General Management

Good hospitality is built on successful relationships, and Cycas's focus has always been to make our hotels the best places to work as well as stay. We have always maintained that we have three 'customers': our guests, our owners, and our Cycadettes.

Since the pandemic began, at Benchmark Global Hospitality we have repeated a motivational phrase many times – soon it will be our time to heal the world with hospitality. Well, that time is upon us! While we have no choice but to embrace a digital world, the human-centered enterprise of hospitality will always rely on the hands, hearts, minds and souls of human beings.

Culture, People and Process;If there has ever been an "intangible", possibly "providing service" is the best example.This is the very foundation of providing hospitality and making that true / real contact with our guests.Our industry is fragmented and diverse, covers the entire globe and having a universal measuring stick is impossible.The industry's answer for years has been scripting and measuring against that, resulting in strange and artificial feeling interactions."did you have a nice trip...", "it is so good to have you back...", "how was your stay..." We all know these heart crunching questions that mostly are asked without any true interest or backed up by the emotion they deserve.And then there was the third party online feedback and scoring.

This was certainly the year I wish our industry never had to go through. Though personally, I believe living through September 11 in New York City was a scarier time, the COVID-19 pandemic had a far worse financial impact on our industry.

At The Student Hotel, we have remained open during the pandemic – albeit with fewer guests and restricted facilities. Because of our hybrid model and the flexibility this gives us, we can change the allocation of our rooms and re-designate hotel rooms to student accommodation.

While IDeaS has always had a close relationship with its 15,000+ global clients, the pandemic has forced us to align ourselves even closer with the hotels we support. In the initial stages, as demand evaporated and hotels closed, we needed to make the necessary changes to our revenue management and pricing systems to deal with the constantly evolving situation.

Hotel or business school and academic education in conjunction with skill is a very logical discussion. Hotel and business schools differ some in education but aren't completely foreign or strangers to each other. To a certain extent, the hotel school will always prepare students better in general for the hospitality industry, due to the specialization of courses.It is also a fact that hotel companies are moving away from generalist and focus on specialists.

We no longer focus on recruitment from only hospitality schools. We did years ago, but it has become an open and even field for applicants with all backgrounds. We hire candidates for their cultural fit over the hotel education and experience they may or may not have.

We recruit for roles in both the “hospitality business” and the “business of hospitality” and look to talent pools in both hospitality schools and business schools, accordingly. Candidates are always considered by their credentials, and by their likelihood to be a fit with our brands.

In short, no. The era of the hotel chain is not coming to an end as they certainly bring value to the industry in many ways, but the way hotels do business is unquestionably changing. While in the past a hotelier needed to work with a large chain or brand in order to have world-class distribution, in today's environment this is no longer essential to success.

Consumers are progressively depending on technology to plan and book travel, which is driving an increase in the number of technology companies seeking to incorporate distribution solutions into their business model. As a result, this competitive landscape has propelled innovation, while creating a downward pressure on cost to hotels.

Consumers today are more connected than ever, and that doesn't change when they travel. As such, information technology (IT) has certainly moved up to the forefront in our organization over the last few years. It touches almost every discipline, and elements of technology are part of every new initiative.

At the moment, IT in hospitality is still in its early stages of development. Tech products are increasingly considered to be at the basis of a guest-oriented and modern hotel experience. Due to the high demand of specific tech products for the hospitality industry, a growing number of tech service providers are offering ways to directly increase revenue or create a more seamless experience.

We are entering into a new chapter for all businesses that demand a sense of urgency and the attainment of meaningful results on the sustainability front. Accor has long taken the view that we're stewards of our incredible locales, and mitigating our impact is a key priority for Accor, and a responsibility the Group has fully embraced.

The reach of sustainability in the hospitality industry is appropriately growing in response to changing guest expectations. We have our work cut out for us to make progress toward a carbon-neutral future. There is no single solution, but rather a network of strategies, systems, and efforts to chip away at our energy demands and reduce our material usage.

The hospitality industry is in the midst of what I call a Golden Age of Travel. As middle classes expand around the world, more people are traveling than ever, and they are craving unique, authentic experiences. That's an incredible business opportunity that we are rising to meet.

With all the talk of disruptors in industry today like Airbnb, Uber and Amazon, the hotel industry's biggest disruptor was the introduction of the OTA's over 25 years ago. At that point we needed to learn how to do more with less, wear multiple hats, combine positions and become creative to save our bottom line.With a majority of our hotels based in New York City, we've been operating in a prolonged downturn mindset since the recession of 2008, and fortunately for us, we've brought that efficient approach to our other locations worldwide.

Most hotel companies have focussed on distribution changes and the need for more pricing flexibility and the efficiency in changing business processes through the assistance of technology. There is definitely an increased sophistication in both the distribution and technology, possibly better described as evolution then the needed quantum leap to weather the next downcycle.Asset light hotel companies have the challenge in aligning the owning companies and their own efficiencies and benefits.

There has been a lot of analysis recently regarding the expected health of the economy. Most people believe that the economic indicators are pointing downward comparing it with the economic recession the world witnessed in 2008.