HCNME COVER STORY ← IN OCTOBER 2020, PATRICK
MENDES TOOK OVER A GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY AT ACCOR as Group Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) in charge of Sales, Marketing, Distribution, Digital and Loyalty.
P
atrick Mendes, Global Chief Commercial Officer at Accor, Europe’s largest hospitality company and the sixth largest worldwide, assures me that even at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when hotel occupancy rates had plummeted and diners had stopped visiting restaurants, he and his team were certain that their industry would bounce back. “Our Chairman and CEO, Sébastien Bazin often says, ‘Hospitality is a blessed industry,’” Mendes explains. “And today, our strong recovery is fuelled by the widespread desire from people to find new experiences and take advantage of freedoms after more than two years living with restricted travel opportunities.” In 2021, the revenue of the Accor Group was already up 34% when compared to 2020, and today, the hospitality giant expects 2022 to be “Accor’s year” across its 40+ brands presented through 5,300 hotels in 110 countries, and run by their 230,000-strong hospitality team. However, I suspect that there is more to Accor’s success post-COVID-19 than just people’s renewed desire to travel, and Mendes reveals that his enterprise’s appeal lies in its continuous commitment to innovation and anticipating new trends. “The hospitality industry is undergoing a period of significant change in which many new trends are emerging globally, and in particular, digitalisation is profoundly altering how
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JUNE 2022 | HOTELNEWSME.COM