Accor's Sébastien Bazin closes CHIC 2022

We will be providing extensive coverage of key takeaways from CHIC 2022 in our upcoming May-June issue of STAY Magazine. Most importantly, we look at the thematic elements underpinning almost every presentation and panel—people.

If there was one overarching sentiment and idea, it was that as an industry we are in a period of great transformation. And we—human beings—are central to this transformation. The pandemic was a great leveller, not one of us was spared from its effects, but we did not experience it equally. This notion was discussed across panels and speakers, but most poignantly by Accor’s Sébastien Bazin in his closing keynote. Bazin acknowledged the absolute failure of major businesses like hotel groups to understand how intrinsically they are rooted in the well-being of the local communities in which they are located and operating, and of the people who staff their operations.

People matter. There was no shortcut to this realization. There is no excuse for ignoring it today. The adversity of the last 36 months has changed us all. It has changed our business models. It has changed our guests. It has changed our industries and our supply chains. It has expedited the adoption of advanced technologies. It has also catastrophically eroded workforces.

The pandemic also eroded hotels, travel and tourism as businesses and as a collective industry. Hotel Association of Canada (HAC) president and CEO Susie Grynol gave a riveting, inspiring, and fiery account of the sometimes thankless and exhaustive work done by HAC team members to communicate and advocate on behalf of the Canadian hotel sector to a government that was many times embroiled and distracted.

And this brief summary would be remiss if it did not include an emphatic acknowledgment of the experts who provided their insights and advice: the myriad analysts, legal minds, economists, HR and accounting executives, hotel operators, and of course, the attendees who brought such energy and interest to the conference.

We’re all, at the end of the day, just people. We are not crabs in a bucket, but intelligent remarkable beings who are, as Sébastien Bazin stated unabashedly, strongest when we work together for a better, more successful industry, today and tomorrow.

Please send your thoughts, comments and contributions on CHIC 2022 to stacey@staymagazine.ca.