Olivier Granet is no stranger to the job, as he worked in the region with Accor for five years prior to taking over from Landais at the start of this year
Following the departure of Christophe Landais to pastures new in Iran, his replacement, Accor's MD and COO of the Middle East Olivier Granet has laid his task of growing the company rapidly in the next five years.
Granet said: “Our plan is to double our network by 2020 from 18,000 keys in the 75 hotels that we have operating as of 2015. This means we plan to open the equivalent in the next five years, what has been developed by Accor in the last 35 years in the region. This is a very ambitious plan.”
He added: “I will look at three priorities: firstly to continue to the development of Accor Hotels in the region, we are opening one hotel per month, on an average in the region. We are signing one new agreement every two weeks."
“Secondly, we need to ensure the full mobilisation of the team in present market circumstances, in order to demonstrate our capacity to protect our market share.”
He said Accor also wants to stay true to their roots as hoteliers taking care of the guests not just during the stay, but before and after, and have hence made significant investments in the digital platform.
Laying emphasis on staff development, Granet says it is important to focus on the colleagues as well.
“The third priority, which is probably new and exciting to my role, is how to engage the entire team in something which is a new journey and management style.
“If you believe, all the discussions here [at AHIC] about digital impact we are always talking about the guests. However, we have to realise that it is something that will impact the colleagues working in all our properties,” Granet said.
He informed that Accor have even gone to the extent of re-christening their human resource department to, “talent and culture”.
“This illustrates the change not only of the words but what is behind. Hospitality is a great opportunity for career and development and we can do it through our training programme.”
A management programme launched by the company in Saudi Arabia has also shown positive signs. Granet said: “We launched our Saudi Management Training Programme, which for the first time saw the promotion of young Saudi Woman that will be trained and work in our properties and the impact on the market with the interest from our partners and authorities is great.”
“This is part of our mission as hoteliers to give the chance and opportunity for people to develop,” he said.
Granet believes that having a female general manager at one of the KSA’s hotels will happen in the not so distant future. “This is something I am really looking forward to. To have the first woman of the management programme to become a GM [in Saudi].”
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