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From sakura season in Japan to the longer evenings across Europe, it's clear that spring has arrived here at Monaco.
We're glad that sunnier times are en route.
And one man already reaching for his sunglasses is Sebastian Bazin, CEO of hospitality giant Accor.
As this series of the Chiefs has demonstrated despite the past year, the travel and hospitality industry is resilient one and as many European nations pass their one year anniversaries of national lockdowns, Bazin believes we are weeks, not months, away from the end.
So what's behind the optimism?
And what lessons is he taking with him as a better future unfolds?
Leading Accor since 2013, Bazin's tenure has seen rapid expansion, but today boasts a portfolio of over 5,000 properties worldwide and some 300,000 employees.
Joining me today from his office in Paris, we discuss opportunity in times of crisis, why corpor corporate social responsibility is no gimmick, and the true value of service.
I'm Tyler Brulee here in Zurich and this is the Chiefs on Monocle 24.
Sebastian, there's many topics that I want to cover over the next 27 minutes or so with you, but maybe we need a bit of a progress report.
Where are we?
We're speaking on a day which is one year on from when many countries in the, in this heart of Europe of course started to announce lockdown measures.
So how do things look at the end of Q1 2021 to you?
Much better than exactly the same time last year.
We have 85% of the 5,200 hotels of Accor being open.
Very eclectic in terms of occupancy actually not bad in China, back to 50, 60% occupancy level with 100% Chinese.
Because frontier has been closed, it's bouncing back nicely in the Middle east, certainly in Doha, in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, it is a disaster in South America, it is still very, very difficult in Northern Europe, in uk, Germany, Scandinavia and France certainly for me now the point to be very vocal for the team, for the owners, it's only a matter of weeks to be patient again.
We have blue sky and I've been advocating a fabulous late spring and a fabulous summer because vaccine has been proven to be very efficient.
So we just have to be patient to make sure that the fragilized population will be vaccine and then we're going to have a very robust days in front of us.
So probably another six weeks, two months and then the rebound is going to be stronger than anybody expect.