Career development might take you into a leadership position if you are ready for it. In this TV show Susan Stolte of Hotelschool, The Hague says leadership is about knowing yourself.

Career development advice for future leaders

Get to know yourself, because if you talk about leadership it's always first about knowing yourself. And get to know others, so understand with whom you talk understand the needs of of, someone, of your counterpart. Really the empathy and social skills are, I think,one of the main issues in the years to come, which they need to learn. If you also look into technology and and artificial intelligence, the counterpart really the yawn factor, so we are really, giving them that sort of development and they have that talent already because we select very carefully from the beginning. But this is one of the main things I think that that leadership is is based on knowing yourself, and having the self-confidence also to come up with new ideas, and to present them properly, and they really learn also to, to make it a sort of fun and exciting to present new ideas, which we saw yesterday with our students, I think that’s a competence you need as well, because you need to sell your ideas, also, to all kind of stakeholders.

Browse more videos by the Hospitality 250 experts and find more insight into social media profiles and other hospitality topics.

Hospitality careers need to be embraced fully and industry newcomers should eat, sleep and drink hospitality, as Olivier Jacquin of Mangalis Hotel Group explains in this TV show.

Hospitality careers require patience

I grew uh, for the past 25 years with big hotel chains, then I learned from them, and I gave the maximum of my capacity. My advice should be to be always keep an eye open to what's happening in the world. You should eat hotels, you should think hotels, you should absorb our hospitality industry like a coffee in the morning, or a uh whiskey on night. You need to be connected, 24 hours in our industry. It's a fantastic industry, it's a demanding industry, it's moving a lot, you see all the movement in design, in the operation, the way of thinking, the distribution changed a lot for the past 5, 10 years, and we need to adapt permanently uh, our skills, but I would say that if you feel yourself, here in the middle of your body, that hospitality is one of the key sector, you should jump into that. I have not a special advice to give, but just to stay connected and give your patience – it's a patient business, you know, we don't send rockets on the moon, we do hospitality business, we build hotels for sure, but at the end of the day, we operate hotels to make the guest satisfied to sleep well, to eat well, and to come back at home and to propose these clients to come back again on the site, and to make him loyal to the brand and to the continent we sell that's the most important, to make our guest happy.

Browse more videos by the Hospitality 250 experts and find more insight into hospitality careers and other hospitality topics.

Developing talent is a core part of any business and what companies are looking for in a new hire is changing. Remy Merckx looks at recruiting digital skill into a company.

Developing talent with digital skill

We are not, not digital by nature, we have to become digital in order to keep up in this business. So, it’s hiring new competencies, bringing people from outside of the industry – hotel industry has been historically very close in the way they hire people. You know, you had to work for different hotel companies before allowing yourself to work for another hotel company. Is that a good model? Probably 10 years ago, today we are very happy to bring people from outside who work for companies like Coca Cola, or to work for more technical companies or agencies. It brings a completely different vision also to the hotel industry and I hope that we’ll have good results in the way we are going to develop this industry moving forward.

Keep browsing Hospitality TV for more TV shows and briefings on developing talent, recruitment, looking after staff, and digital competencies.

 

Deal-making is a hurdle for growing business. In this TV show Tom Walsh of Staycity discusses a strong development pipeline.

Deal-making in alternative markets

It is a very limited marketplace. I mean our our objectives, were 900 units today, by the end of next year we'll have 2000 keys. There are deals that we did over the last few years that are under construction at the moment, many of them, a couple of them opening this year, and four or five properties opening next year. It's hard to find the properties that's, you know, that's, that's you know, par for the course, you really are competing with other users, whether it's office use or residential use, or hotel use, you're generally competing for, you know, scarce real estate in city centre locations. We're, we're seeking city centre locations, so you're, you know, you are by definition really, uh, competing with other users. Our growth plans will see us having about 5000 keys by 18 or 19. We're quite comfortable we'll be able to find sufficient properties for that we've, as I said, 2000 open by the end of next year, and a pipeline of 1300 on top of that. And, a good strong unsigned pipeline, so you know, we're able to ferret them out, you know, bit by bit, deal by deal.

Browse more videos by the Hospitality 250 experts and find more insight into deal-making and other hospitality topics.

Hospitality careers success can hinge on the company you choose to work for, as Daniel Ruff of Wyndham discusses in this TV show.

