: yes, it doesn't happen to us. Well, it probably does. Probably yes, because somewhere in there everyone thought: that's a good idea. We are going to do that. That makes the customer feel kind of welcome. While the opposite is true: you get scared out of your wits and all you think is: where are all the cameras and they are watching me. That's the effect you have.
Too luxurious can also be, too luxurious. I haven't experienced that in the Netherlands, too luxurious, no. No, sorry, we can be very brief about that. It's fantastic huh, the hotels I mention, Kruisherenhotel, I wrote a show in hotel De Ville in Groningen. I wrote a show in hotel Pincoffs in Rotterdam. Those are all wonderful places. But the real and the luxurious that it also gets confusing again, I've only experienced that abroad.
I love coming to Soho House ladies and gentlemen, yes. And then we know, we can look at each other then and we know what we are dealing with huh? Someone with money. No, that's nonsense. No, I like to spoil myself and my wife once a year and then we go to New York to the Soho House in New York on Manhattan. Fascinating, fascinating. That's too luxurious, even for me. That's too luxurious. Yet that you think: this is a world where I don't really belong. Because you know, you all know the concept of Soho House of course, you join a club. So you sleep in the hotel but you are also a member of a club which me and my wife actually knew from second one: under no circumstances could we ever join this club. So the only reason we are members of this club is because we sleep in the hotel. And somehow all those people feel that. You feel that too. All those people feel that, who think: ahh yes, that's a guest. You know. But you want to feel: that's someone from the club. But I can't radiate that.
Anyway new York, I totally panic about that. If you have to order coffee there you have to memorise it, right? You have to memorise what you want, you have to rehearse that and then you have to walk in and then order right away because otherwise you're off and then it's not your turn until five in the afternoon. I once walked all the way in there, all practised with exactly what I want and then the woman said: to drink here or to take away sir. And then I said: take away sir. And uh yeah, I started singing the national anthem, just to be sure. You just don't know. So that feeling always creeps up on us when we are there anyway. The people at the reception are the people at the reception but of course they are also very hip and young nice people in New York who also immediately give you the feeling of: you are not a member of the club but still nice that you are sleeping here. The most brilliant example of this was that at one point I was talking to the gentleman at the reception, because I needed to know something, and behind me were people who were getting into the lift to go to the club. Members of the club. But this gentleman behind the reception thought: yes ho ho ho, I have been given an order, not just anyone is allowed to go up to the club. So that one went about shouting over me: sorry sir, sorry sir. And someone else, a colleague of his, who did very subtly, who did this... so... But that guy didn't quite get it. Who thinks: no hello, I have one job, I have to stop people who don't belong in the club. Who said: sorry sir, sorry sir, please sir. And the other woman who did.... And then we all looked back and then we looked straight into Richard Branson's face. Well then you know you are basically a guest in the hotel indeed. And that's also a hotel that was also too luxurious in the sense that it was luxury which I didn't quite understand as well. I remember the first day we were there in the Soho House, my wife and I... Richard Branson. I think I'll just mention that you know, then that comes in the compilation and then there's someone who thinks: hey why? That's nice huh, then he thinks well but that's a friend of Richard Branson. Well and that way I get into all the clubs.
But anyway, so I was there with my wife in the hotel room and we had checked out and had sex as you always do in a hotel, look that doesn't film that, I know exactly when I say what, you see. And anyway at one point there was a knock at the door. This is too luxurious. And a bloke came with a trolley and said, Cocktail sir. Get it? That didn't enter my mind. That concept. That someone comes to make cocktails at 5.30 in the early evening. So I said: no thank you. And I closed the door again. That's my problem a bit with too luxurious, that I don't quite understand it. So that's why it's nice to be here in Holland.
The nicest thing is indeed clarity and that there is some kind of love in the end. In the end, that's what you guys are selling to everyone the most anyway: love. And of course I also heard Jort last year, there are countless hotels but we are not talking about those now, which are too clean, which are too bright because of the fluorescent beams. But ultimately whether it is about the Kruisheren or Hotel V in Amsterdam, it is love that is being sold. And it's love where there isn't someone beating their chest. And that's beautiful too. Surely you are helping people in some way from the background. And that is also the only thing we can do in our lives. We live in an extremely rich country, economically everything is actually going very well. The ABN is not bothered by you guys. Well that's fantastic you know. You don't want to know how many times Stef has to go to things and it says: I still get money from you guys. Huh and I won't leave until I have all the money. But here, there's no problem at all. We live in a fantastic country and all we can do is help people in a kind of non-economic, in a loving way to take them forward in life. And I try to do that too. On my daily basis. Just today. I had to checkout at the supermarket and there was a girl behind the till. Difficult, a difficult look. Difficult look. And I thought: you have to help a girl like that. And she asked me: do you have another thirty cents. I said: no. She said: oh. I think yeah yeah, be consistent then, you know. Do you have another thirty cents? No. Well sorry then the whole party is off. Then I'll just scan it all back again. But a girl like that has to help you move on. Otherwise she stays where she is and that's not good. And I had to pay thirty euros. Exactly thirty euros. And I gave her fifty and I said: would you like to add seventy-three cents. And then she started thinking... Because then she was busy, you see. And that's what it's all about. It's those little gifts, as I sometimes call them.
