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The Parisian palace Le Ritz is offering cruises to its customers, the hotelier Accor is investing in the Orient-Express train with tremendous success… Hotel professionals have an appointment in London from November 7 to 9 with the World Travel Market. According to Vanguelis Panayotis, CEO of the consulting companies MKG and Hospitality ON, transport will have a prominent place there.
RFI: At the head of MKG and Hospitaliy ON, your tourism and hotel consulting companies, you bear witness to this incredible change: transport is coming to the hotel!
Vanguelis Panayotis: Yes quite. The journey as an experience! And this need to take time into consideration. Increasingly, this travel time will be part of the hotel offer.
The Covid-19 crisis has undoubtedly accelerated things?
Certainly, but the trend was already there. The proof with the investment of the French hotel group Accor, these last five years, in several means of transport. Firstly with the new label around the Orient-Express train, a train considered a palace on rails! This train had been out of service for thirty years, because it was too old, hence the idea of participating in its rehabilitation for new journeys reserved for a luxury clientele.
Accor, present in France and around the world, has just innovated with less expensive getaway offers
Absolutely. The group takes advantage of the extent of its network of brands (Mercure, Ibis, Novotel, etc.) in all regions of France to offer trips. These stays can be made step by step in a van for example. Accor has signed a partnership with the manufacturer Mercedes and it works really well.
For you, the van, the train, and other, correspond to a real new demand?
For sure. The times want people, and therefore customers, to feel more and more disconnected. Thanks to transportation for their hotel stay, the trip reconnects them to authenticity. It feeds emotions, creates memories. It is this experience that customers are looking for today.
With a service value that also finds a renaissance there, since you have to follow these escapades of discovery.
This is a real new way of approaching the concierge service. It takes logistics, to cover customer needs. They are personal (visits, childcare, lingerie, etc.), but they also concern more general local offers, such as gastronomy. It is a real reservoir of ideas and potential.
A search for authenticity specific to the younger generations, French and foreign?
It’s a global phenomenon! With a large part in France, and with our European neighbors. This demand is also exploding in the United States or Canada. I remain convinced that with the lifting of the confinements and the opening of China and the surrounding countries, we will see the emergence of offers in Asia.
The train, the minitrucks… And the palace Le Ritz, which can offer its customers cruises of the same name.
Ritz cruises, for the concept of a sailing palace. Similarly, the American group Four Seasons has just bought its second plane.
The goal is to set up a mini airline?
These planes are offered for express stays, during the stay at the hotel: to visit neighboring regions or countries, or even on an initial trip, between the country of residence (of the tourist) and the country of the hotel.
Could we imagine in the future offers with hotel rooms or trips to the hotel by freighter?
Why not, it did exist in the past! By the way, for the record, one of the founders of the Accor group, Paul Dubrule, went to the United States with a freight ship ticket, the cheapest to travel in the 1950s. If such a possibility existed today, I am convinced that it would work.
The desire to pollute the planet less gives rise to all these new ideas, which you call “ new soft mobility » of the hotel industry.
We have just seen it in France with the controversies over footballers’ private jets. What was possible yesterday will not be possible tomorrow. Today, the planes or vehicles of hotel groups offered to their customers must meet the two key words: “group experience” and “authenticity”.
The possible future of the stay or the balloon transport is part of it?
Yes, the stay in an airship, we are talking about it! What a dream to be able to enjoy the discovery of a region or a country in the air as a family… This would give time to savor, while preserving the planet.
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