Hospitality careers advice

So, for me I think the most important decisions that I've made in my career are really around the people I've worked with and for. I think, you know, companies are fantastic, and you have to believe in a company's vision, but ultimately you're working for great people, and I think the most exciting thing about joining Wyndham is I really believe that we're a company full of great people, and it's been a fantastic first three months for me, to really jump into that and see it first-hand.

Browse more videos by the Hospitality 250 experts and find more insight into hospitality careers and other hospitality topics

Africa is more than a great opportunity, it's the biggest market to come. Just to keep in mind, a few numbers; first, 1.5 billion inhabitants by 2050, it will be bigger than uh, China or bigger than India. In the continent of Africa fits more or less all the whole world; uh China fit in Africa, India, Europe, US, and Brazil, just to give you the size of Africa. And today, if you take the market, only 5%- 5.3% of the sub-Sahara Africa, just to give you uh, the, the- the mass market that we are developing, uh, branded hotels, 5%, versus 44 in, in Europe, and 70 in the US. Then, to show you the massive opportunity we have, all together, bigger than chain original player like Mangalis Hotel Group, or small independent hotels, to support the growth of Africa.

Speaking from Wyndham, I'm excited because we continue to be one of the fastest growing companies in the world, and we're the biggest, so I think we're going to deliver on our promise to ensure that there's a hotel in every place that our consumers' want to stay. It's really exciting, we've acquired the Dolce brand, uh Dolce is the planning, the meeting planners brand of choice, so it's 27 hotels globally, and 7 in our part of the world, it gives us the opportunity to both add a important brand to our stable of brands, but also, to have a a management infrastructure in Europe, so now we can actually manage other- other brands within Germany and- and the markets here.

I just saw this morning on the television here in Berlin, a whole transmission on, a new concept of, working only with icons, so we don't have a language any more, but we work only with icons, which would help to have all the language issues worldwide eliminated in one go. But this is very much the new generation, I mean everything is, with pictures, everything is visual, everything is, short and fast, you know, I mean what we see in the span of attention is not too high, not too long, so you need to interest in them and involve them in a very short period of time. I think visuals help a lot there. And I also support the creativity of the young generation, there's a lot of creativity and imagination, and if you try to, to limit that down to words, it’s not in line with how they function. So that's what we see, and and it means that in our curricular at our school and our university programs, we work very much with simulations, and er, interactive courses etc, so to really involve them directly and give them the chance to, to, work on their creativity. And we see that happening, and because, I mean, our students yesterday, that one against it was Cornell, it was really based on a sort of really creative imagination of how the world could be if you look into the developments of an Airbnb and all other kind of of Uber's etc that is going on. If you look into, into this development, they find a sort of very easy going answer, it's not complicated. And I think this is one of the skills of the new generation.  

OTAs have a strong position in the hospitality industry and will only get bigger as Tim Ramskill of Credit Suisse discusses in this TV show.

OTAs in 5 years

So I’m Head of Research on the transport travel leisure side of Credit Suisse as an equity analyst looking at the hotel sector, the airline sector and the whole of the travel space. Focus on the industry from the perspective of advising our institutional clients about the changes in the travel space. I think what we’ve experienced, what we expect to continue to see is very dramatic growth from the online travel agents. That's manifested itself in a 30% growth rate over the course of the last 4 or 5 years and we’re forecasting that the online travel agents are going to keep growing their fee base at around about nearly 20% a year over the course of the next 5 or 6 years. So the pace of change has been, and we continue to believe will be, very strong.

Hospitality TV will continue to feature shows about OTAs and distribution channels.  Why not take a look at who else has been featured in the Hospitality250.

Real estate funds can be a part of the development process for hospitality projects. In this TV show Andrew Pratt explains what Patrizia is all about.

Real estate funds and commercial investment businesses

Patrizia was set up in the mid 1980s, basically as a residential property company investing in residential property in Germany. Went through an IPO in 2005, now has over fourteen billion euros worth of assets, mainly in central Europe, fifty residential and commercial, we have thirty funds in Germany, we're the second biggest house builder in Germany as well now, the market in Germany's changing from being a, er, rental market to home ownership. Similar model to the UK. We act for a hundred pension funds across Europe - well across the world, actually. The strategy for Patrizia was to replicate that model, in the UK. Came into the UK, about - just under two years ago now we've been setting up both residential and conversion, commercial investment businesses.

Hospitality TV will continue to feature shows about real estate funds and development. Why not take a look at who else has been featured in the Hospitality250.