Because, of course, a hotel has long since ceased to be a place where you sleep for a while and move on the next day. It is an experience. People live towards it, people stare at it and people like me make a show there. So that's vital. Things happen in those rooms that you guys don't know about, so to speak, yet somewhere I have a feeling that you all get it. And that's good. And that's powerful.
I mean I am still from those days indeed, yes you went to a hotel to sleep. You went to a shop to buy something. But those times have changed completely. It has all become an experience. I live in Antwerp, that's no longer shops either, it's all experiences. The worst is the Nespresso shop. I don't know if you've ever been there, ladies and gentlemen? That's not a shop anymore, that's an institution for sick people. Sick people work there. The Nespresso shop there employs people with extreme low self-esteem and people with extreme separation anxiety. And they put them all there to work in pretty black clothes in a dark room so you can hardly see them. But it's really incredible. You walk in and immediately there is a girl saying ‘hello’, that you think: okay. IK don't know where you are from but this is scary. And who says: shall we have a cup of coffee. That you say: well no sorry, I want to buy coffee. Is that even possible? And she says: but I would really like to have a cup of coffee with you. That you think: I think you have already had a lot. So take it easy. I said: I want to buy coffee, is that possible? Yes but sir, we have a whole new delicious flavour from Brazil, I would like to let you taste it. I say: but I want to buy it, is that even possible? And she was irritated, I noticed, she was irritated. And she went to walk behind the till and she asked me: well what do you want? I say: green, purple, that flavour from Brazil, brown and purple again. Well I got it all in a bag. She came around the little desk one more time so she could physically grab me and then she said: was this it? I said: yes, this was it. I understand you find that difficult but this was it. I am going now. Can I go? I'm going. And then she looked at me and then she said: sir, is everything going well with the machine at home? That's what she asked me. And I looked like what are you talking about? Is everything going well with the machine at home. I said: no. The machine at home is not doing well. It is retaining a lot of moisture at the back.
Get it? Those are experiences. I bought a car the other day and then I'm going to talk about hotels afterwards, don't worry. But it's about the same principle, namely it should be clear. I went to buy a car. I hadn't bought a new car for ten years. I had bought a new car. I had paid for it. I arrived at the showroom. So I thought, I'll get a key and then drive off. No more of that either. A man came and said: there you are, I think: oh Jesus. And then I had to go with him to another room, there the lights went off. There a disco ball went on and there stood my car with a cloth over it. And this man who said, who did this like this... I said: yes, I think a car, stop time. Yeah, I don't know. I thought, I'm in some moronic quiz or something, what is this? And then the guy said: yeah but that's your car. I say: but with a cloth over it. Well, I just drove off with that cloth over it. I think yes.... I turned forty say.
So that's why huh. I have experienced Soho House. I know what limit you can also cross in hospitality, in making things up, in making people feel uncomfortable. But in that respect, the hotels I've experienced here in the Netherlands, I've experienced them all as pleasant, they're all wonderful. In Flanders, I haven't experienced that much but I'm sure that will be good too. And again, you are doing important work. But important work in the background. And that is work that is often forgotten, work that often doesn't have a name, that doesn't have someone to latch onto. Sure you do have them the hotel owners who put themselves in the foreground. Anyway, on that note, I've been through the Hilton. Is there one? Okay. Well then I can tell another story right, ladies and gentlemen? Yes, that's nice. Well, well, look he's a sweet guy. Yes, he has a small car, but he is a sweet man. No look, we have a comedy club under the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam. And that's a well-run club. But well, of course you're in the Hilton. So those are rents and they go up. So you occasionally sit in a discussion and what I liked, I went through an evening with two friends of mine and one of those friends of mine, he's friends with Wolfgang. Is Wolfgang around? No. Wolfgang was the boss of Hilton Europe at the time. Look, and that's fun to sit in the bar of the Hilton with someone like that, you see, because then you suddenly understand what hierarchy means. Fantastic. No, really. No, so you have to imagine. We have quite a hassle with the owner of the Hilton because of Tumler. We go to the Hilton to go out with the guy from Hilton Europe and suddenly the guy from Hilton Amsterdam is our best friend. That's nice isn't it? And who asks... Yes, no mar seriously, he asked us if the music should be turned down because there was a party going on. Well fantastic. Did we say ‘yes’. And then we left. What a shitty night they had there. But anyway, you're doing work and now I'm going to finish up guys because you still have to have drinks with all of us here, you have to go to the work-in-dinner and you still have to discuss with each other how you're going to get more senior citizens to your hotel. Well that's no doubt going to work out. No doubt they are going to succeed. ABN AMRO has plenty of them in its customer base.
