Pascal Gauvin, chief operating officer, India, Middle East and Africa, Intercontinental Hotels Group
With the aggressive expansion plan for IHG in this market, Gauvin highlights two important elements allowing the operator to stand out in a crowded hotel market — its proprietary reservations system and its loyalty programme.
With the latter, Gauvin says: “For us, loyalty programmes are absolutely essential; 40% of our bookings are from our loyal guests.” And with 23,300 rooms already in operation across nine countries in the Middle East, he says one of IHG’s key pillars of success is its IHG Rewards Club. Currently, the operator has a global community of 92 million Rewards Club members, which account for a third of all Middle East, Africa and Asia room revenues.
In a company statement earlier this year, IHG vice president of sales & marketing, India, Middle East & Africa James Britchford revealed that out of these bookings, 60% come from business customers, 20% of which are from the MICE segment, highlighting the importance of business travel for the brand. Last year, the group launched IHG Business Rewards, its global bookings programme offering rewards on all qualified business bookings for guest rooms, meeting rooms, and events.
Gauvin continues to talk about the reservations system. IHG is well known in the travel industry for the launch of its proprietary reservations system Holidex in the mid-1960s. But that system is going to be phased out in 2017, as the operator is working with Amadeus to develop a Guest Reservation System (GRS), which will be cloud-based and eventually connect all IHG hotels. The GRS can be operated alongside Holidex, and the transition to GRS, which is due to be rolled out globally in 2017, will be undertaken in phases to minimise risks. He says: “People [go to] a global brand for the reliability but when they arrive at the hotel, they want personalised service.”
The GRS is something he believes will further help the hotel brand in this endeavour. “It is going to give us the opportunity to know our guests’ behaviour even more. Knowing where they have stayed before, what they think of our hotels, and so on, will really make it easier for us to make their stay absolutely perfect. And this is what we are obsessed by: perfection in delivery of our brand.”
And with GRS, “every hotel of the IHG world will be linked together” according to Gauvin. He gives the example of a guest staying in New York who will travel to the UAE the next day.
“I can have all this information, give the guest the room that they like, know which channel they want to watch in their room, and we will know what temperature to set the room at,” he says.
Gauvin adds: “We need to be a bit more forward-thinking and understand that the hotel business is not just a simple room that you sell. [The experience] has to be better than everywhere else, and better than home.
“I’d say that 30-40 years ago, every hotel offered better technology and better rooms than home. But today that is not true. People have almost all the technology, so we need to be creative and inventive to make sure we make people’s stays absolutely unique, personalised and very different. If you can bring all what people need, why would they go somewhere else?”
| Advertisement |
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
