Accor, Booking.com, Grape Hospitality, IHG Hotels & Resorts and Radisson Hotel Group presented hospitality students with five challenges aimed at shaping the future of the sector. What are the results of this second episode of season 3?

The Young Talent Awards, organised by Hospitality ON, are an international competition and the prize rewards the students who have best responded to the challenges posed by companies in the sector. The challengers aim to create opportunities to improve customer and employee experience, enhance sustainability and integrate technology in innovative ways. 

IHG Hotels & Resorts

“We need to learn from you. To hear what this young generation has to say, especially in Hospitality. Because we know that hospitality is getting older and older, and we need to bring it back to the pleasure of working in hospitality. So that's why I love this kind of challenges, because it's a sense of asking, what do you think about something, besides assuming that we know how to make those some of the subjects, that's why I love it.”

"When I hear all the ideas or the way they professionally present their projects (the participants ) , I got thinking about how good it would be to exchange more, listen more, and help more." "It's a two-way street, right? Some of them have a lot of questions about careers in hospitality, and we have a lot of questions about what they expect from hospitality." - Mariana Machado, Human Ressources Director at IHG Hotels & Resorts

Accor

At Accor, under the direction of Kelly Delage, Vice President in charge of Commercial. Ancillary Services at Accor students were challenged to solve the following challenge:  

The challenge:

How to design a "wellness" offer that would be accessible to all hotels segments, including economy and midscale hotels?

At Accor we believe in what we call "Augmented Hospitality". This vision of our sector puts experience at the heart of everything we do, to enhance the experience of our guests. Travellers don't only come to hotels to sleep anymore, but to "live". Whether it's going to one of our restaurants, having a massage at a spa, or working remotely from one of our coworking spaces.

With experience playing an increasing role for our guests when choosing an hotel, how to design a "wellness" offer that would be accessible to all hotels segments, including economy and midscale hotels?

More specifically:

• How to ensure this wellness experience remains coherent with the hotel segment and their typology of guests?

• How to make sure such an offer is "scalable", in order to be deployed in a large number of hotels across the world?

• How could this offer take into consideration our vision as a company and our commitment to more sustainability and balance?

“ For Accor is a really key  challenge  it's really to develop what you call ancillary revenues, with everything that is all revenues and experiences that are outside the room. And that's why we've created, actually, in Accor a dedicated team two years ago in Europe, to work and to develop this part. And wellness is a part of it actually, The idea is really to offer to the guest an augmented hospitality. “

“Because we can see that wellness is a very strong trend , and the guest expectations are becoming bigger and bigger over the time. It's not just a passing trend, it's a real new way of living.”

“We really believe that it's a great opportunity to elevate the guest experience, but also to premiumize our Eco and mid-scale hotels. It also good opportunity for Accor and for the hotels to optimize the return on investment of the square meter, because we know that the wellness travelers, spend usually more than the traditional ones. So that's why, basically, we choose this challenge.” - Kelly Delage, Vice President in charge of Commercial. Ancillary Services at Accor

Challenge accepted!

Kelly Delage came in person to congratulate Rossi Lila Mai and Marie Allet, the winners of the " The Bubble Team" project. This project is about creating a sensory room that would be implemented in the hospitality industry.

Well done to the finalists of "Impact" project: Chirag Patel, Le My Nguyen and Koilia Paraskevi and "Project Namek":  Sofiane Ladraa and Chen Xiangrui.

Grape Hospitality

Grape Hospitality represented by Pauline Staub, Director of Sales, Marketing, CSR at Grape Hospitality, challenged its students on the following challenge:

The challenge:
“How would you create an innovative loyalty program that turns The People loyal customers into passionate brand ambassadors?”

“We choose this challenge because The People is a young brand born 3 years ago, and that's true that today, we welcome more than 500,000 guests per year. A little bit more 20% come and book from our website, Thepeople.com. “

“To them, we know that we need to better know our guests, to connect them, to invite them to come back to work on the business and to help them to find the best way to book, so that’s the idea to challenge the team on this royalty program.” - Pauline Staub, Director of Sales, Marketing, CSR at Grape Hospitality

Challenge accepted!

Pauline Staub personally congratulated ":  Carl Hayek, Julie Labbe, Vianney Hartmann for “The cyclists project”. That project is a gamified app in which guests would not only go to the hotel but also discover hidden gems and hidden places next to the hotel.

Congratulations to the " Grapeful Elves " finalists: Ka Wai (Carrie) Chui and Yui Sun (Zach) Koo, as well as the “LEA” project with Yelyzaveta Kirii, Enzo Louis and Agatha Pacheco Faugeron.

Radisson Hotel Group

At Radisson Hotel Group, under the direction of Raul Alvarez Barrera, Global VP Digital at Radisson Hotel Group and Mario Manfuro Digital Experience Senior Director at Radisson Hotel Group, students were challenged to solve the following challenge:  

The challenge:

 “How would you revolutionise the future of work in hotels?”

Challenge accepted!

Raul Alvarez Barrera and Mario Manfuro congratulated ":  Jean-Auguste van Willigen and Emma van den Berg for the “Studio HSML” project. That project is an artificial intelligent tool on how to combine the employee and guest journey.

Congratulations to the " Symphony " finalists: Maria Neves, Sebastian ZISCHG and Anaïs Hupont, as well as the fianlists “ Team Hotel Net” with Ellen Grandmougin and Camille Valiquette.

Booking.com

“We all talk about that we want to learn from you, and we always like to have fresh ideas coming from you. On the  challenges we presented this year, we presented two challenges one in June was about the all sustainable travel ecosystem, and we wanted your ideas about that. It was a great success, by the way, we were inspired.”

“And so for November, for now, we presented a challenge about artificial intelligence. We really saw that as a future, and going forward, you will be the one using more artificial intelligence."

“We have been working with artificial intelligence already since more than 10 years, but right now, we need to make it through and to come to the market through artificial intelligence, not just for our customers, but also for our partners, the hospitality world, and also inside as well for our employees.” - Angélique de Courtivron, Area Manager Chains at Booking.com.