Vlad: Hello, everyone. In today's episode we have a new guest - Fabrice. We're going to talk about where the market is heading, the noise around technology, hotels, and customer experience. Thank you so much for joining us. How are you?
Fabrice: Thanks for having me, Vlad. I'm good. Thank you very much.
Vlad: For those with no context about you and the company you're involved with - quick intro. Who are you, what are you doing, and why should people give you money?
Fabrice: I've been in the hotel industry for 20 years. I did hotel school in Switzerland, then 10 years in Paris, and now 10 years in Berlin. I went through all the standard steps in a hotel - a lot of front office - then shifted into revenue management. I started assisting revenue managers and moved into consulting: revenue management and e-commerce. I've been doing that for about 13 years. Since January 2025, I've been with IFA. IFA is a portfolio of seven hotels: four in Germany - three on the Baltic coast, one in Saxony - and three in Austria. IFA is a brand that is part of the Lopesan portfolio.
Vlad: Congrats on the new step. How do you see the market now compared to last year? Everyone seems to be pushing through social media to avoid commissions from OTAs. Some hotels do ads, others accept third-party commissions. What do you think a hotel group like yours can actually grow from?
Fabrice: The hotel industry has never been as dynamic as it is right now. Coming out of COVID - where the company I was formerly with saw business break down by 96% - it was like starting from scratch. There are challenges on so many levels. Cost is the first one. Revenue managers used to only ask how much to put on top. We weren't necessarily looking at what was going out at the bottom. Now you have to do total revenue management - you have to see the full picture. That also touches on which channel to sell through and whether to reduce commissions. Strategy-wise, there is no secret sauce. The most important thing is to know your business and your customers. Depending on that: how do you reach your customers, over which channels, and how sustainable is that pool of customers?
When I started around the end of the 2000s, France was the first market to say OTAs are stealing our business. France also scrapped the rate parity rule in OTA contracts. There has been pressure for 16 or 17 years to build more direct business. The calculation is simple - fewer commissions means more profitability. But you have to keep in mind that OTAs are not the devil. They are definitely not our enemy. Those channels and partners are all opportunities. It is up to us to steer them. When I have 447 rooms in Rügen and 420 in Fehmarn to fill, I cannot discriminate. It is nice to say everyone should book direct, but that is wishful thinking. The OTA partners invest a lot in marketing. Booking.com was already investing around two billion a year in marketing almost a decade ago. The commission is your marketing fee. To be seen, you have to be out there. The right channel mix is critical.
Vlad: You are right. Everyone treats OTAs like the devil, but it is just another hand helping you. I don't believe there is a hotel that survives purely on direct bookings - it is not sustainable unless you are a giant brand. After that it comes down to guest experience. If guests love it, they recommend it - that is how you reduce third-party dependency over time. It is not about avoiding OTAs completely; it is about gradually shifting some of that spend to direct channels.
Fabrice: Absolutely. And you do not shift it overnight. If you have a property with strong USPs and a clear identity - take Hotel Adlon in Berlin, it is known worldwide - they have a completely different approach. But if you do not have those strong USPs, you have to play the game. Work on your product and service delivery. If you are good when the customer is at your property, that is what people talk about. But it is a medium-to-long-term effect, and you have to be consistent. The issue is there is so much pressure on costs. Payroll is always the first thing you look at when pressure builds. Hotels need the workforce there, but often the money for payroll is not there either. It makes good service delivery very difficult.
Vlad: I was surprised seeing hotels in the Constanta and Mamaia area of Romania - popular in summer but empty the rest of the year. Over a thousand hotels, and I wonder how they make money. Maybe it is a family business with no risk. But with maintenance and employees, the costs are huge.
Fabrice: Best guess for them - they have no risk that way.
Vlad: Exactly. Guest experience matters so much now. One influencer story about a beautiful, well-priced place can create a huge visibility boost. But there is so much competition - people do not know what to choose. What do most hotel groups get wrong, or underestimate, about resort revenue management?
