BERLIN – Between brand standards and environmental, social and governance issues, the latter wins out, said Accor’s Chairman and CEO Sébastien Bazin.
“I hate tight brand standards,” he announced at the International Hospitality Investment Forum in Berlin. “We live in a world of flexibility. We have very sophisticated and professional [hotel] owners. You need your brand to have a common DNA, good concept and image—but for God’s sake accept that the same brand may have a different design, different way of operating, in different geographies. This is the future.”
He said that planet-friendly priorities should be dictating the decisions of tomorrow.
The French hospitality firm recruited Brune Poirson, a former member of the French Parliament and Secretary of State for the Environmental Transition, to the role of chief sustainability officer last year and has committed to being net zero by 2050. Initiatives include electrifying its hotel energy systems, installing low-energy-consumption LED lighting at sites, and eliminating guest-facing, single-use plastic by the end of this year.
Accor saw first-quarter 2022 revenue of €701 million, up 85% like-for-like, with steadily improving RevPAR. Accor has of 5,304 hotels in 110 countries, having opened nearly 300 properties last year, and a pipeline of 1,212 hotels. However, Bazin insisted that net growth and sustainability were not mutually exclusive.
Late last year, Accor became the majority owner of a new lifestyle hospitality entity with Ennismore under the terms of an all-share merger. The portfolio has 92 properties globally, with an additional 150 in the pipeline, bringing its lifestyle brands together under one roof including 25hours, JO&JOE, Mama Shelter, Mondrian and The Hoxton.
Bazin said his priority for the coming years is to replicate the consolidation that resulted from the Ennismore merger across Accor’s other segments to make the business simpler for hotel owners and clients to understand and join.
“Having assembled those 14 brands together, the growth of [Ennismore’s brands] is probably three to four times better than if I had left them stand alone,” he said.
Just last month, Accor, Ennismore and Country Garden’s Funyard Hotels & Resorts announced plans to develop at least 1,300 JO&JOE hotels in China.
This article originally ran on Hospitality Insights, a sister publication to Hotel Management.