Find here the highlights of the 28th edition of our Think Tank dedicated to the hospitality of tomorrow.

MKG Insights - Driving forces of the world of tomorrow. Adrien Lanotte, Senior Analyst, MKG Consulting

Hotel operators have collectively found a higher value than digital actors.

The digital travel actors have become more powerful in recent years.

In hospitality, we are seeing a return to grace of this "old world" which represents a certain attraction for investors.

American actors are diversifying and accelerating in the rest of the world, particularly in Europe.

China's logic is to create its own champions. The first is Shanghai with Jin Jiang and Tripmod.

In the USA the dynamic is still the development of franchising. The number of franchises has grown by 5.5% in a few years.

In terms of demand, one of the things to remember is that in May we returned to a dynamic of RevPAR growth compared to pre-Covid in Europe.

There is a recovery in the market but not in the same way as before the health crisis.

On weekend days, the recovery has picked up earlier and stronger. On the other hand, it has taken longer on weekdays, but it has not yet returned to pre-Covid standards.

The difference in average price between weekdays and weekends marks the break that Covid has brought to the sector.

Building a new universe to grow lifestyle brands. Cédric Gobilliard, CEO Europe du Sud, Ennismore et Ian Di Tullio, Chief Commercial Officer Southern Europe, Accor

In 2017 when we saw a certain trend arrive with travellers wanting a more local and cultural approach.

Hotels are becoming places of life with the lifestyle trend, the common areas and the F&B offer are the key elements.

The lifestyle essentials are the design, the F&B offer, the community, the entertainment, the locals.

I consider myself more of an innkeeper than a hospital operator today with the prominence of F&B in the industry now.

It's essential to create, to animate and to tell customers that there is always something going on.

We have taken the decision to work with brands that have all founders because they bring values and states of mind that are then shared with the community.

Lifestyle hotels are also becoming destinations for locals, we need to attract locals and then attract travellers.

It is our ambassadors that allow us to live and expand our offer.

We really wanted to protect our values and keep the founders, it was essential for us.

We have a positioning in terms of what the brands mean to the customers.

The strategies today are fundamentally different, the approach is much more community based.

The traditional brands of the Accor group can also become lifestyle.

The strength of a standardised brand is that the brand can be rolled out very quickly.

Ennismore's restaurants can now be found in Accor group hotels. This synergy is very beneficial to us.

The restaurant industry is driving the hotel industry upwards, it is a real vector of creation.

Maintaining performance and profitability. Eric Omgba, Co-founder, Alboran Hôtels & Hospitality et Eric Viale, Managing Director Southern Europe, IHG Hotels & Resorts 

Before looking at margins, it is the well-being of our employees that is important to us. The first lever today is how to deal with teams who have fled the industry and how to meet their expectations.

Beyond the margins, the challenge is to invest in our employees.

We want to offer a real opportunity to develop skills.

We have taken advantage of this crisis to review and rework our structures.

Energy consumption has been at the heart of our concerns for several years, bearing in mind the impact on the environment.

We have set numerical targets in our hotels with the aim of reducing energy costs.

 Energy is not just a matter of capex, but also the culture of our teams. There are many things we can do today to reduce this consumption.

As far as energy reductions are concerned, we are now more on a pricing logic.

We now have to maintain a high market logic.

Every crisis brings opportunities and lessons learned.

We had a great opportunity with a catching up of demand which drives our average price.

It is now essential to optimise each square metre by being original.

Increase in the cost price, how will the chain absorb these costs? Jean-Luc Guermonprez, Deputy General Manager / Director of the Hotel Division, Vinci Immobilier

Our mission is to build the city of tomorrow, and the hotel industry is an integral part of that.

The war in Ukraine posed a real problem for the supply of materials.

The delay part, we managed to manage it thanks to our partners.

We must continue to develop and propose projects at reasonable costs for our partners and clients.

The operations now last 1 or 2 years longer, so the cost is increasing.

It is difficult to bring down the price of land, it is even becoming more and more expensive.

There is a real spike in construction costs but it all depends on the location. In Paris, they are rather high because of the approach of the 2024 Olympic Games.

