IH & RA Conference

The hospitality industry needs to be proactive and well-prepared in advance of any crisis to mitigate the damage done to business and customers.

That was the view of Deborah Luhrman, crisis communications specialist and special adviser to the World Tourism Organisation on communications, and of Alan Orlob, vice-president of corporate security and loss prevention at Marriott International.

Luhrman said that the industry was suffering from an "overdose of crises" and needed to put guidelines in place to help manage the next one.

Orlob, speaking about how Marriott had dealt with the attack earlier this year on its JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta, said that having a tried-and-tested crisis management programme in place had saved lives as well as limiting the damage done to the hotel.

He said: "We feel that, by having these plans in place, we were able to mitigate what could have been a catastrophe."

On that occasion, the Jakarta hotel's security guards prevented a suicide car-bomber from driving right up to the hotel lobby, in range of the hundreds of people dining in the hotel's adjacent restaurant. Of the 12 people who died in the bombing, only one was a hotel guest.

Marriott keeps a close eye on travel advisories and, if it feels that an attack could occur on a hotel, it places it on Code Red status, introducing a raft of 40 preventive procedures, including vehicle and luggage inspections and a ban on parking close to the hotel.

While such measures are costly, Orlob claimed that the return on investment was "huge".

Travel warnings pose challenge

The poor quality of government travel advisory warnings represents one of the biggest challenges to the hospitality industry, according to the secretary general of the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), Francesco Frangialli.

Frangialli said that too often the advisories issued by governments about foreign travel were not geographically specific, were irregularly updated, and were lifted too slowly once the threat had gone. He also criticised advisories for their apparent lack of common criteria.

While the WTO recognises that governments have the right to inform people of security risks, Frangialli said that the organisation was campaigning to get these concerns resolved.

However, he was largely upbeat about the long-term prospects for the hospitality industry.

"Never in the industry's history has hospitality experienced a deep, lasting recession - it has always bounced back," he said. "The tourism industry has always come out of turbulent times in much better shape than it went into them. We can see that happening again."

Méridien saga makes investors edgy

The continuing saga of debt-laden hotel chain Le M‚ridien has made potential lenders and operators more cautious about entering the hotel industry, according to experts at the IH&RA conference.

Tim Hansing, senior vice-president of acquisitions and development at the Kingdom Hotel Investment Group, said that the problems at Le M‚ridien had damaged the financial industry's view of the hospitality sector.

"I think institutions will look and say that banks have been burned," said Hansing. "It will cause some friction for those lenders who would not traditionally invest in the hotel industry."

Peter Anscomb, corporate director of leisure and head of hotel finance corporate banking at the Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns 11 of Le M‚ridien's UK properties, said that there was no doubt that the situation at the hotel chain had made people more wary, though he did not think that it would put investors off.

However, Rod Taylor, hotels team leader at Barclays Bank, said that there would always be high-profile problems and it was unfair to point the finger at Le M‚ridien.

He said: "If we think that the world is black and white, and Le M‚ridien has tainted the industry, then we need to ask: what of Queens Moat Houses? Why did that not taint the industry?"

Older workers can ease staffing crisis

The hospitality industry should take advantage of the world's ageing population to address its staffing issues, delegates at this year's IH&RA conference were told.

Philippe Rossiter, chief executive of the HCIMA, said that pressures on pension provision, and increased life expectancy through improved healthcare, meant that workers will want to work for longer to earn additional income and remain active.

Rossiter added that employing older workers would be cheaper, as they would have more life skills than school or college leavers.

Peter Schatzer, regional co-ordinator for the Mediterranean at the International Organisation for Migration, said that by 2050 almost one-third of the population in Europe would be aged 65 or over. And the ratio of people of working age to those too old or too young to work was set to decline dramatically, leading to greater labour problems for the sector.

Schatzer said that for Europe to maintain the size of the working-age population it had in 2000, it would need more than four billion migrants a year to enter the region. Current migration levels are about 250,000 people a year.

The issue of not exploiting migrant workers was also raised. A panel of experts agreed that any scheme to use migrants to fill labour shortages in the industry should be affiliated to a training scheme. This would enable the workers to either take skills back to their own countries or to contribute positively to the development of the country into which they had migrated.

Go green for funding

Proposing the construction of an environmentally friendly hotel could make it easier for developers to secure funding, according to a leading industry banker.

Peter Anscomb, corporate director of leisure and head of hotel finance corporate banking at the Royal Bank of Scotland, said that, as the number of eco-lodge hotels and resorts coming on line increased, banks were likely to look more favourably on "green" hotels.

He added that financially sound and environmentally friendly hotel proposals would often find it easier to get funding. "It would be a benefit in terms of the way it is sold to the banks," Anscomb said.

Sustainable or environmental tourism is a growing trend in the sector and was identified by Pedro Ortun, director of the Enterprise directorate-general at the European Commission, as one of the major demand issues facing the industry.

Ortun said that hotels would have to react by promoting sustainable attitudes to cope with tourists' increasing concerns about environmental issues, and the EU would have to look at creating more positive policies around sustainable tourism.

Egypt shrugs off terror years to double hotel roomstocks

Hotel roomstock in Egypt is scheduled to double over the next few years, despite a turbulent past few years for the Middle Eastern country.

Throughout the late 1990s and the early years of this century, Egypt had to cope with terrorist attacks, the global economic slowdown, the impact of 11 September and, most recently, the war in Iraq.

But the country has not slowed down on the development of its hotel offerings. Since 1998, the number of hotel rooms has increased from 81,235 to a current figure of 125,791. A further 150,000 rooms are under construction.

However, Egypt's minister of tourism, Dr Mamdouh El Beltagui, has put a stop to development in the short term and is not granting any more permissions for fear that supply will quickly outstrip demand.

in brief

Big brand domination "not a real threat"

The idea that the hotel industry is about to be dominated by a small number of large brands is misleading, according to Rod Taylor, the hotels team leader at Barclays Bank.

Taylor said that while hotels in countries with a mix of corporate and leisure business, such as the UK and the USA, would eventually be operated or owned by less than a handful of well-known names, other countries would remain almost brand-free.

Countries such as Spain have very few branded hotels, argued Taylor, and are dominated by small, family-run groups - a trend that he believes is unlikely to die out. He added that, because countries such as this rely almost entirely on leisure tourism, the need for branded hotels is "minimal".

Tourism sector to get own internet domain

The tourism and travel industry is to get its own internet domain. The .travel domain will be industry-restricted and will only feature travel- and tourism-related content. The idea is that, by using the .travel tag instead of ones such as .com or .co.uk, associations and companies in the industry will be able to clearly indicate their line of business.

For more information on the new domain, visit www.ttpc.org

Istanbul to host IH&RA conference in 2004

In a bid to show that everything is back to normal in the city, next year's IH&RA conference will be held in Istanbul, the Turkish city recently hit by a spate of bombings.