The image projected onto the Center Stage screen at last week’s Phocuswright Europe 2024 conference in Barcelona displayed a narrow, ornate room that clearly had once served as a chapel fit for a queen.
Yet as Maud Bailly, CEO for the four luxury brands at France-based Accor, explained, the room serves a different purpose today — as a hotel experience.
The chapel at MGallery’s Domaine Reine Margot Paris Issy near Paris serves as a gilded demonstration of the measures hospitality businesses are willing to take to meet guests’ increasing appetite for experiences. Listed as a historical monument in France, the property was once a retirement home for priests and the royal country retreat of Marguerite de Valois.
“At the same time [it] became a hotel offering to guests something which is quite unique, and we do that in a very creative way for many other hotels,” Bailly said. “We try to protect their stories, identities, and we transform them into quite memorable moments, unforgettable experiences because, to us, luxury is about seamlessness. Everything needs to be fluid. There’s a lot of work behind the scene, but you don’t see it.”
Subscribe to our newsletter below
As detailed during the executive panel, “Beyond the Bed – An Experience You’ll Never Forget,” not every hotel can offer, literally, royal experiences — but that makes it even more important that they treat guests like royalty, the panelists agreed.
“For us,” Juan Carlos Sanjuan, founder and president of Spain-based Casual Hotels, said, “we are looking to create a new ecosystem … a happiness industry.”
Nils Korsvoll, vice president of customer journey and product development at the Scandinavian hotel company Strawberry, agreed, emphasizing the culture his company tries to build from within.
“You have a cliche [that] you hire for passion and you train for skills. We do that,” he said. “Just one example is we don't do normal recruitment; we do auditions. So we actually have maybe 500 people at a time in a given city going on auditions, where they have maybe five minutes to present themselves, and that way we hire people with lots and lots of passion.
“They also don't have the skills,” he added with a chuckle. “We really do have to train them, which can be a bit of a pain, but you do get an amazing culture.”
Bailly seconded that notion, saying a successful brand’s “secret recipe” is a successful culture and strong service commitment.
“Hotel and hospitality are far more than just places where you sleep and eat scrambled eggs in the morning,” said Bailly, who oversees Accor brands Sofitel, Sofitel Legend, MGallery and Emblems. “It's not a commodity. We are emotions makers.”
Strawberry covers a broader range of price points in its hotel offerings. One way the company found to still meet the desire for experiences was through a partnership with a live entertainment company, Korsvoll said.
“So we have an agreement with Live Nation in all four of the main Nordic countries and offer tickets, pre-sale access, VIP passes, mini concerts to people, guests, members, also locals in the community,” he said. “And we see that resonates really well across all our chain scales. So that's one of the things we're trying to bridge and try to make our mother brands stand out and not just our chain brands.
“Experiences is something that kind of transcends chain scales.”
Watch the full discussion with Lorraine Sileo, the founder of Phocuswright Research and a senior analyst for Phocuswright, in the video below.