Accor’s Rick Harvey Lam Looks to the Future

From thalasso to candle rituals to nutritious but delicious food, the Sofitel Singapore Sentosa Resort & Spa is focused on the details.

Accor’s newest rebranded property, opened this month, overlooks the South China Sea, with easy access to Tanjong Beach. It features 211 rooms and suites, plus four villas, four F&B options, more than 27 acres of tropical woodlands, and the world’s largest So Spa.

Speaking with TMR in New York last week, Rick Harvey Lam, Accor’s senior vice president for global marketing, luxury & upscale brands, noted that like every Accor property, the hotel sports “French DNA” in its gastronomy, its design, its culture, and its focus on wellbeing. Then he chatted about other properties in the works, the controversial Accor marketplace, and the newest hot customer base, Millennials (though he declined to comment on the chain’s interest in acquiring Fairmont Hotels parent FRHI, or Marriott’s Starwood acquisition).

Lam noted that the Sofitel Singapore Sentosa is looking into becoming the first in Singapore to offer thalassotherapy—therapeutic treatments based on the use of seawater and mineral-rich mud that Accor is promoting in resorts around the world. The So SPA’s Mud Pool contains volcanic mud from New Zealand believed to keep the skin “dewy and lustrous.”

“The owner of the hotel asked us to bring thalasso in; the trend in Southeast Asia is to look great without the use of botox,” Lam said. But Accor is “promoting thalasso at resorts around the world.”

Other properties in the works

Meanwhile, at the most exclusive end of the Sofitel brand, two more Sofitel Legend properties are currently in the pipeline, and will eventually join the five existing properties, in Cartagena, Amsterdam, Egypt, Hanoi, and China.

“Legends are legendary destinations where legendary people go,” Lam said. “These are all hand-picked properties, and we are opening slowly to make sure each is the right property with the right quality. We absolutely want to get it right.”

In the MGallery line of more intimate boutique properties, two recent openings were in Toulouse, France, in September, and two in London. Two more are in the works, in Laos and Thailand.

Moving downscale, Accor’s M Gallery brand properties are targeting the millennial market by combining on a cooler vibe with a hotter social scene.

“We meet the needs of millennials by being quirky, playful, fashionable,” Lam said. Even the grooming here is loose—staff can sport tattoos and shaved heads, and for staffing, “we look for millennial people who can give guests tips on millennial stuff to do.”

Millennials are traveling “further and earlier in their careers” than previous generations, and their hyper-connected world sees no difference between work life and leisure. They demand lots of connectivity—with friends at home, through networking in the hotel, and with what’s happening in the city outside the hotel’s walls, Lam said.

In the North American market, meanwhile, Accor opened its first Pullman property this month in Miami, “competing with the Grand Hyatt for the upscale business,” Lam said.

Other Accor news

Also new from Accor is the somewhat controversial “marketplace,” aimed at giving independent hotels a distribution network other than the online travel agencies (OTAs). Announced in June, the marketplace lists independent hotels on the Accor website in return for a commission lower than what the OTAs charge.

Lam said the marketplace is now in “a select group of markets but looking to expand.” Accor in October said it expects to have 10,000 properties on the platform within three years.

“The growth rate of online travel agencies has outpaced the direct business, and we are looking country-by-country at what is the right distribution strategy for us,” Lam noted. “In the North American market the travel agency channel is very important to us, and luxury travel agents are still the key for us in the U.S. and Canada.”

Not surprisingly, he declined to comment on reports that Accor is in talks to acquire FRHI, which operates luxury brands such as Fairmont, Raffles, and Swisshotel, or on Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood.

Photo courtesy: Accor Hotels