HRS recently announced the launch of a sustainable hotel booking initiative. The subject of CSR seems more topical than ever within companies?
Emmanuel Ebray - That's right. Whether it's with a customer or a prospect, with a company or an institution, I don't have a single discussion at the moment without this subject coming up. There's a crazy level of awareness, which we didn't see even two years ago. Of course, companies always need to make savings, to consolidate their hosting expenses, but this point has become central today. So, at the initiative of our CEO, Tobbias Ragge, we asked ourselves what role HRS could play as a player in the business travel chain. Hence the idea of an index measuring hoteliers' commitments in terms of reducing their carbon footprint and the Green Stay label for hotels classified as 'green'. These are all responses to our customers' need to assess the eco-responsible performance of their travel policies, and therefore of their hotel programmes. We are currently running a pilot phase of the Green Stay index with one of our major clients. For this Fortune 500 company, we are analysing all the hotels that have been booked, i.e. 60,000 establishments worldwide.
What is the purpose of this rating system?
E. B. - Our ambition is to provide transparent and structured information on hotel energy consumption, water and waste management, so that groups with advanced CSR policies can feed their reporting with dashboards on the impact of their hotel programme. Thanks to this, buyers will also have this information available in their procurement tools when defining the hotel programme. And this information will be passed on to travellers, who will be able to make an informed choice about green hotels in terms of eco-responsibility. The Green Stay index will be clearly displayed in our booking platform or in Concur's, where HRS content is integrated.
How much does the hotel sector contribute to the carbon footprint of business travel?
E. B. - According to various studies, the segment accounts for around 21 % of the carbon footprint of business travel. But the complexity of the market means that hoteliers' initiatives in the field of sustainable development are often limited. more difficult to quantify, Unlike sectors that are concentrated on a small number of players, such as rail or air. You have all the programmes set up by the major hotel groups, but also those of more local chains and the myriad of independent hotels around the world that have carried out remarkable initiatives, but don't necessarily know how to pass on this information.
Doesn't this fragmentation of the hotel market mean that information is often patchy?
E. B. - In addition, there are always different angles of view from one group to another, and different types of certification. Certain factors must also be taken into account when analysing the sustainable performance of an establishment, such as its location. A hotel in the tropics will need air conditioning, while those located in northern countries will consume more heating. In the end, 70 % of the measurements were not comparable. So, to find elements of comparison, we have defined a methodology which is based on several recognised protocols, including those of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, the World Travel & Tourism Council and the International Tourism Partnership. At the same time, we demonstrated our ability to deconstruct complex information with the launch of the Clean & Safe label at the beginning of last summer, for which we questioned hundreds of thousands of hotels about their sanitary protocols.
How do your hygiene/health initiatives, with the Clean&Safe label, and your CSR initiatives, with the Green Stay label, fit together?
E. B. - As with sustainable development, the health measures put in place by hoteliers in response to the pandemic reveal distinct approaches and different partners, sometimes responding to local issues. Our customers told us that they were a little confused by all these labels. So we decided to standardise this subject, which is actually quite complex, and to create a sort of common umbrella, taking into account the specifications of the WHO or the CDC in the United States, but also the structuring elements of the certifications in the hotel industry. Hence our Clean & Safe label, launched in partnership with SGS, one of the world leaders in certification. Along with tens of thousands of independent hotels, all the major chains signed up without exception, even though they had already put in place some excellent measures of their own. So we thought, now that we have this experience, why not duplicate it in terms of CSR. There are few technological players today capable of interacting on a global scale with a fragmented hosting market and processing and decrypting all this volume of information.
Has the pandemic led to other changes for HRS?
E. B. - We've discovered a new business, that of crisis management. For example, for the leading Italian cruise company, who were seeing their 1000-passenger boats return with contaminated passengers, we found solutions to quarantine them. In a very short space of time, we had to call the hotels, even those that were closed, convince them and talk to the authorities. In the same vein, in Germany, we are currently supporting the armed forces requisitioned for vaccination campaigns. In Australia, last year we helped to manage the fires in Queensland. two million overnight stays, either for covid or for rehousing people affected by the fires that ravaged the state last summer. A solution had to be found in less than 15 days, including integrated payment, invoice recovery and consolidation of expenditure.
Is crisis management now an integral part of your offering?
E. B. - We didn't have anything packaged before, but now that our proven ability to manage crisis situationsOur Crisis Management offer is now in place. It includes sourcing hotels, negotiating, settling and collecting invoices, and feeding information back into management tools. Some authorities, institutions and insurers already have partners, notably travel agencies, to manage the rehousing of people affected by a crisis. But we realise that when the issue becomes complex and goes beyond a certain scale, technology is needed. And that's where we can make a real difference.
We realised that with the crisis, more and more customers were booking long stays using our tools.
Have other trends emerged as a result of the pandemic?
E. B. - We realised that with the crisis, more and more customers are booking long stays through our tools. Until now, to book a residence, you had to call the establishment or its channel directly. So the whole exercise in the fourth quarter of 2020 was to structure a solution that allows our customers to stop using offline services and do everything online. Today, everything is done in real time, whether it's bookings for four or five days, two weeks or three months, and everything is integrated into our tools. If you put yourself in the buyer's shoes, they want to have a complete overview, consolidation, but also choice. So, instead of the traditional offline approach, where bookings were usually made with a supplier already identified in advance, our solution highlights the full range of long-stay accommodation solutions, including hotels, residences and flats.
Is teleworking, another major development brought about by covid, something HRS is considering?
E. B. - A number of major clients have asked us to make pilots for what is known as the new work. While not all their employees have the space or the right connection to work from home, the idea is to map the location of all employees - with filters based on teams and professions - to suggest places where they can work. In a way, it means completely rethinking the logic of assignment and presence in the office so that people can work effectively together. It's still a bit early to say whether there's a market for this in France, but I have the impression that there is in a number of countries, such as Germany, India, Italy and Brazil.
