The wellbeing offer is key for many guests
A report exploring the shifts and innovations taking place in the sector post-pandemic, has been published by Accor, a world-leading hospitality group, in collaboration with Globetrender, the UK’s leading travel trend forecasting agency.
The Hotel Trends for the Viral Age study addresses the behavioural shifts of the last two years, examining the trends which are a natural progression, such as Accreditation Reassurance, which applies to health and safety standards, and Touchless Technology, which accelerated quickly during the contact-light Covid years.
With wellbeing high on the agenda for travellers, savvy hotels are working with dedicated medical professionals to ensure guests are taken care of, giving rise to the trend for Health Concierges.
Meanwhile, a new trend for Niche Curation, in the form of tightly edited hotel collections, reflects the desire for Instagram-style perfectionism that aligns with specific lifestyles.
The final trend, Openings Uplift, reports on the boom in hotel unveilings happening around the world in both alpha locations and remote destinations, providing fresh opportunities for tourism to flourish.
Globetrender’s Founder and CEO, Jenny Southan, gleans insights from across the global tourism landscape, exploring behavioural and cultural changes, data and research, mapping the predicted outcomes for a sector that is well into a post-Covid recovery and quickly heading back to 2019 levels of domestic and international travel.
Duncan O’Rourke, Accor’s CEO Northern Europe, said, “Throughout the pandemic we have never stopped looking ahead, adapting to the impact of Covid and planning our recovery.
'As a result of our rapid response to the pandemic, Accor became the first major hotel group to launch a unique global cleanliness and prevention label, ALLSAFE, representing some of the most stringent cleaning standards and operational procedures in the hospitality world.
'Today, guests want to have a guarantee of health and cleanliness. It is their primary concern and an expected requirement whenever they travel. Accor addressed these concerns and highlighted our highest standards globally via this professional certification.”
He added, “Accor is a dynamic business built on agility and innovation, which was crucial during the pandemic. Like Globetrender, we are constantly looking ahead, monitoring shifts in behaviour and trends to anticipate customer needs.
'The Covid years were a split focus – managing the impact of the crisis today and planning for the recovery tomorrow. Tomorrow is here, recovery is strong and maintaining our people-centric approach to
hospitality remains crucial.'
(source: Accor)