RLA Global: Personal Lessons from 2021

Question: What has 2021 personally taught you?

Roger Allen, Group CEO.

Fortune favours the brave. In a world of unpredictability, caused by the pandemic, survival and future success came down to creating certainty in the form of embracing new opportunities and challenges.    

Rita Levy, VP Global Business Development.

2021 proved (what I have always known) that the real PR of the hospitality industry is persistence & resilience. Something our industry has in abundance and will continue to demonstrate over the next year.

More than ever the importance of “Human Capital” comes to the forefront: lots of people in our extended hospitality “family” have suffered through this crisis. We need to address the human aspect in hospitality, leading with empathy and finding ways that we can offer assistance to our employees in the challenges that they may face in their personal lives.

Paul Boldy, Managing Director - Middle East

Flexible working is here to stay! 2021 has shown that not only can it work long-term but it has sometimes proven to be even more efficient. Certainly, the quality of work we have delivered, has not been diminished by reduced face-to-face contact. It is a key lesson for the hospitality industry to embrace - it has often lagged behind in offering flexible working (where it is possible) and the most attractive employers will be the ones who fully adopt this new way of working.

Another key insight and one that I see as my key challenge to address in 2022, is that there is a greater need in the market for a metric-focused approach. What used to work, doesn’t necessarily work moving forward and it’s the data that will help shape what these new opportunities are.

A real personal reflection has been; what we may have lost in vacation time, we have more than made up for in family time. Quality time together does not always need to be about the next big holiday, but I really think that this sense of experience and quality time will be reflected in how we travel in the future.