Is this a relationship that is one premised upon the positives or negatives, is it a friend or foe type set of circumstances. I think ultimately what will be successful are those who can at least embrace it as a partnership opportunity, be mindful of where the OTAs can truly add incremental value. Many talk about the OTAs adding, if they can add incremental room nights, that’s definitely extra revenue you might not otherwise have achieved and that's serves a purpose. I think the reality at the moment is, yes you’re getting some of that but you’re also facing a challenge from quite a large amount of business not necessarily being incremental. So, I think it’s working on the ways that you can ensure that what you get is incremental and at the same time as we touched on before, ensuring that when we do gain access to that customer who may have arrived via the OTA channel, you try and make the most of the opportunity to cement your relationship as a hotelier with that customer going forwards to maybe cut out the OTA going forwards.

In this digital age there is tension between online travel agents and brands, as Carl Michel of Generator Hostels discusses in this TV show.

Digital age conflicts

There's always a tension between an OTA and a direct machine, one of the challenges is simply, you've got to, you've gotta co-exist - we're frenemies, basically, to the OTAs, they are a necessary evil, what we hope to see, is by driving more content onto our web-site, and more unique offers onto our website, that we'll gradually gain more brand fans, brand loyalists, but we're still a relatively small brand, we only have ten locations, so we have to recognise the OTAs do play an important role in getting our brand distributed and out there to the market.

Hospitality TV will continue to feature shows about OTAs and what the digital age means for hospitality. Why not take a look at who else has been featured in the Hospitality250.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The staff level is a lot lower than, than in hotels, we all know that in F&B and in conferences, you have very high staff levels, so as we don't have this it's, it's reducing, our staff level. But also in terms of the normal hotel guest, it's when they check in and when they check out that the most work is created for the, for the hotel. And not just at the reception, but also for housekeeping, for the concierge, even for accounting, and so by having longer stays we can really reduce the amount of work that we have, per guest. It is a typical challenge for us, of course, having bigger units. and in fairness the units size have come down, in recent years. However, please remember we have all the space that we're not using for restaurants and conferences that we can now allocate for rooms for example, as well as we might use part of that space to rent out to retail. So all this generates additional revenue. I think another key advantage of serviced apartments is in terms of exit strategy, a hotel, you can always just sell as a hotel, in one block whereas serviced apartments, depending on the legislation in the country you are in, you might have the opportunity to sell the apartments individually as private residences And so therefore you have an option basically to if the residential market is booming, you might say "hey, you know, I'm actually selling these as residential" rather than, than, as a trading business.