Accor, CitizenM CEOs Tout New Remote Working Models
The increasing crossover between work and hospitality was a hot topic at Skift Forum Europe.
It was, inevitably, going to come up during the day’s closing interview with Accor CEO Sebastien Bazin, who gave an update on his Wojo co-working brand. It’s hard to keep up with the numbers because of the pace of new openings, whether dedicated spaces or hotel hotspots, but Bazin had an update, and claimed Wojo was now the second largest co-working space provider in France, with 70,000 square meters of space, and a 10,000 customer base of...
It was, inevitably, going to come up during the day’s closing interview with Accor CEO Sebastien Bazin, who gave an update on his Wojo co-working brand. It’s hard to keep up with the numbers because of the pace of new openings, whether dedicated spaces or hotel hotspots, but Bazin had an update, and claimed Wojo was now the second largest co-working space provider in France, with 70,000 square meters of space, and a 10,000 customer base of companies.
Travel agencies have long declared they’re targeting employees from smaller companies, as multinational firms retain their travel bans. But Bazin spelled it out clearly during his interview at The Londoner hotel.
“We stand to lose 20 to 25 percent of international business travelers,” he said. “But then you have the shift of working from the office, (to working) from home and now working from anywhere. You have hundreds of millions of employees who will be extremely happy, if we can give them a booking engine, to use the premise. That is heaven, and it’s planet friendly.”
Accor has a head start, he added, with the group’s now four-year old Wojo brand.
But he’s not always been so lucky. As the CEO revealed he thought the wider industry had failed hospitality workers with low pay and limited career prospects, another mea culpa moment came with his launch of lifestyle-concept hotels.
“I miserably failed five years ago. I said it’s bizarre the hospitality players, as good as we are, only cater for the traveler …. there are 1.5 billion international travelers, which is great, and they represent 95 percent of what we do. But we have 7.5 billion people on the planet, which means we’re missing probably 6 billion. I said this is foolish.”
He said he tried to invite those people “living next door” to enter his hotels. General managers, however, didn’t give a damn, he said. The food was boring, he joked, so Accor had to reinvent itself.
“I refixed a lot of the food and beverage venues to attract the local population, which is why we went into the lifestyle concept,” he said. Those lifestyle hotels are now gaining popularity with remote workers, so everything’s come full circle.
CitizenM also had a lot to share. In a rare appearance, the Dutch hotel group’s CEO spoke on stage. It’s got a stack of cash to build its own hotels, some near company headquarters, but has its eye on smaller companies too.