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.

 

Hotel operations can be more complex to take on than operations in other asset classes. In this TV show Ryan Prince of Realstar group discusses competencies needed for different asset classes.

Hotel operations are the most difficult

There's different characteristics, so if you look at student housing, it tends to be more stable than hotels. You don't have to deal with night to night filling, so I think there's lots of attractive characteristics of these alternatives, but similar to hotels, they're operating businesses by and large, and so there's a lot of skills that the owner needs to have in order to understand how to run those things, deal with employees, deal with day to day occupancy issues. I generally think hospitality is the hardest asset class to run and operate, so my, in my experience, if you understand hotels, moving down the spectrum if you like, is an easier thing to do than moving the other way. I think the people who actually find the biggest difficulty is, are those people who are in student, and think moving to hotel is a logical step and that's a much harder step to make.

For more great shows on hotel operations, check out more videos from the other Hospitality 250 experts.

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

We operate 11 properties along with 900 apartments. Typically blocks of 50 to 150, units. We take the entire property. The guest who arrives goes into a 24 hour reception; uniformed staff running the same kind of back office software as a hotel, but with no food and beverage, and you get a key to a studio, or a one bed apartment with a kitchen in it and a living space.

I think one of the first things I decided to do was to get out of Australia. You know, it's a wonderful country I lived in Sydney, grew up in Sydney, but it's quite small, in terms of what you can do in the space, so if you, if you wanna be, in the hotel sector and have international experience you obviously have to leave Australia, so, that was one of my sort of the first decision, er, was to move to London where I got a position with Hilton. And a lot of it's down to timing as well, so it's, you know, right place, right time. And being involved in the transaction side of our business, so being around M & A transactions, lots of disposals, that's something that I've made a conscious decision to stay close to. And also then choosing to go over to Dubai, where I would be able to access Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, I think that's sort of broadened my career prospects and, and is part of what I think has made me get the role with Trump, was the international experience and also the experience working for a brand, and an owner, I think whenever you can have the experience of working on both sides of the fence, then that’s a great value, so really try to make sure I have experience from all aspects within the industry. Or as many as possible, anyway.

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.  

Career development in hospitality can be a long and rewarding journey. In this TV show Gregory Lanter of Club Med shares his career story.

Career development show

I believe starting in this industry is a great element. It's very difficult to start in another industry and to join this industry and this, very specific type of companies, because there is a culture, and this culture is not shared with all the industries. Myself, I started in Club Med and I started in the allotment for Club Med. So I'm pure in-house, product of Club Med. That's how it worked out, and I agree that developing Club Med around the world is about finding the most beautiful places in the world, and that's the sweetest part of the job, and that's the dream part of the job. Then, there is, as for any jobs, the other part of it, which is more difficult, but even if challenging, fascinating, and, and great, and a great thing to experience, definitely. So! Start in the travel industry, that's probably one of the best ways to end up in the travel industry, if I have one advice.

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

In terms of operating models, many of them start out as owner operators and indeed well, you know, we've been hearing about these concepts today. Many of these brands that have come through, you know, fundamentally they have got investment and they are owner operators, they're in charge of their brand name, they, they run the operations and they also own the real estate, you know. And frankly that from an investment perspective, it works because it allows you that ability to be in complete control of the operating model, and you have that flexibility. And I think as you start moving through and then looking to expand that model whether it's into a management contract or a franchise or something else, ultimately those types of models, you want to be, you want to be sharing a concept which is established. So I think normally what you see is you'll see this type of concept, and we've heard about it today, you know, a lot of these are owner-operators; as they've grown they've grown within an owner-operator model, but then they are looking for that next level of growth, potentially via franchise or management contract. That's what I do. Our business is all about operating risk, so, you know, we'll take owner operations, management contracts, franchises, you know, manchises, and that's what we do; we look at those operating cash flows and, and we understand the difference in them and how they can work. But fundamentally, at this stage in the market, which is still a relatively young part of the sector, a lot of the propositions that are coming out, they are still owner operators. And, and I can understand that, it makes sense for the investors, and it makes sense for the operators because they've got that flexibility.

The European market has different characteristics to the market in the US as John C Wagner of Cycas Hospitality explains in this TV show.

European market: Cycas developments

Space is a bigger consideration of course in the UK and Europe than it is in the States, no doubt about that, but the demand is there, the demand from the customers for this long stay product is absolutely there and so, it's our challenge as an industry and indeed our company in Cycas, it's our challenge to try and figure out - how can you, how can you develop, how can you build a product that makes economic sense? One of the the things that we've done, and we're quite successful in the couple of properties we're doing this way, is combining a traditional hotel, and then putting a serviced apartment or an all suite hotel component as part of the hotel - for example, our Stratford hotel has a Holiday Inn at the bottom, and a Staybridge suite's on top, we're under construction now in Manchester, where it's a Crown Plaza at the bottom and a Staybridge on top, we've got a number of other developments across Europe and in the UK, where there're two hotels in one, the mix of that allows, the the land to get a bigger bang for the buck to get more rooms on the site than might otherwise be possible, and of course you've got the operating efficiencies, of you're got more rooms so you can spread staff - housekeeping, maintenance, engineering, accounting, - all those things can be combined behind the scenes, so where you still have distinct brands for the guests out front, but behind the scenes, you've really only got one big hotel versus two small ones. So the efficiencies work.

Hospitality TV will continue to feature shows about the European market and the hospitality market in other regions. Why not take a look at who else has been featured in the Hospitality250.