Best Western is a broadly distributed historic brand from our industry, what has been inspiring you over the last twelve months?

David Kong: “I am very surprised with how fast things have changed outside our hotels. With OTAs, distribution has changed, we don’t sell our product the same way. They have taken away our ability to use our relationships as leverage in the business. OTAs are fighting to win market shares. Expedia for instance has spent 6 billion dollars this year in advertising, Booking 5.6 billion dollars. How could we compete? By spending that much money they get a bigger share of our market and thus have more leverage on the hoteliers.”

To which extent do you believe OTAs are protected from the GAFAs? If you take the value of a hotel group that could reach around 40 billion dollars and compare it with Priceline which is around 90 billion and Apple, Amazon and so on are so much bigger. Will they be able to react when Google decides to enter tourism and leisure?

DK: “If you look at the figures, I think OTAs are afraid of GAFAs. In the USA, 70% of the richest households have Amazon Prime. If you look at the whole country one out of two households have Amazon Prime. You can then imagine how powerful they are. If they choose to enter the hotel market and become a market place they could easily do it. So, I think it’s not if Amazon goes in but when Amazon goes in. Their CEO has already said: they want to sell everything.”

In the cruise market there is something hoteliers are really interested in, you have direct access to your customers. Did you look at the hotel industry before designing your marketing and distribution strategy?

Georges Azouze: "The...