We need to succeed on construction costs what we have succeeded on sustainable commitments.

We are currently going through a difficult period to launch new projects despite strong demand.

We are doing less and less new projects today on greenfields.

We want to achieve more than 50% of our turnover through rehabilitation.

Coping with inflation, levers for progress. Véronique Debarge, Director of Purchasing France, Entegra

We assisted a hospital operator with its breakfast in order to have a quality offer at a lower cost.

We work directly with local producers without using intermediaries.

We try to find solutions adapted to each client, we do not have a single solution.

Today we measure our catalogue on a monthly basis to ensure that our prices are more interesting than the market prices.

New generation hostels. Frédéric Josenhans, President, Grape Hospitality et Cyril Vaussard, Managing Director and intrapreneur @Tulip Residences / New concept Lifestyle HoSHo, Louvre Hotels Group

We have moved from a logic of standardisation to hybridisation.

In the 2000s, there was a great lifestylisation.

We collected all the customer requests around a new model: hybridisation.  

It is an anchor and a place of life in the neighbourhoods where the properties are located.

We have a hybrid model that will adapt to the neighbourhood.

We want to involve our employees in this CSR approach, and they will even be the ones to take it to our customers afterwards.

In our business model, F&B represents between 40 and 50% of turnover.

Social networks have been at the heart of our communication since the beginning.

On the distribution side, our priority is direct distribution on our website.

We sell by the room, by the bed and at different prices. So we have to manage revenue management well.

We think that there is a real market to be taken in France on this new model which is in the economic segmentation.

Our target is young employees, families but also tourists and students who are looking for inexpensive accommodation.

We are looking for key locations such as railway stations and airports.

We are currently working on office conversions as well as brownfield sites.

Hosho is an international project, we already have in mind to develop in foreign destinations.

We will then develop a franchise.

Within 5 years we want to have 10 properties in Europe and 45 within 10 years.

A strong product to create customer loyalty. Anne Billaz, CEO, Lagardere Active Enterprises ; Laurent Taïeb, Founder, Groupe Laurent Taïeb ; Hugues van Heesewijk, Co-Founder et CEO, Gogaille 

Gogaille means to spend a convivial moment all together, warm around a table.

We are targeting intermediate-sized cities.

We propose to destructure the hotel industry, starting from the fact that the hotel groups and brands have deserted the city centres.

 We have taken the customer journey back to basics. People like to sleep in cosy and authentic places.

Our corridors are the streets of life and the lobby is a central shop that acts as a living space.

We are there to organise the flow of the city.

When we started this project, all the hotel operators thought that it didn't work because they didn't think there were enough rooms.

The beginning of the customer experience through smartphones because half of our teams are developers.

Our customer experience is fluid, hand-sewn and interactive.

The idea is to have daily interactions with our customers, especially with the locals.

We are the only country where there is such a fine line between luxury and what lies beneath.

We have proposed hotel operator programmes with a real transversality in the offer, from the ground floor to the upper floors to convey exceptional emotions.

Today, demand is disproportionate to supply in this market.

In our offer, everything is in the future.

The way the hotel business works has changed completely, and this was long before Covid.

Nowadays, you don't just create hotels and restaurants, you create destinations in their own right with real added value.

ELLE today is a global fashion and lifestyle brand that is very influential in the world.

Today having and giving meaning is very important to consumers.

ELLE Hospitality was a logical continuation of the cafes, spas and salons we have opened around the world in recent years.

To create this brand, we needed expert partners who were up for the challenge and who would assist us in translating the brand values through this new concept.

We were keen to create products that would stand out from the crowd.

 There are two concepts: the ELLE House concept, which is more urban and has a boutique-hotel feel, and the ELLE Hotel, which is more leisure-oriented and offers a regenerative experience.

Among the 4 pillars of our concept, we obviously find women, regenerative travel, sustainable development and community.

We started with the Parisian woman, a national treasure, and her wardrobe became the common thread in the decor of the brand's hotels.

How will hybridisation transform the hotel industry? Gabrielle Halpern, Philosopher and specialist in hybridisation

More than ever we are lulled by contradictory injunctions.

