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Firstly I would like to have an overview of EHMA in your words… its philosophy and raison d’être… The EHMA was born 26 years ago because 5 or 6 hoteliers in Rome decided to go beyond the boundaries of Italian Association of Hoteliers. They were General Managers or owners of luxury hotels in Rome and they had contacts in London, Paris, Madrid and so on. So they decided to create a Pan-European association before the European Union was born. The general idea was to have a so-called “amicale”, a friendly association, for the contacts, for the spreading of all information used, helping each other, exchanging ideas, the usual things hoteliers do. Was there any sort of pre-requisite to be a member? Yes, there was. One had to be in the hotel business for more than 10 years, to be either owner or General Manager of a four or five-star class hotel. To this day these are still the prerequisites. So it’s a kind of “elite group” if you like. Well yes.... Obviously things evolve. What are the ambitions for the association today? How do you see the future? Our ambition is basically to keep up these standards and to continue what we have done. What has evolved over the years is that now we give much more importance to professional development. So when we have our meetings, for instance, unlike before in the past when it used to be mostly just association business, now we have two full days of what we call education or university days. This is because even the most experienced still need to keep up to date with what’s happening around us, especially with technology, which is continuously evolving. Also we all have problems with the talent war and finding the right people, recruiting and maintaining staff. So now we are heavily focusing on professional development. Please tell me a little bit more about the upcoming events in Seville and Biarritz. What’s happening there? These events are annual. Last year the event was in St. Moritz. Next year will be Seville and the year after in Biarritz. Basically it is a four-day event, of which two days are dedicated to association development, one morning is our AGA and then we have lots of functions and events, and dealers, and some glasses of champagne. We network, which is really very important. How important is today for hoteliers to be up to date with new technologies? For me I think it’s absolutely fundamental. If you don’t keep up to date you lose the rails. The way we do business has changed so much in the last 30 years, so we have to keep updated. What do you think is the biggest challenge in this respect? There are so many different technologies that are evolving like the in-room technology, the management technology and so on… Yes, but we still make mistakes. That’s why I was so impressed with your SMARTreport, because I though that this is something that could really help us… personally speaking. But there are some hoteliers who think, or who feel that they are excellent at everything. But I feel that the job of a Hotel Manager is such an all-encompassing job and that you can’t be a total expert in every aspect… you can’t be a desk manager, a chef and an IT manager all at once… you have to be in contact with people who are experts and are able to share their expertise with you. The average hotel manager doesn’t have a technological background or doesn’t have a high tech background, so this is obviously part of the challenge. Yes, that’s why we have an IT manager in our hotel today. But then again you need to know enough to understand what you need and where you want to go. Obviously the IT manager should be in a position where the hotelier is asking him to execute certain ideas or so rather than necessarily initiating them. Usually we proceed this way: we know that we have a problem, and we need to solve it. So I say: “Go out there, find out which way we could solve it; then come back to me and then we decide.” A lot of new technologies are addressing problems or situations that didn’t really need a solution before: finding new ways of doing business and so on. So this is quite important for the hoteliers to understand. In-room entertainment for example. Here in Rome we are not a hotel or a city destination which requires a lot of in-room entertainment, because people who come to Rome want to go out and visit the city. Even when they come for business, they go out in the evenings. There is so much to do and see! But still we have to have the basic things that people are used to. At the moment we have in-room high speed internet access but I noticed that it was high speed four years ago and today it is totally overrun by much higher speeds! I noticed it by myself, just by using my e-mails. If your computer slows down you immediately start panicking and get grumpy. We are all used to getting everything fast, at a click of a mouse! I think that people expect that now. Before they didn’t expect it, but now it’s a minimum requirement. Unfortunately I do know that some new technology is very expensive and that continuously having the latest technology is not always possible This is part of the problem, the cost, of course, and figuring out how you can get return on investment. This is also what everybody needs to know. It’s nice to have lovely flat TVs, interactive TV and Internet but of course you want to know how to get a return on that, and hopefully we can help with that. The educated public has no a real way of choosing a hotel based on its technical capabilities. Do you feel this is a major problem and if so how do you think we can redress that? I think it’s difficult to send the message of how advanced you are technologically. In a hotel like us, in a city like Rome, we do have a lot of repeat guests, so if you are not up to the expectations on the first trip, they will not come back. So that’s one of the challenges we have. So this is hopefully something that we can develop together as well with the web. I’m hoping. The problem is always money unfortunately. Ideas are great, it’s just being able to afford. One of the biggest challenges especially for a five star hotel, where you have seen in the past the TVs were in an armoire type, and it’s quite a big installation, we are not just looking at replacing a TV for example, we have to replace all the furniture that goes with it. So this is quite a big challenge at the moment as well. The good news is that TVs are becoming smaller and not larger in a way. So they can probably fit in the old armoire. You’ve probably noticed in your travels that these armoires do not appear very much in new hotels. The trend now is flat screen, which is mounted on the wall. Choosing technology both in-room and in terms of infrastructure, just how strategic as a challenge is this at the moment you think for a Hotel either for new builds or for refurbishing? This is one of the most strategic and most challenging things. The point is that we need to find the things that the client really requires. It’s useless fitting up the room with digital products that will never get used, so we have to identify the client’s needs, the famous “wow factor”, that is to say to find a good reason to return. This is a big challenge. |
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