Accor's Bazin Revamps Hotel Group's Focus To Asia And Luxury

This story appears in the March 2020 issue of Forbes Asia.

Standing in the lobby of Singapore's iconic Raffles Hotel, Sébastien Bazin, the CEO of the French hotel giant Accor, declares: "This is the best hotel on the planet," drawing applause and cheers of "bravo" from the VIPs gathered to hear him. He made the remarks at the official reopening last October of one of Asia's grandest hotels, first opened in 1887 and which Accor manages. The hotel had undergone a two-year renovation rumored to have cost at least $100 million (the hotel is mum on the exact figure).

The Raffles reentry into the Asia hospitality scene is a crucial part of Bazin's global strategy for the world's fifth-largest hotel chain by rooms. While Accor has long used its budget brands as a major cash cow, Bazin, 58, is determined to push further into luxury, where margins are fatter. "When I started six years ago, luxury was less than 20% in terms of revenue. It will be 50% of our revenue in 2020," says Bazin in an exclusive interview held just hours before the Raffles reopening. (The interview was held before the coronavirus outbreak, so that topic was not discussed.)