Interview with Sébastien Bazin, CEO of Accor

Good morning, good morning Simon. How are you?

Morning was actually fine. I had a meeting at 7:00 this morning and arrived last night at 11:00 p.m. and believe it or not, I had a meeting at 11:30 last night which was a very nice meeting interviewing someone. Then I started early and you are my second meeting and I was late and I apologize.

First, we're having fun doing it. Two, I want Accor to move to be pioneer, to be audacious, to be there kind of actually ahead of anybody else. And kind of actually, I realized we missed America, so we're not going to miss the rest of the world, which is why I'm here so often. I come to the Middle East probably every month for a day or two, so I am very bullish on Southeast Asia, China, India, Middle East, and probably many other countries. So Accor is probably the most diversified hotel company operating in 110 countries. So that's a good bright side of it. The bad side of it, I'm traveling 250 days a year going from one continent to the other continent, but I guess I'm enjoying doing it.

Yeah, the only special routine is I try to not drink on the plane, never. And two, I always open the curtain, sounds bizarre, when I go into the hotel room. I open everything so I can see outside. That way, if I do wake up in the middle of the night and if it's dark, I don't look at my watch, I don't look at my phone, and I'm trying to actually rest again. So open the curtains, that's what I do every time.

It's one of those obligations where there's one element which I cannot depart from: is not accepting that a third of the world population does not have access to drinkable water. So when you, like I call, we open one new hotel every day, so that means I guess every time I open a hotel, I know I'm taking some precious resources away from a local community. It could be electricity, it could be water, it could be food. And it's not a paradox. I am really now pushing everybody at Accor, said let's stop being volume driven. Let's really do two columns: when you're going to be opening in tertiary cities in Nigeria or in Sri Lanka or any other places, why don't you put a negative column? What are you taking away from people and what are you contributing to the same local community in terms of jobs, in terms of craftsmanship, and in terms of supply? And if the two columns, there's no positive out of it, don't open. So it's a question of being rigorous, being candid, being aware of what you're doing. And at the end, probably what I'm the most proud about is the social part of CSR. We hire 120,000 new people every year, and two-thirds of them never went to university, probably haven't finished school and never had a job before. So that capacity of welcoming and taking people in my hands and offering maybe a life and a job, and of course they leave after four years because they are stronger and they've learned something, and that's fine. So I'm doing it again. So the social aspect of Accor is probably not on your Miracle, but we are all super proud about it.

Yeah, COVID relation was, well, we had one, knees down, we almost died. That was tough. Plus I was not traveling, so my wife was happy to see me most of the time. It worked and we're still together. And it was time to reflect, it was time to think, it was time to really pause a minute in my life professionally and personally by assessing what we've done wrong, what we should be doing differently. I discovered team members that I didn't know existed all over the planet and they were super good, very warm, very generous, welcoming doctors, nurses at home. So it was a good wake-up call for me. So decided, I guess, through those two and a half years, we're going to be reshuffling the entire organization, which is when we started by splitting economy, midscale, and premium. And then I have lifestyle. So it was, in many ways, I don't want to go back to it, but in many ways, Accor is stronger today and I'm probably a different person because of it.

Yeah, absolutely. She was glad as well, I hope so.

It's by changing the organization. We decided to have brand-led CEOs. They are fully autonomous; they're not independent, but they're autonomous. I am their chairman, but they could decide on 98% of the topics. Brand promise, brand campaign, product teams, financials, development, this is their turf. And they have to be accountable for it, but I trust them. And same thing for any more, it's a question of getting back to entrepreneurship. I want them to basically develop like if you were them as a founder, and it actually works beautifully. I'm not interfering, and they probably make the same mistakes I would have made no matter what. So better agility, better responsibility, probably more fun, and they go faster. So I don't know why it took me so long to get to that decision, but I'm glad you got there anyway.

Well, we've made a bet 45 years ago in China, and that's a 45-year bet, and it's a long bet, and it's working, but it took us 25 years. We made a similar bet for the last 35 years in South America: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru. We decided to make a similar bet on Africa, sub-Saharan Africa. This is probably the continent of tomorrow for sure, but that's going to be another 25-year bet. And then decided, I guess, India, Southeast Asia, and Middle East. And that's where you're going to have an enormous attraction in terms of demand, in terms of entertainment, in terms of business opportunities. And you know what, this is where the money is. And at the end, when it comes to hospitality, the only three places with real money: America, Singapore Inc., Middle East Inc. So for me as a service provider, I'd better be there with those who can trust me and finance most of the hotels. So it's, and I love the adrenaline, the energy. There's a lot of energy in Singapore and there is here in the Middle East. So it's, but you need to come back often because they need to see you. Yes, so you build up a relationship and at the end, it's perfectly located. Middle East, India, four or five hours away from a lot of capital cities on Europe. And many people probably should continue coming to Paris and Rome and Venice and London, but the world is so beautiful, you might as well just move and discover Saudi Arabia and discover Oman and discover a lot of the other places in the world.

I know, come along.

Enormously. I'm, funny enough, it has nothing to do with the name of the corporate. My journey has been on meeting people, whether they are executive or not executive. I love the human interaction. So I actually left firms or left jobs to follow a man or a woman, and I never regretted it. So and I'm doing the same with that. I'm building a personal relationship with people who may have the decision power or not, and I love the time I spend with them and maybe we can do something together, but it starts with the stomach. What my stomach tells me, my instinct, then my heart, brain comes only third. So that's my recipe.