Fabrice: I have mostly worked in high-pressure cities - Paris, Berlin. I have had resort properties too. It is a completely different setup. In a city, you want high pressure and visibility, and it goes through rates because guests compare. In a resort, you want to extend the length of stay. Somebody coming to a resort ideally stays longer than a city guest who might average two to three nights. The offer has to reflect that. This is where total revenue comes in: I would rather have slightly lower room revenue but know that guests staying seven nights will spend in my restaurants and other outlets. That generates money across the whole property. In a resort, you need the right mix: groups, FIT, OTAs, direct channels for short stays.
The bigger challenge right now is that booking lead times are getting shorter and shorter. Before, you could count on summer bookings six months out. Now guests are waiting - driven by global conflicts, energy prices, financial uncertainty. I had fantastic on-the-books numbers at the start of the year. I was very optimistic about summer. Then I watched the demand erode month by month into spring. The last-minute high-rate pickup I needed to hit targets was arriving later and at lower rates. The resort business is less plannable than it used to be.
Vlad: How do you see the resort market and hospitality overall over the next three to five years? Do you think people will hold onto their money because of uncertainty?
Fabrice: One hundred percent, yes. We discuss it with our investors regularly. We looked at statistics from the German Federal Statistical Office yesterday - they surveyed people on what they are cutting back on because of economic uncertainty. Travel was third, with around 37% saying it is the first thing they would skip. They will not cancel their main summer holiday - especially Germans, that is sacred - but they will skip the two weekends they might have taken in May or June. That is what we are missing: the short breaks. The volatility is extreme. Last week we had good weather in Germany and bookings suddenly picked up - for one week, then settled again. You have to put your eggs in as many baskets as possible. If you depend on one segment and that segment disappears, what do you do?
Vlad: I had a conversation with a revenue manager in Doha who said that in luxury, the experience is everything - a great experience leads to referrals and stories. How do you balance how a room looks versus how a guest actually feels in the property?
Fabrice: It all comes down to price-value perception - what the guest paid and what value they received. The main lever is the people. Good front office staff can turn a bad situation around. I have five years of front office behind me. When the AC is broken and nothing works, if you listen and react, the guest will still leave happy and give you a good rating. Then there are the small details. How many times do you check into a hotel and there is no socket next to the bed to charge your phone - just one socket on the other side of the room? That sounds trivial, but it sticks. Think like a guest: do the guest journey through your own property. See it through their eyes. The biggest enemy of that thinking is owners with a fixed perception of what their room is worth. I have seen it with boutique four-star hotels in Paris - I told them our price was not competitive. We had ten competitors nearby with refurbished hotels offering equivalent service for 50 euros less. The owner said their room was worth 200 euros - a number that existed only in their head. I understand the logic: they invested millions in renovations, put in 4,000-euro mattresses. But that is not the guest's problem. The guest compares. There is a saying in revenue management: ADR you cannot take to the bank. Selling three rooms at 900 euros versus 100 rooms at 300 euros - what is the better result? Owners sometimes forget that.
Vlad: If you had a magic wand, what would you change or improve in the hospitality market?
Fabrice: There are so many dimensions. The investment market for hotels is very complicated - no one is buying, no one is selling, there is a lot of pressure on investors to flip properties fast. You see consolidations and hotel groups that have existed for decades being sold or going bankrupt. That investment pressure transfers directly into the hotels. In Germany during COVID, we lost 300,000 professionals from the hotel industry. We still have not recovered. Before, if you were not happy with a chef, you had a new one the next day. That is no longer the case. If you have good people, hold onto them. So my wish: make things a bit more enjoyable for everyone. The times are what they are - politically and on many levels there is a lot of change, not always for the better. I want us all to take a breath and see the positive side of hospitality again. Have fun with it, instead of running under such extreme pressure.
Vlad: Where can people find more about you and IFA Hotels?
Fabrice: For IFA Hotels, just search IFA online and you will find all the properties - on the Baltic coast, in Saxony, and in Austria. For me personally, you will find me on LinkedIn. Reach out any time - I am happy to keep the conversation going.
Vlad: Fabrice, thank you so much for everything you shared today. Links to Fabrice's LinkedIn and IFA Hotels are in the description. Thank you so much, Fabrice.
Fabrice: Thank you, Vlad. It was fantastic.
