Louise Daley, Deputy CEO, APAC, Accor was interviewed by Yeoh Siew Hoon, founder, WiT during the WiT Virtual Summit on June 24. Watch the full video here.
Here are the key takeaways:
On the first countries to emerge from the Covid-19 rubble
China – “Now with the way that that the epidemic has been controlled in China, we’re seeing some really stable and consistent growth over the course of the last couple of months. And even despite the outbreak a couple of weeks ago in Beijing – yes, there were some cancellations and there’s a little bit of a drop in bookings – but… we’re getting back to not so far from last year’s booking trends… We’re really hopeful on China.”
New Zealand – “[New Zealand] was one of the first countries to claim to be Covid-free. It’s not quite the case at the moment, but it’s still obviously very much under control… New Zealand is a little bit more reliant, certainly in our network, on international travel, so there’s a lot of talk of travel bubbles or green lanes, but again in New Zealand, you can see a fantastic recovery through May and June but the question of course we have is how sustainable is it going to be? We hope it is, but as people are unable to travel outbound, they will travel more in their own country.”
The two countries predicted to recover the fastest – Vietnam and South Korea.
The country predicted to recover the slowest – “Singapore is almost totally reliant on international travel.”
On what OTAs and hotels shouldn’t be doing to each other
To OTAs – “Nobody likes being taken advantage of right? So I think you’ve got to play the long game, and that’s what Asia is very good at doing. … Don’t gouge hotels. Don’t try to take advantage.”
To hotels – “We shouldn’t lock them out. We shouldn’t close the door [to OTAs]. They are valuable distribution partners and we should treat them as such – not block them out.”
On what keeps her awake at night
“One is the excitement… of the unknown… I’m very excited, in a way, to see where that change takes us. But I’m equally apprehensive because we can’t really see very far into the future. Right? So on the one hand, it’s really exciting, because it’s going to be new and it’s unknown. On the other hand, it’s very worrying, because we cannot see very clearly… There are so many unknown variables, that it becomes very difficult to navigate the way forward.
“We employ an enormous amount of people in hospitality and travel, and… what keeps me awake at night is… it’s going to be very hard for for a lot of people that look to hospitality and travel for their livelihood.”
On showing leadership in crisis
“There’s one constant that runs through everything, and it’s just communication. It’s really simple… even if it’s not a good message, it has to be communicated. There’s a lot of work going on within our teams around the communication in a very micro way… One of the great things about hospitality is we do care deeply about our connections to people because that’s why we’re passionate about service. We’re passionate about making people making people’s travels and experiences joyful, and we work very hard at doing that.”
On the biggest lesson learned through this crisis
“Pre-Covid, everything had to be perfect. The journey had to be wonderful, you had to have the most beautiful consumer interface. Now, we’re getting out there and we’re getting a bit down and dirty… It’s about being functional… the consumer will understand that they want the functionality, they want to be safe… people will be more adaptable for sure… It’s okay to be scrappy.”
“We need to sort of rediscover the scrappiness… we can strive for perfection, but that can be the end goal. We don’t have to have perfection before we do something… What has really stood out in all of this is it’s not necessarily the the platform or the lighting in the lobby or whatever… We’re taking care of you. We’re welcoming you. And we support you. “
