Q&A: Dimitris Manikis, President & Managing Director EMEA, Wyndham Hotels
Following the introduction of Wyndham Hotels’ La Quinta brand to the European market and the announcement of the first Wyndham Grand in Portugal, Sleeper caught up the company’s EMEA President Dimitris Manikis to talk trends and response to disruption.
What do you think Wyndham’s biggest achievement throughout the 2010s was?
As Wyndham Worldwide – the parent company of Wyndham Hotels – was founded in 2006, we’ve really only been around for 14 years, but I’m really proud of the amount we’ve done in this short space of time. I think our greatest achievement has actually been achieving what others have taken decades to do; we now have the largest franchise in the world, and are regularly expanding into new territories.
The La Quinta brand was recently introduced to Europe – what adjustments did you make to the offer for its debut in this market?
It’s a beautiful hotel – I was so excited when I visited the site. It’s one of our largest outside North America with 400 rooms, and, of course, you cannot copy and paste something that works in one market to another, so we made some tweaks. In this particular instance that meant looking at what our facilities represented, which is what hospitality is all about – so we worked to incorporate a great spa and Turkish restaurant into the essence and DNA of the La Quinta concept.
Are there any other Wyndham brands you think will thrive this year across EMEA?
It’s like asking which kid you love the most: we’ve recently had a lot of internal discussions about Super 8, which is expanding in Germany. It’s an interesting concept in the economy space, and I think the market will really start to understand this segment going forwards. We’re looking to create hotels for all ages and across the spectrum of business and leisure travel, so I think this segment will become increasingly important.
What is Wyndham’s approach to sustainability going to look like over the next decade?
It’s been one of our key discussion points, and I haven’t been to a meeting or conference where sustainability isn’t brought up for a while – it’s here to stay. Over this period our sustainability efforts will be put to the test. We’ve got a plan – regionally and worldwide – and have partnered with the International Tourism Partnership which, for the hospitality industry, is one of the greatest alliances to discuss energy and sustainability with. We have a duty of care and the duty is to everyone: our guests, our team members, our planet and our stakeholders.
Are there any design trends you expect to see emerge over the next couple of years?
I think that you will see designers going back to basics. We will need to address the basic needs of consumers more and more, and as basic as it gets is sleep. It was world sleep day last Friday, and we teamed up with Russell Forster from Oxford University (a circadian neuroscience specialist) to talk about just that. Providing better quality sleep and rest is going to be a key element of hotels because it’s the essence – so we’ve put together 10 tips for better sleep. From a design perspective, we’re listening to our guests and recently introduced our Room8 concept at Super 8 hotels in North America, where we brought a lot of interesting people together to tell us how future designs could look, and address the current problems – and most of these guys were actually using the brand to travel themselves, so it was very insightful.
Hotels and travel are likely to be big casualties of the coronavirus situation. How do you think the industry will cope?
We are part of a very resilient industry, and people will not stop travelling after this is over. I consider this a lesson for all of us, and I don’t see the end of humanity just yet, but we’re monitoring the situation and following what governments and World Health Organisation are saying very closely. Needless to say, the safety of our team members, partners and guests is our top priority.
