Transformation of models, products, brands, profitability levers, customer bases, work tools, uses, expectations, the state of our blue planet… The hospitality sector has not waited to adapt and sometimes even launch new trends. The Hospitality Operator Forum has been analyzing, sharing and challenging these transformations for 30 years. Join us on June 12 to celebrate these 30 years of exchanges and continue to move forward together.
The Hospitality Operator Forum was born in the 90s, at a time of accelerating development and structuring of the hotel industry in France and Europe. 30 years later, for some the new generation has taken up the torch, how do we continue to invent and evolve?
Join our ecosystem and take part in the 30ᵉ Hospitality Operator Forum on June 12 at the InterContinental Paris Le Grand hotel.
Hospitality Operator Forum
Hospitality starts with the men and women who welcome loyal or visiting customers on a daily basis, their expectations and needs have drastically changed as one of the founders of the chain hotel industry in Europe, Paul Dubrule, pointed out in 2019:
[We’re] in a labor-intensive business, and the workforce, if it was trained, if it had skills, if we could educate it, the output was extraordinary. To increase productivity in our businesses, we can use robots, artificial intelligence… but we’re limited. Where we can make tremendous progress is when we train […] our staff, [when we motivate] them, because staff are key in this business. In fact, I’d like to see minimum wages raised today. You can increase wages in the hotel business by 20% today, and I’m sure the result will be positive.
We can discuss it, although we shudder when we talk about things like that, and it’s not easy. It’s not easy to do, because we’re not alone, we have neighbouring competitors, a number of things… but if we don’t all get on with it. […] An agreement with the public authorities, the social partners and all the professions in the hotel industry would be a very interesting challenge. We need to raise wages in our profession.
This is being done with efficient, high-performance management tools that have evolved considerably since 1996. The arrival of OTAs has led to major changes in hotel distribution and marketing, even impacting on customer relations, as Georges Sampeur pointed out:
To quote Confucius, “experience is a light that only illuminates the path we have travelled”. So we have to be careful about trying to make foresight from experience. To return to the idea of the evolution of professions, I would say that we shouldn’t suffer. When you’re faced with a revolution, which may seem like a challenge for your company, there are two ways of reacting: either you look for someone to blame, or you look for a solution. In our case, I think we prefer to look for solutions. We adapt. We had Booking.com’s intervention. It’s true that this is a major issue for the industry, because we’ve always said that the value of a company is its network, but it’s also the value of its customer portfolio, the loyalty of its customers. Today, while the physical hotel industry cannot be dematerialized, and it’s our job to choose the right locations to attract customers where they need to be, we are in danger of seeing distribution become dematerialized, and therefore of losing the very lifeblood of our brands, namely the customer portfolio.
This continues with the product: how do you give it a solid foundation? How can we make it grow? What role do brands play in the value of our establishments?
Between opening an establishment and launching a brand in 1996 and 2025, certain factors have evolved and others have been added. The catchment area is no longer the same as the Internet and OTAs, and neither are customer expectations. As for the economic, geopolitical and financial context, there’s no need to comment. However, certain fundamentals remain unchanged, and are even strengthening. The hotel sector is still one of the first to recover, a trend that is even strengthening with tourism and leisure becoming a key sector.
And it all culminates in a vision, a strategy, a desire that hospitality entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs will be sharing with us on June 12.
So let’s get together to discuss these exciting prospects, without shying away from the obvious facts:
As Heraclitus of Ephesus observed over 20 centuries ago: “Nothing is permanent except change”, so let’s pass the baton for an afternoon to future generations.
Hospitality Operator Forum Fiction
This year, the Hospitality Operator Forum introduces a brand new experience: Hospitality Operator Fiction. A fictional challenge where the next generation of hospitality leaders reimagine industry practices to accelerate the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This fictional challenge invites students and young enthusiasts to project themselves into 2030, as key decision-makers at a round-table discussion.
More than just a competition, Hospitality Operator Fiction is a unique opportunity to challenge established models, propose bold ideas and demonstrate that hospitality can be the driving force behind real change.
Supported by Solenne Ojea-Devys (CEO of OKKO Hotels) and Johanna Wagner (impact entrepreneur and founder of Agence HoPe), Pauline Grumel, founder and director of Unisoap and David Cottereau founder of Enviro Développement. The challenge allows participants to rethink the future of the sector – and to be heard by the industry’s top executives.
BrainTrusts MKG Consulting
Join Braintrust MKG Consulting for a discussion of current issues. Two workshops, please note that places are limited.
- Transformation and change: mobilizing your teams
- Transformation and change: convincing customers
New event, Topliner
Transformation is the main topic of this day’s Operator Forum…
But what about the Topline, which is the 1st line of the income statement?
A great deal of attention was paid to the subjects of revenue development through Yield, Pricing, Sales and Marketing, loyalty and customer experience.
But what about today, at a time when everyone is talking about AI, automated pricing and chatbots?
How does a hotel, a company of any size, adapt to the commercial, technological and human contexts, and transform itself to pursue its Topline development objectives?
Join our ecosystem and take part in the 30ᵉ Hospitality Operator Forum on June 12 at the InterContinental Paris Le Grand hotel.
