ASTM Event at the citizenM Hotel in Geneva on 22 September 2020

At long last I could finally meet again with industry colleagues and travel managers. Live and in colour at the brand new cititzenM hotel in Geneva where the ASTM had initiated a fully Covid19 compatible hybrid event to commemorate the opening of this new property.

Sabah Kahoul and Dominic Short from the ASTM had made it their target to bring business travel management people together for a physical meeting after all these weeks of lockdown.

Regardless of the pandemic the citizenM Hotel in Geneva the chain’s second property after Zurich is already strongly focussing on touch free processes. You check-in via the app or at self service kiosks and you programme your own key card yourself. Of course Sales Director Hugo Martin was ready to welcome all the guests and offer support if needed.

Unlike events that we are used to from the past this one did not start with a get together and a welcome drink in a meeting room. On the contrary – go to my room – wow, cozy but cool – set up laptop, iPad and other gadgets. A quick look into the minibar – what a surprise ! A bottle of finest Champagne with an aperitif box and a personal welcome note were waiting for me. Now I am ready to get started with the virtual part of the event. One half of the participants are like me in their own room at the citizenM Geneva hotel, others from Switzerland, UK, Italy and further countries are joining the discussion via zoom.

After the formal welcome by Hugo Martin including a virtuell «cheers» Dominic Short gave a quick update regarding the ASTM. A number of things have happened in the last weeks and months. Beside the fact that many new members have joined (currently 450) an Advisory Board has been established and a brand new website will be available in the next days. On top the ASTM is preparing a string of attractive webinars with new partners. With this Marc Zuber, Global Travel Category Head at Nestlé took over the moderation of the panel discussion.

The following panelists went on to discuss the state of the hotel industry and how the current pandemic will shape the future of the industry.

Peter Grover introduced the topic based on TRIPBAM market data. Currently more than 250’000 hotels in key cities are closed. Unfortunately this is not clearly reflected in the distribution systems. Over and over again travellers on private and business trips are showing up at closed properties. Furthermore staff of companies like Facebook, Google, Salesforce and many others will be working from home for many more months to come. Staff of small and medium entreprises are slowly getting back to business travel. They mostly stay in three star hotels which is making it even harder for the 4 and 5 star properties.

To be able to survive in this current market strict measures in terms of health and hygiene with potential internationally recognised certifications are necessary. Also digital and touch free concepts are essential. Virginie Rouault confirmed that citizen is totally focused on this anyway and therefore has become “pandemic proof by accident”

For international organisations such as the Global Fund and their travel management the current crisis is a totally new challenge. According to Frederic Claus in the past the travellers were given a budget for their duty travel and they booked by themselves as they wanted. In the future he would want to «interfere» with the planning tob e able to guarantee the duty of care and support the staff with good planning of their trips and essentially their choice of hotel. This also means that hotel management must be sorted centrally.

For Nathalie Ansermoz it is clear that the hotel RFP will change over time. In addition to today’s requirements there will a need of contact free hygiene and security standards. The guidelines for the choice of hotels are being updated at Parker right now. On top step by step they want to move from static to dynamic hotel rates. Hotels are currently in a very uncomfortable situation and not really in a position to offer fixed rates for 2021. What Nathalie would like to see would be company specific bundles with add ons such as shuttle, wifi, coffee etc.

Also interesting was the statement by Marion Dargaud, that for the planning of future meetings and event everything was totally changing. Hotels and event agencies must be ready to understand that planned events cannot be paid for up front right now. Against the normal procedures there must be massively more flexibility on all sides. Currently both agencies and venues are ok with accepting short term cancellations. It will be very interesting to see how this develops over the next months and years.

Virginie Rouault confirms that for hotels right now the only way forward is to be totally flexible. The terminology «non-refundable» will not be used at all under the current situation. However it had taken some time within citizenM to understand which hotels in which markets would be implementing which rules.

Peter Grover pointed out that the topics of hygiene and security but more than anything the flexible cancellation process will be part of any future hotel deal. With a current minus of 30 – 40% on the currently contracted rates Peter said that  automatically there will be a switch from fixed to dynamic rates. They are better for moving away from the annual RFP process and a catalyst for change of the relationship between corporates and hoteliers. The adding of further amenities would however make the comparison of the pricing more complicated if not impossible.Certainly, this will be a new challenge for the corporate hotel program management. Here comes a small (very well hidden) announcement regarding travelBrain and our capacity in the field of hotel program management.

Frederic Claus also wants to see more flexibility in the coming contracts and he expects airlines and hotels to be understanding when immigration restrictions change at short notice. In these cases maybe hotels can offer highspeed internet at little or no fee to make sure that people can connect anyway. Currently it is impossible for travellers to know which services can at all be offered by hotels. Are the restaurants going to e opened? Will there be breakfast? Can we make use of gyms and spas?  The communication between hotels and travellers is compromised right now.

Nathalie Ansermoz thinks that these topics need to be addressed via the TMC. These relations are good, and the agents would have the best access to the necessary information.

To round off Marc Zuber pointed out that in future the working relationship with the hotels needs to be a lot more value based.

After the interactive panel-discussion that all participants joined from their citizenM hotel room we all met up in the «living room» of the hotel for a drink and some dinner. The dinner and the following dessert were served in Covid-safe bento boxes that each participant was given individually.

It was great fun to meet up again after a long break and see colleagues from the industry under less formal conditions to talk about the state of the industry. For this I would like to thank the ASTM team and the colleagues from citizenM for organising such a great event.

And of course, I will be happy to be part of any further events of the fastly growing ASTM.

Adrian Matt for travelBrain