www.ceotodaymagazine.com CEO Today United Kingdom Awards 2023 16 How have the company’s brand acquisitions helped to build on its potential? Much of our growth has been organic – we have never undertaken any funding rounds and remain a private and highly successful company. We did acquire Best Loved Hotels, which is a historic and respected hotel marketing consortia much loved in the agency community. This strategic purchase has allowed us to work with additional hotels around the world and so helped grow HotelREZ’s overall footprint. In addition to Best Loved Hotels, we both own and manage World Rainbow Hotels, which is a LGBTQ consortia brand on CVENT that allows hotels globally to tap into this lucrative market that is important in terms of revenue and inclusion. Is there a particular creed or philosophy that motivates your work? I think you must remain ethical. Fairness, respect and delivering on your promises are key. You need to own the challenges thrown at you and address them head on. This is the corner stone of our Customer & Ethical Charter. We are not a cookie cutter one-size-fits-all business, but a tailored, quality-driven distribution and representation business that retains customers based on service and personal relationships, but at scale. for us to understand their business and for them to appreciate how the technology can drive their success. For example, it is baffling that so many hotels would rather spend more on lobby flowers than rich media because it is not as tangible and visible, but this is all part of understanding the value of quality distribution. I use the word ‘quality’ deliberately, as hotels would be surprised at the state of some of their distributed data. It can be a minefield; any one flag ‘not ticked’ or lack of content can have a huge impact on hotels’ revenues, which is why our hotels are rigorously and continually audited. We are incredibly entrepreneurial and seek out solutions or workarounds for our members to help them achieve their goals, and I think it is this commitment to our customers that has led to our growth. Notably, this extends to the team and culture we have created within HotelREZ. We are lucky to have an incredibly experienced, professional, motivated, forward-thinking and long-standing team. Their loyalty to the company, our members and mutual success, particularly during the pandemic, was simply incredible – the internal ethos is very positive, and thankfully politic-free. All of this allows us to be both flexible and quick to market in our approach to hotels’ specific needs. Our primary focus, now and in the future, remains our customers, which inevitably drives our growth. However, It is probably time to begin raising our profile globally so hotels realise there is a full-service quality alternative to traditional GDS technology providers, as the reality is if we are included in a hotel RFP we generally do win it.
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