EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW We are more looking at experience. Sometimes, people want ultra-luxury for a special occasion and sometimes people are looking for something more casual than the luxury experience. They just want the right location and amenities but they don’t need a bellman and round-the-clock concierge service; they are looking for something accessible. With our 600 hoteliers sharing the same vision of hospitality and our 6 new categories, guests can always find the perfect hotel to get the most of local life. What value do you bring to the hoteliers that the others don’t? This is the big thing because we are talking about chains coming into our space, such as the strategy of Curio by Hilton, or Autograph Collection by Marriott. That’s a great complement, because all these chains are coming through something called a Soft brand, which is what we have been for more than 50 years. It means that what has been decided with “The Originals” has been validated, and we have been doing this for 50 years: it is not new for us to be a soft brand. Owners always deliberate on whether they want to be independent or be affiliated with a chain. Hospitality is very complicated, so what we give to owners today is the space to be independent while providing them different value services like distribution, marketing, a digital procurement platform, a training academy and a brand, for a quality consumer experience. We provide added value but we are not going deeper when it comes to the management of the hotel, because most of our hotels are independent. I strongly believe that travellers today are actively seeking the kind of hotels where they can have a unique experience. Independent hotels all have their own individual stories and singularities, so to be transparent with the traveller today, we talk about the humans and the experience, meaning true hospitality. You were talking about distribution. How do you do the bookings through the central site, and how does that compare to some of the other big groups? Today, we are in a niche market, so we primarily promote the destinations, and each hotel is promoted with a real story. We write the story with the hotel, along with the key activities and experiences travellers can live on property, but also find in the environs, whether it be fishing, golf, hiking… the list goes on. We promote each hotel with what they can provide the customer. In order to do this efficiently, we signed a major deal with TravelClick by Amadeus, which is a complete technological solution, and which we have been working on for the past 18 months. Via this unique platform, we have the distribution, but we also have a loyalty programme, we get the business intelligence and the customer surveys. So, it’s a unique platform where the hotelier can manage his or her reservations, loyalty and customer data. They get everything on the one unique platform, including the booking engine and the website. Your background obviously has had a lot to do with consumer facing technologies, and this must be a big asset for the group as well. How are you leveraging that in helping these hotels get a better grip on what people are looking for today when it comes to technologies in the hotels themselves? Yes my background has a lot to do with consumer technologies, but everything revolves around the consumers so when you make a study and you see that your five brands are not really visible for our customer, we had to come back to the consumer in terms of marketing. This new marketing concept was one of the main challenges when it came to convincing the hoteliers that while they had had their own brand for more than 50 years, that they should change it for a unique “group” brand and that this would help us “grow the pie”. I use the knowledge I obtained in the past on the way consumers are using technology to convince hotels that they need to move towards something that would be easier to understand, getting more turnover for each hotel. This was the
Hotel & Tourism SMARTreport #41 2019 Winter Edition 9 9 ABOUT THE ORIGINALS, HUMAN HOTELS & RESORTS key. If you can provide more business to each hotel they will follow you and that is the new challenge for this group. Hotel The Originals Cap Sa Saal Luxury - Begur Hotel The Originals Borgo Eibn Mountain Lodge The Originals, Human Hotels & Resorts is a collective movement of 600 independent hoteliers who have shared the same vision of more personal and authentic hotel services for more than 50 years. With six categories, from budget to luxury, The Originals, Human Hotels & Resorts hoteliers all have something unique to share, show or try out, from a recipe to an anecdote, passion, story or diverse experiences. This allows guests to get the most out of local life in 12 European countries and worldwide. The Originals Collection, The Originals Relais, The Originals Boutique, The Originals Residence, The Originals City, The Originals Access Find out more at the www.TheOriginalsHotels.com How are you working with travel agents in terms of making them more want to work more than with you? How do you encourage them? In Q4 2018, we signed to get our own GDS code, which is “OG”. Today, we are spending a lot on promoting our brand on GDS, and we have run a huge roadshow over the past six months to tell all our partners about our story, about our hoteliers’ independence, about family-style hotels, without having different brands. This is a long job, talking to our partners so that they recognize the great potential for their guests, and we have been doing this for the past six months and just three months ago launched our new chain on the GDS. Konrad Senoner, Hotel The Originals Granvara Relais Spa Agathe et Frédéric Kop, Hotel The Originals d’Alsace Strasbourg Sud What are the ambitions for the future for the mid to long-term? Today, we have 600 hotels, and by 2022 we hope to have 1,000 hotels. But we are looking to find the right hotels in the right locations with the right experiences. It’s always a question of people. We are not looking to get a big number of hotels, we are looking to have the right hotels. We are looking to be the authentic hospitality Valérie et Eric Boitte, Hotel The Originals Annecy Sud Beauregard
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