There are small signals around us that show that not everything is irreconcilable.

Hybridization is the unlikely marriage between things, activities, sectors, generations, materials that at first sight have nothing to do with each other but which together create new things.

Hybridization is the great trend of the coming world.

The term suffers from a negative connotation today. However, this negative imagination is not new, as the myth of the centaur in Greek antiquity proves.

What questions and anxieties does the myth of the centaur answer?

He has both too much identity and too much identity, he is the fruit of an improbable, even forbidden marriage.

By dint of putting everything into boxes, we miss the reality.

Instead, we should see in the figure of the centaur the face of the future at a time when we have to reinvent everything in our lives.

A railway station can be much more than just a station, it can become many other things.

There is one transition that we never hear about, and that is the demographic transition, the ageing of the population. We have therefore invented a sector called the silver economy.

All the companies will have to question themselves and reinvent themselves to respond to the problem of an ageing population.

We're going to have to tackle all the transitions head on.

I am convinced that tomorrow all places will be third places.

Hybridization is also affecting the hotel industry, bringing a number of benefits.

A hotel is no longer a hotel, it is becoming a third place.

Hybridization also affects the clientele, with locals joining travellers.

The hotel is no longer just a place to sleep, but an educational and cultural place with many services, in other words a hybrid place.

Tomorrow we are going to enter a society of relationships, service and relationship are two very distinct things. A relationship is bilateral, so that changes the economic model and the services.

We are entering the era of customisation and singularity.

How are you going to transform your customers, but also how are you going to let them transform you?

Young people are much more demanding in their expectations of the working world.

What we gain on the one hand in productivity, we lose on the other hand in meaning. So we lose the overall vision.

Hybridization is a real issue and a project for society.

Supporting the development of the Pierre & Vacances Group - Center Parcs, facing new challenges. Franck Gervais, Managing Director, Pierre & Vacances Group - Center Parcs

There were two problems before the crisis
1. No clear structure
2. Every year since 2009: negative net result

Health crisis :
800 M € loss of turnover
600 M € cash consumption
530 M € of debt on 30/09/2021

The group's conviction:

Customers want to change the way they consume, and they want authentic and meaningful tourism.

As parents, millennials want the same lifestyle they had as children. They want their holidays to be meaningful.

Center Parcs: your 5 senses awaken naturally in the heart of nature with your children.

Urban tourism is very different post-covid.

Our ambition is to reinvent tourism: tourism that respects the environment and brings customers together.

CSR is at the heart of our strategy.

We have reinvented the customer experience. At the heart of our strategy is the move upmarket and modernisation, 100% experiential offers and ambitious and responsible development.

We will continue to develop in a responsible and ecological way. We prefer to rehabilitate rather than build.

We want our customers to open up to the territory and not remain locked in our resorts.

First half of 2022 :
+141% Group turnover vs 2021
+89% Adjusted EBITDA vs 2019
+ 24% net profit vs. 2019

Forecast 2022:
+7% tourism revenue vs 2019
96m Adjusted EBITDA 2022
451 M € cash position vs 2019

Target 2026
5 strategic priorities :
Revenue growth
More balanced partnerships
Lower structural costs and optimised opex
ROI and cash focus
Simplify and de-risk

Strong markers and trendy F&B concepts. Olivier Bon, Co-Founder, Experimental Group ; Dan Cebula, Founder & CEO, DEPUR Experiences ; Stéphane Manigold, President, Groupe Eclore - UMIH restauration IDF 

We have really worked on our F&B programme.

We systematically sign restaurant menus with chefs.

On the experiential side, we see a huge recovery.

We're going to have to rethink things to deal with recruitment problems. We have an increase in the wage bill in the restaurants.

We want to make sure that our employees have less toil but that our customers can continue to enjoy our offer.

The world has become absolutely food.

The restaurant business has changed my life. At the time, I was working in finance and had a burn-out. Afterwards, I had a dream: to create a restaurant.

When you put everything together efficiently (food, drink, atmosphere, etc.), you can see that it works.

It's F&B that makes customers come, spend and return.

In terms of transparency, it's a very good opportunity to align interests that have not been aligned until now.

