Josiah: For context for our listeners, some may know this, but if you rewind back into history, Accor entered the hospitality industry as a disruptor, right? And you said it’s key in times of change, like we’re living through now, to keep your adaptability quotient high. You’ve talked about orchestration, a lot of these sort of things. I’m curious if you could speak a little bit more to that. What does it look like practically as a leader to keep adaptability quotient high in your organization?
Gilda: I would say it’s one of the most important, if not the most important, aspects to keep in consideration. You never know what every day is going to throw at you, right? We may face a delay in the project, or we may encounter a conflict of opinions in part of the project, or unforeseen events may occur that impact the project or an aspect of it. So we have to be nimble. There’s no room to panic. We have to look at everything, as we said, from a short, medium, and long-term perspective. However, we must be extremely resilient. And when you’re a disruptor, creating something that hasn’t been done before, of course, you need to have a very high level of confidence; however, the ability to recover is absolutely essential.
Gilda: Maybe we made a decision, it wasn’t the right one, we accept it very early on and then we move on and we fix it. It’s almost a scientific approach where you test the results and then you adapt. And it’s the same thing from an emotional perspective, too. This is an extremely exciting project. It’s a dream of a project. It’s a privilege to be working on something like this, but it’s also a lot of hard work. And emotions run high when the pressure is high. And so if we’re all swimming in the same direction, and we all know what the mission is, we’re very clear from a communication perspective, everything can be done. Very lucky to be working with extraordinary people and dreamers and people who did not take no as an answer, which is extremely important and they’ll push you to the limit, but that’s what we’re doing. We’re pushing boundaries. If we want to create something truly extraordinary, we just have to be ready to be adaptable to maybe break models or do something else and test. And at the end of the day too, our guests will be the ultimate decision makers as to whether or not this is working or not, right? They’re going to be the proof of the pudding is our guest satisfaction and that loyalty and that Orient Express community that we want to build worldwide. That’s going to be the ultimate litmus test, I would say.