You are doing work that is nameless but certainly important. And I want to tell you one more story about how I see that going. Look, I am a fan of very few people. I am a fan of one man and that is Keith Jarrett, a jazz pianist. I don't know if you know him. If you don't know him, google him, it's fantastic. Keith Jarrett I am a fan of. Keith Jarrett has played fantastic concerts. His most important and famous concert is the Cologne concert in 1976, if I'm not mistaken, in Cologne. Keith Jarrett was a strange man. We are all a bit weird people. Keith Jarrett was a strange man. He wanted to sleep wherever he was in the same hotel where he always slept as that time before in the same room, that sort of thing. If that wasn't arranged, he couldn't play. He wanted to decide where the piano was on stage. Sometimes that really came down to a three-hour walk across the stage and then he would walk and then he would feel and at one point he would know to the nearest centimetre: this is where that thing should be and then he could play. That was Keith Jarrett. And Keith Jarrett arrived in Cologne that evening. The hotel where he always stayed was full. He had to go to another hotel. He couldn't pull that off. He had agreed to meet at half past four, five o'clock at the Cologne Opera House where he would perform and where he could decide where the piano was. He got there at five and there was no one there. It was 1976, there were no mobile phones, he had to wait. The great Keith Jarrett had to wait at a door and at five-thirty a technician came and opened the door, showed him the stage and he saw to his horror that the piano was already there. Moreover, it was a smaller piano than the one he had asked for and there were keys stuck. You played that night anyway. He played and he thought: you know, I'll improvise a bit. It's an hour-and-a-quarter concert. It's all improvised and it's the most fantastic thing you've ever heard. It's magical. You can also hear the audience laughing. If you hear carefully, you also hear the audience laughing the first minute because they think: what is this? What is this? You're not going to play such a weird piano. This concert was organised by a seventeen-year-old girl, Vera Brandes was her name. And that seventeen-year-old girl had at some point thought, I think it would be fun to organise jazz concerts. And so she had done some research, she had phoned some people and she had heard through the grapevine about this one Keith Jarrett. And she had heard that's a bit of a weird guy. Who always wants to sleep in the same hotel in the same room, he wants to decide where the piano was and she knew all this. And she too arrived at that Opera House at half past five, six o'clock and she too realised: I have a gigantic big problem. She ran back to an office, she started calling all her friends: guys we need another piano. There was one guy who then said: I know another place on the other side of Cologne, a music school there we could get a piano. And then someone else said: it's raining, this doesn't make any sense, let's not do this. And Vera Brandes went to see Keith Jarrett. And she sincerely, with her most beautiful, biggest eyes, so nothing crazy thinking, she sincerely asked him: would you still play tonight please. And he did, and once again it's one of the most beautiful concerts you'll ever hear.
And what I find special about this story, it really happened from A to Z, is that there is a third person. Only that third person we don't know. But there was a man or a woman somewhere who said to a girl of seventeen, when she asked: could I organise jazz concerts, do that. Just do that, you are seventeen, you have no experience but my back is to you, go and organise that. And if there is a problem, you can come to me. Go and do that. And who is that? We don't know. But that role is extremely important. Without that person, the whole concert wouldn't have been.
And when I think about your industry, I think about that kind of man or woman who is in the background managing that kind of thing. And whether you're in a franchise or whether you're in a big conglomerate, but still somewhere someone in the background has to see things, give people opportunities, give people confidence and make sure it all runs and that brilliant concerts can be played. Make sure you are that person and Stef is there to also look on cheerfully and happily in the background and understand: well there's nothing to gain from this but also nothing to lose and it will all work out. But as long as you can be that in your life then I think you have achieved one of the greatest goals there can be. And I wish you all that, that you will succeed, that you can be the person in the background that creates magic and that people feel that and that after having spent an evening in your hotel, or maybe two days, people think: I don't know what exactly I experienced but I am not going to forget this for the rest of my life. And, of course, I also wish you to have the occasional person who opens the door at seven in the morning and says: hey, he's already awake, now go home.
For now, I wish you a very nice evening. You are in the heart of Amsterdam. I don't know what you are all going to do but this is going to be gigantic fun, I can already feel that. Maybe I'll join you or walk or I don't know how it goes and otherwise I'll be in room three.
I return you to the ringmaster and thank you. Until next time!