I attended a Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International event on April 25 hosted by the organization's Connecting Future Leaders division. Its members are all aged 35 and under — so I suppose I'm not eligible.
Fifty people were in attendance, and the passion was there to see.
Chris Keates, account director for IHG Hotels & Resorts, interviewed Franck X. Arnold, managing director and regional vice president at London's Savoy Hotel. The hotel has been part of Accor for a few years now and hosted the event.
We gathered in The Savoy's Pinafore Room, which is lined with photos of previous United Kingdom prime ministers who had gathered there over the decades for a dinner club formed by Winston Churchill.
The dining club was known as The Other Club, apparently because the principal club was Parliament itself. Although it's a 20-minute walk between Westminster and the eastern end of The Strand, where The Savoy sits.
Arnold could have done it, no problem, for he compared the discipline of hotel-keeping with that of completing a marathon.
His message to the attendees was that they should not be scared to fail on their way to success. He mentioned two failures he had experienced personally, but added that he picked himself up and learned from them.
I moderated a panel at the event on loyalty. Panelists included Shumi Khan, Accor's senior vice president, business intelligence and revenue management and who also is chair of HSMAI Europe’s revenue optimization advisory board; Scott Jakins, general manager of the Staybridge Suites London Vauxhall, which is managed by Cycas Hospitality; and Debra Patterson, director of quality and sustainability at The Savoy Hotel.
Patterson has worked at her hotel for almost 30 years — the epitome of loyalty — and made the point that loyalty and teamwork in a hotel or across a brand has a direct link to the loyalty and experiences of guests’ continued stays.
Time ran out before I could ask my final question to the panel, but as though by telepathy, one attendee asked it almost verbatim: How does one measure loyalty?
The answer was that it was not purely one measure, such as revenue, satisfaction scores or the smile on a face when a guest’s birthday is remembered. Rather, it's a combination, of course.
Politics
The event location of course brought politics to mind.
Before I learned the origin of the name of The Other Club, I thought it sounded like a bully time full of jolly japes for them, not us. It summed up in a way the feeling today that politicians are more distant than ever from the electorate.
And I'm not the only one feeling that way.
Last week at the International Hotel Investment Forum in Berlin, Accor’s Chairman and CEO Sébastien Bazin railed against the modern age’s ragbag of politicians.
“I know I am too candid, but the world is a mess,” Bazin said. “The leaders do what they can do, but 50 years ago we would have spotted four or so leaders that you would point out that you would admire. Today? Would you point out any? I do not want to blame any of them, as leading a country is one of the toughest roles in the world. Nowadays it is also about social networks. You are on the defensive all the time.”
Better to stay in the Pinafore room in 2024 with that impressive group of young hoteliers.
I'll leave you with one fun fact about The Savoy Hotel: It also is famous because you can ready it by a small road leading off The Strand that only goes as far as the hotel's front door.
It is the only street in the U.K. where cars can drive on the right-hand side of the road, apparently made law by an Act of Parliament in 1902, although I can find no reference to that in Hansard, the official minutes of Parliament.
That odd change in direction probably did not save the members of The Other Club any time in reaching their canapés, cigars and port.
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