00:00Hello, Chris here from Southwest Business Insider. I'm here backstage at the Southwest
00:14Property Awards 2024. The event is our annual celebration of the region's commercial property
00:19sector and we're here to really recognize and honor the great and the good from the
00:25industry across 13 different categories ranging from architect of the year to developer of
00:30the year and our much coveted property personality of the year award. Now, it's been an interesting
00:3612 months in the sector here in the Southwest and with that in mind, I've called some of
00:41our guests to see what they think about this sector at the moment and their optimism for
00:46the future. So, Nigel Dyke, consultant of Alec French Architects and this year, of course,
00:52one of our big successes has been the Bristol Beacon. There aren't many opportunities in
00:58the world to put a 21st century concert hall inside a 19th century concert hall and that
01:04clearly has been a really significant project for us this year. It's part of a variety of
01:10projects that we do across Bristol and the region. My name is Tim Wielden. I'm managing
01:18director of Zeal Hotels. We are developing what will probably be the most sustainable
01:24hotel in the world, both from an operational point of view and from a construction point
01:29of view and we have been liaising with and working with Southwest companies throughout
01:34this period, which has been, from my point of view, the dream has been 14, 15 years.
01:40We have actually been working about five years now on the design for the hotel and it will
01:47be a remarkable hotel at the end of the day and we're looking forward to opening it in
01:51January or next year. My name is Rebecca Cook. I'm a chartered surveyor and head of valuation
01:58at Vickery Holman. We're a firm of chartered surveyors and property consultants based across
02:02the Southwest with offices in Truro, Plymouth, Exeter and Bristol. Having joined my company
02:09as a graduate surveyor and having progressed through the ranks from chartered surveyor
02:13to now senior associate and head of valuation at the firm, I think it's an incredibly exciting
02:18sector to be a part of and one which my company in particular very much supports young people.
02:24We have 14 graduates currently at the company and I think it's an incredibly exciting opportunity
02:29for young people. I think it's quite a difficult market at the moment. I think that Bristol
02:36seems to suffer from a mixture of popularity and also quite an expensive land value and
02:47construction costs so that actually it's quite difficult sometimes to deliver projects and I
02:54think that needs to play out over the next couple of years. I do know that there is a
03:01considerable demand, greater demand now for hotel accommodation within the Southwest,
03:06particularly post-COVID and this is something which we are going to be looking at helping
03:13with. Although the hotel that we are at the moment building and designing and constructing
03:18will be a leisure hotel. It's going to be a four-star hotel. It's going to be commercial
03:23and leisure based but it's going to be transitioned. We are just off the M5, we're
03:29at Exeter Science Park which is a becoming science park. It's great, it's getting bigger
03:33all the time and it's very close to the airport as well. Beyond that, we're also looking now at
03:40ZL2, ZL3, ZL4, ZL5 and various other locations within the UK. Exeter is the prototype and we
03:49have drawn a line in the sand in terms of design and what we're going to be doing within that
03:56particular hotel operationally. ZL2, ZL3, ZL4, ZL5 will actually be even more sustainable at the
04:03end of the day and we are looking at developing the ZL brand if you like further, not only in
04:09the UK but also abroad in mainland Europe and also elsewhere.
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