Keen On Meetings Biz, Accor’s Kovarsky Is Building Better Tools

Cyril Kovarsky joined Accor on April 1 as senior vice president of global sales after serving as senior vice president of corporate sales for business services at Orange, a French multinational telecommunications corporation. He spoke with BTN Group editorial director David Meyer about his approach, including the fact that technology is driving two Accor priorities: facilitating communication between sales and property-level employees and a digital meeting-planning tool.

How has your telecom experience served you so far in this role?

We have a lot of similar things between telecommunication and hospitality. Since I was a director for seven years of the operation of Orange for the retail market, I was the head of the Orange shops. A hotel is quite like a shop: It’s about the place, the product and the customer. And corporate sales is the same: Take care of your internal people. Take care of the travel manager. You have to take care of the IT guys and the personal assistants. If you don't know them, it could be an issue.

The Accor sales team is using Salesforce, and you're deploying a hotel portal, Accor New Application for Integrated Sales, so Accor service people can also access the information. Are you on track?

We call it ANAIS within Accor. It's part of a €225 million digital program launched by Accor chairman and CEO Sebastien Bazin at the end of 2014, and it's rolled out quite quickly. By the end of the year, all the hotels will have these ANAIS tools. ANAIS helps the sales team better manage all their corporate relationships on our strategic and key accounts. The sales guy has a lot of work [with the corporate client], I know, but the GM is in a relationship with the guest and listens to the guest. I need to have that information. We can put everything in ANAIS, and the guys in charge of the global account can see everything that happened. It will be more efficient for our guest or client.

You're in charge of a new meetings, incentives and corporate events initiative for Accor. Why did you take this on and how are the tools working for that?

Within the [larger digital initiative], I am now the head of a MICE program [with the goal] to digitize our meeting-planning tools. I come from a [different] company and industry, and I saw it was difficult for my personal assistant to order a small meeting. It's not only the job of the manager of procurement to buy meetings, incentives and corporate events. The PAs of the sales manager buy MICE every day. If we can facilitate the life of these people, who are also our [corporate] clients, it's a huge market. It's quite tricky, though, because it's always a balance between procurement and going directly to the final clients who will order.

When then will the tool be available to them?

I hope at the beginning of 2016. Depends on how fast we can roll out the technology solution. We need to finish discussing it with our partners, but I want a tool in the hands of meeting planners that can make life easier for them. We are also looking at ways to announce our presence in the United States in the MICE market. These are my two priorities.

There’s good demand in the MICE market today. It has increased from the past couple of years, yes?

Yes, for sure. There's a big demand. I understand that the decision can take two or three years before the event. We have to work now for the big MICE business in 2018. It's long-term. [Smaller] corporate meetings can be short-term, but we need the tool.

How many properties do you have in the United States today?

We have eight hotels total in the U.S. It's 2,534 rooms. Seven are Sofitel.

How large is the corporate sales team, and how many are focused on the United States?

We have 750 people on our global sales team, with 50 focused on the U.S.

Wow. That's a big commitment.

Yes. We are small in number of hotels in the U.S. today, but the U.S. is one of our feeder markets, and this is a huge market for us. The U.S. is the only market where the sales VP and the distribution VP report directly to me.

You're putting a lot of focus on the MICE space. Clearly, it's a big piece of business, but why there, as opposed to the transient business accounts?

When you are new, if you have an idea, you push it to see if it is a good idea. Can I make my mark and do this idea? It's my focus. It's very important for Accor as one of the pillars of its digital program, along with the midmarket and B2B. I don't have to focus on only one.