We had to modernise a place without upsetting the codes and find a chef who could break the codes.

Eclore's motto: one place, one chef, one story.

We are launching our first female chef in our new restaurant next to the National Assembly.

Transparency, it must be necessary in the restaurant business.
If something is not homemade, you have to tell the customer.

Our children are no longer used to a table experience.

MKG Insights : Responsible hospitality sector. Sylvie Bergeret, COO, MKG Consulting

How do you reinvent a model?

There has been an increase in construction since 2000.

In the last period, this increase in costs was supported by an increase in RevPAR.

Average prices have fallen in terms of the development of the offer.

The age of a hotel affects its performance. It is the properties that have been created in the last decade that have grown.

With the exception of the mid-range where it is the slightly older hotels that are performing best.

In these buildings, which consume a lot of energy, the challenge is to reduce energy consumption while maintaining the hotel's attractiveness to customers.

Today, 30% of hotel operators say that they are going to undertake work to maintain the insulation of their property.

The main issues remain: profitability, customer experience and social responsibility.

Keeping up with the new normal. Hubert Viriot, CEO, Yotel 

Millennials have totally different expectations in terms of employment and hotel experience.

The [recruitment] problem is actually much deeper than it is at the moment.

There's a mismatch between the roles we're offering and what prospective employees want.

We have a customer base that is always changing.

You have to trust the hotel managers. We recruit them at a very young age and we make them responsible right away.

We focus on our main role: accommodation. But we understand that we have to work with partners to boost the experience.
In this way we can create the experience that our customers expect.

We are going to develop 14 hotels in the next 12 months.

We need to develop ever smarter hotels and build them in a more intelligent way.

In recent months, we have managed to outperform our competitors.

The economic and societal context, an undeniable impact on the hospitality sector. Pierre Sabatier, Economist

The Arab Spring is a direct consequence of inflation.

In Europe, and especially in France, we are behind the cycle, we are just beginning to enjoy the financial constraint resulting from the health crisis.  

All the rich countries are going to experience a certain slowdown, notably due to the health crisis.

We have put our economy under a bell for 2 years.

The danger is to maintain an exceptional response to an exceptional situation when the latter is over.

Demand has been boosted by superficial phenomena.

The state can no longer support aggregate demand as it did during the crisis.

The central bank no longer wants to finance and is also raising interest rates.

Nowadays, risk can be revealed and valuation will reconnect with the real world and the reality of the economy.

Before, money flowed freely, now we have to get used to the fact that money is becoming scarcer.

Purchasing power will necessarily decrease, both personally and professionally.

We will be entering a world of arbitrage within the next one or two years.

All these successive shocks are the expression of a more global phenomenon: a change of era.

The model is no longer adapted to what societies around the world are aspiring to, and this has led to numerous tensions.

We are experiencing the revolution of the three Cs: consumers, citizens, employees.

We are living the end of an era that began in the 1970s.

Power today comes from the ability to connect the small (territory, employees, etc.) with each other.

Beyond a certain size the level of commitment is diluted.

Meaning lies in the ability to provide a vision to employees so that they have confidence.

 

 

MKG Consulting

MKG Consulting

Press / Research & Studies / Events / Training

  • MKG Consulting Paris
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Ennismore

Ennismore

Opérateur

  • Ennismore Europe
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Accor

Accor

Hotel Group

  • Accor France
  • Offres d'emplois 31 currents job offers
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Alboran Hotel & Hospitality

Alboran Hotel & Hospitality

Investor / Finance

  • Alboran Hotel & Hospitality France
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InterContinental Hotels Group

InterContinental Hotels Group

Hotel Group

  • InterContinental Hotels Group United Kingdom
  • Offres d'emplois 54 currents job offers
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Grape HOSPITALITY

Grape HOSPITALITY

Investisseur / Finance

  • Grape HOSPITALITY France
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Louvre Hotels Group

Louvre Hotels Group

Groupe hôtelier

  • Louvre Hotels Group France
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Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs

Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs

Hotel Group

  • Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs France
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DEPUR Expériences

DEPUR Expériences

Cabinet de conseil

  • DEPUR Expériences France
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