BERLIN — Sébastien Bazin, president and CEO of Accor, said being a good listener and keeping up energy levels, “because your people need it,” have been two critical strategies to negotiate his firm of approximately 5,300 hotels through the past two years of pandemic crisis.
Speaking exclusively to Hotel News Now at the International Hotel Investment Forum, Bazin said he felt lost at times during the early months of COVID-19 but that he saw early it was important to “take time to reflect, to think before you make hard decisions. It’s certainly interesting times.”
Now, he is full of optimism for Accor and the overall industry.
“We are able today to operate, are able to enjoy great results in America, fabulous results in the Middle East,” he said.
However, a critical challenge moving forward is labor.
“The labor shortage is as bad as we feared. It is not getting better unless you accept to pay very high wages, which you cannot afford to do. We really have to think collectively, all industry players, trying to reassess,” he said.
One brand that has seen rapid change in its customer base has been Rixos, Bazin said.
In March 2017, Accor invested 50% ownership in the Turkish brand, which has relied notably on a traveler base from Russia and former Soviet nations and has assets in Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kazakhstan, Egypt and Croatia.
That demand ended suddenly with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“What’s extremely interesting is that it took only six weeks … between February and March to redirect and readdress another customer base, which is Benelux, Baltics, England, America, and it is working. We’re going to be full at Rixos this spring and summer with a 90% clientele shift,” he said.
He is also enthused about the return of the Orient Express hotel brand, which Accor acquired in November 2017 from the French state-owned railway company, the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français.
He said the brand represents a feeling, a sentiment.
“Whether it is cinema, Agatha Christie, or literature or Guerlain perfume … 1940s Art Deco ... it’s stronger than a brand, it’s very broad, but it’s always at the highest level in terms of exception, elegance, chic,” he said.
For more of Bazin’s comments, watch the video above.