60 seconds with (4 months later) …Guillaume Marly, Managing Director – Hotel Café Royal

How was the re-opening of your business and how was it carried out in line with safety procedures put in place to allow social distancing?

Opening on the 04th September and of course ensuring that the government guidelines are being adhered to and more… It is actually not that difficult to plan once you have gone through the step-by-step process in all departments, pre and post arrival/experience. You have to, literally, walk through the experience to pick up all the details and points relevant to the new normal.

How is the general feeling and feedback from your team members and your customers now the lockdown is over?

There is a huge sense of excitement and anticipation from both parties. Equally though, everyone wants to ensure that they feel safe and that every eventuality has been assessed and result’s in a plan of action to tackle it. 

What role has technology played in supporting your re-opening plan?

Quite an important one in terms of communicating with everyone – guests and staff alike. And also, in organising new ways of looking at menus, ordering food and services, CRM systems, etc…

What market trends are you seeing since re-opening?

Big opportunity for the domestic market as international travellers are absent for now; families in particular, so we are learning to cater for this even more than before.

What techniques have you used to build sales and re-engage customers?

Staying engaged has been key during lock-down rather than new techniques. It was really all about building or strengthening relationships with existing clients (and suppliers) rather than targeting new ones. The other thing was to actually react and offer things that are relevant to the UK market which is something we knew well but really had to improve on. How do you attract someone to stay in London when not everything functions as it used to?

What positive lessons do we need to learn from what the industry has been through?

So many on a personal level:  

The ability to lead in a crisis (and a long lasting one!), always staying positive and inspiring people even when the outlook is uncertain and far…

How to re-build a business from scratch and really look at every single line of the business to ensure that it survives first then performs further down the line to generate profits.

Our industry is so resilient and so are our people. We knew this before, but this has driven it to other levels! The power of camaraderie, solidarity has been tremendous…

It has become obvious that We (as an industry) lack serious and meaningful representation at Government level even though we b=generate so much revenue for this country as a whole. A group of us is working on this at the moment to hopefully change this picture for the future…