Roger Allen, RLA Global Group’s CEO had the honour to have a one-to-one discussion with Club Med's President Henri Giscard d'Estaing at the International Hospitality Investment Forum (IHIF) session on: Reinventing Travel and the Resort Company.
Covering a wide range of topics including:
- The strategies Club Med deployed to manage the pandemic crisis and how they learnt to live with its impact.
- Why Club Med has continued its growth trajectory throughout the pandemic, and their plans to still open new 16 resort projects by 2023.
- The road to recovery and the doubling of digits for their ADR.
- Looking ahead - what will be Club Med’s drivers of revenue growth, in the coming years and, how are they aligned with Club Med’s investment & development objectives.
Henri was quite vocal about the economic, social and cultural importance of tourism and, what he felt was the lacklustre support received from the French government.
“We are probably not vocal enough about what tourism and hospitality bring to the society and what it brings to the global economy and to countries that depend on it. We should formulate what we believe should be the right support from the government.”- Henri Giscard d’Estaing, CEO of Club Med.
There were many takeaway insights from the discussion but what really resonated was his strategy for getting through, as he called it ‘the mother of all crises’:
- Look after your people.
- Don’t make any decisions now that can harm the future of your business later.
Further insights from this one-to-one can be found at International Hospitality Investment Forum (IHIF) and Hospitality Insights.
