Skift Take
It sometimes take an outsider to identify the mistakes of the past, challenges of the present and game plan for the future. Bazin succinctly describes his perspective on the industry and how he plans to take a multi-national, multi-brand corporation into the future.
Editor’s Note: This interview is part of Skift's CEO interview series. This particular series is with hospitality CEOs talking about the Future of the Guest Experience and the evolving expectations and demands of hotel guests. Check out all the interviews as they come out here. Also, enjoy the previous series on the Future of Travel Booking, with online travel CEOs.
Accor Hotels is one of the largest hospitality organizations on the globe and unlike many of its competitors owns and operates more properties than it franchises. The group recently announced a five-year, €225-million digital transformation strategy, which includes a mobile-first customer portal, a new platform for personalizing customer follow-up and service, easier payment and check-in services, and online booking tools for businesses and meeting planners.
Accor reported its first-half profits for 2014 rose 15 percent due to cost cuts and strong demand from the Mediterranean region, Africa and the Americas. The group is also actively expanding with 100 hotels planned for Chinese tourist destinations, 20 hotels under the new Grand Mecure brand planned for the Middle East.
Sébastien Bazin joined Accor as CEO and chairman of the board just over a year ago in August 2013 after building his career real estate investment company Colony Capital. In a recent conversation with Skift, the relative newcomer to hospitality industry talks about where he thinks the hotel brands failed, the four characteristics that define today's guests, and why he thinks transparency is the key to change within his organization.
An edited copy of the interview is below:
Sébastien Bazin: If I may start on what’s happened to the industry at large, it will explain the reason why we launched the digital strategy. It's just a matter of 65 years in this industry since the 1950s, of which the hotel operator had been blessed for the first 50 years to be, basically, the sole participant in the value chain. Ninety percent of profit was derived from the hospitality industry with the other ten percent in the hands of the intermediate actors, the traditional travel agent such as Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Amer
