BERLIN – Leisure guests are still anxious about traveling following the global pandemic and as a result have gone “back in time” to favoring travel agents and tour operators.
That was according to Gabriele Burgio, CEO of €2 billion hotel manager and tour operator Alpitour World at the International Hospitality Investment Forum in Berlin.
Speaking on a panel discussing the future of the leisure hospitality market, he said travel anxiety was changing consumer behavior but not hampering demand, with a persisting trend for shorter lead times for leisure bookings.
Karin Sheppard, SVP and managing director Europe for IHG Hotels & Resorts, which operates more than 6,000 hotels across 17 brands including Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza, added that the shorter lead times had meant fewer cancellations and there was still a willingness to pay for flexibility.
Grégory Lanter, chief development and construction officer at all-inclusive holiday group Club Med, said the post-pandemic consumer inclination towards holiday packages was a trend for the long-term. As well as managing 70 resorts, the group has its own tour operating company.
“This anxiety will remain … someone taking care of the chain with your flights and accommodation is something that’s going to stay,” agreed Alexander Schneider, president of Nikki Beach Hotels and Resorts, which has 11 beach clubs and five hotels and resorts. “It will favor the comeback of some of the tour operators.”
Ramón Aragonés, CEO of NH Hotel Group, which is part of Minor Hotels and operates 350 hotels in Europe and the Americas, added that there was “no better tool than the loyalty programme” to translate business guests into leisure guests, and had been “crucial” in increasing direct sales.
Since 2019, the company has been working with Minor on integrating all of its hotel brands under a single corporate umbrella, and in 2021 reported a full-year revenue increase of 54.6% to €834 million.
Despite the panel reporting a tremendous recovery in leisure demand this year and optimism for the sector, Aragonés expressed concerns over cost increases once the ‘boom’ plateaus, and Schneider warned the biggest enemy to the leisure sector was airlift capacity.
“This is something I think will eventually create a ceiling in the leisure recovery if it doesn’t change,” he said.
Where the audience was not advised to be living in the past was in product development. Sheppard said IHG has already been developing “third spaces” in its hotels for guests to both work and relax, to meet the growing “bleisure” demand. The business, which reported revenue of $1.39 billion last year, is now training its team members to “read” customers to ensure they are following that transition from business to leisure guest. “You need to tailor your product and decide on your audience,” Schneider said. “People want to stay at places where they find like-minded people and you only get that if you create a product with edges.”
This article originally ran on Hospitality Insights, a sister publication to Hotel Management.