Wolfgang Neumann boasts an impressive career, including 24 years with Hilton worldwide, ultimately as president of Hilton Europe and Africa in 2005. Wolfgang Neumann boasts an impressive career, including 24 years with Hilton worldwide, ultimately as president of Hilton Europe and Africa in 2005.

Keeping up with Carlson
The tie-up with Carlson is of particular importance in achieving these commercial goals, explains, Neumann, because of the international reach.

“Commercial drive is a key, key, key pillar and that will be in partnership with Carlson because we can approach this in a global way when it comes to globalising sales offices, approaching customers on a global basis, building competitive web platforms and distribution engines [and] launching a globally effective loyalty programme,” he says, explaining the benefits of the alliance, which was formalised in December 2011.

“I think this partnership has strengthened enormously [over 2012]. I come from an international branding background, I come from the Hilton experience, an American company, and that’s what Carlson brings to the partnership, so for me it was relatively easy to focus on the key opportunities and work with the colleagues in America in exploiting the [synergies],” Neumann says.

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For the hundreds of GMs Neumann oversees, the benefits of this drive relate to capturing market share.

“That’s what it’s all about; we want to gain share from the competition, so a general manager will definitely feel the commercial drives today with all the systems and tools that we are making available.

“We have launched a new revenue management system in conjunction with Carlson called Snap; it’s the most advanced revenue management system in the hotel industry. Why is it the most advanced? Because we were lagging behind a little bit with ours but the benefit of doing it a little bit later is that we are really up to speed with the very latest technology and opportunities to optimise our revenue at the hotel level and at the area level.”

Neumann adds that GMs will also benefit from Rezidor’s “continuous drive to shift towards online to get away from the dependencies on online travel agencies”.

“This is a big drive; improving constantly [our own website] and ensuring that we own the customer relationship, the guest interaction at every touch point,” he says.

However, Neumann is keen to put the overall responsibility for the guest experience back onto the GMs: “We can all try to develop distribution and channels and internet but at the end of the day the most important touch point for the guest is the experience itself in the hotel.

We’ve got to focus on making sure that we live up to any expectations of the guest but to me most importantly, that we give the personal service to our guests —that’s what Rezidor’s “yes I can,” philosophy is all about.”

This is also the premise behind a current project to redefine the Park Inn by Radisson mid-market brand. Again working with Carlson, Neumann is planning to relaunch the brand in order to better meet the needs of generations X and Y, a group he believes is seeking “individualisation, flexibility and connectivity”.

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