Luxury Travel Advisor’s parent company, Questex, owns the International Hospitality Investment Forum (IHIF), which recently convened in Berlin, bringing over 1,200 senior leaders in global hospitality investment and development together for the first time in 18 months. A highlight of the event was a one-on-one conversation with Sébastien Bazin, chairman and CEO, Accor Group. In a session entitled, “Rethinking Hospitality,” he said he has learned a lot over the past 18 months.
As the pandemic set in, he realized from his Paris-based headquarters that much of the decision making to get through the crisis would come from the hotel managers on the ground and not from the corporate office.
Accor is the world’s largest hotel company, with 40 brands from luxury to economy, more than 5,000 hotels in 110 countries. Its luxury brands include Raffles, Orient Express, Faena, Banyan Tree, Delano, Sofitel Legend, Fairmont, SLS, Sofitel and So.
Bazin said that essentially handing over the keys to his teams on the ground enlightened him as to the strong talent Accor has across the world.
“They knew so much better than me in the Paris headquarters. In hindsight, I’ve discovered hundreds of extraordinary leaders at Accor. I know now their first names, their last names, and they have been just extraordinary,” he told the audience.
Bazin, known as a dynamic leader for his forward thinking and innovation, said that during the depths of the pandemic he had to accept that even though he was at the helm of Accor, he couldn’t control much. “You are in the dark. You’re blind. You don’t know the pandemic’s effect. You know you have to make some decisions. You have no idea whether the government will make the right decisions. You know it will affect your owners, your employees, your clients, and you’re not in control. So, it was a time to just accept that you’re no longer in charge of much.”
As business comes back, Bazin is forecasting that leisure travel will take on more strength in Accor’s portfolio as international business travel diminishes, now that corporations have realized that virtual meetings work perfectly well for some situations.
The Accor portfolio currently skews 40 percent leisure, 40 percent domestic/regional business travel and 20 percent international business travel.
“CEOs or CFOs may tell their colleagues to stay home and meet on Teams or Zoom. If you feel there’s [a need to meet], then you go,” said Bazin, noting that this new mindset will have an impact on numbers.
“We know for a fact today that the 40 percent leisure will increase dramatically. We have seen that this summer. We’ve never had such a robust demand traffic for domestic leisure business; it’s even better than we expected,” said Bazin.
He is forecasting longer lengths of stay for leisure trips with two growing trends: Travelers want to reconnect with nature and they want to discover local communities.
Even as international business travel decreases, the fact that employees can now work from anywhere is a bright spot for hotel business. That opens up a brand-new market for Accor, says Bazin.
“There are hundreds of millions of people—probably billions—who tomorrow morning could work from any place. Ten percent of them will go back to the office permanently, and of those who are not going to go back to the office, 70 percent of them will not want to work from home either. They will want to work from a place that’s going to be a bit more spacious, where you can meet somebody, and not be alone,” he predicts.
This is a great opportunity for hotel companies to address these workers and say, “Don’t work from your home. Why don’t you have your meetings within my own premises,” says Bazin. He advises hotels to reconfigure their hotel lobbies and public spaces for this type of guest. “Make it for them. Develop interaction between the travel and the local community [with F&B],” he says.
“People, for the same pricing, want to have fun, they want to be able to work, and they want to be able to meet somebody else and discover something. So, it’s, again, that fulfillment, that reconnection to nature; all the things we talked about. The future of travel is far brighter than the boring of yesterday. It’s fun,” Bazin said.
He left the IHIF audience with a sage piece of advice, for those times when an executive needs to make big decisions.
“The decision-making process is very simple for me. It starts with my stomach, with my gut. Then it goes to my heart. Is it a good, kind, generous decision? The brain only tells you the timing you need to make the decision. If you start with your brain, you’re dead.”
A key mission for Accor was setting up a relief fund, as Bazin knew the majority of his staff would not benefit from government support programs simply due to their location. Accor launched a $200 million hardship fund which was made accessible to 290,000 employees, many of whom took advantage of the program with the average grant costing $400.
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