Interview: Accor Hotels CEO on Moving Fast While Others Fail
Photo Credit: Sebastien Bazin, chairman and CEO, AccorHotels.com AccorHotels.com
Skift Take
Accor CEO Sebastien Bazin thinks the hotel industry has failed to get a wake-up call over the last 15 years and has missed out on wave after wave of digital innovation. He's saying all the right things about Accor addressing these past shortcomings, although the jury is still out on how much he'll be able to accomplish.
Sebastien Bazin, chairman and CEO of Accor Hotels, thinks the hotel industry has been a self-inflicted victim of inertia, having failed to respond over the last 15 years to the emergence of online travel agencies, their integration of travel metasearch, and now the sharing economy.
Appointed chairman and CEO of the hotel group in 2013, Bazin is determined to shake things up, having invested in digital assets, making overtures to independent hoteliers, and trying to change management culture by tying managers' compensation to the guest perception of the brand and properties.
"Accor is not going to be a spectator of its own life," Bazin says. "We're an actor."
He doesn't mince words, describing the hotel industry's joint booking initiative in Roomkey, as "pschitt." [The French slang terms doesn’t have a direct translation, but it comes from the sound of opening a can of soda as in something that blew up.]
Skift sat down with Bazin in Hollywood, Florida at the Phocuswright c
