After almost coming to a standstill during the Covid-19 pandemic, international travel is back. Airports are bustling, hotel bookings are up and the prices of flights are soaring as the holiday season gets under way." During the pandemic, most people experienced something they had never experienced. Now they are valuing the moments they missed, significantly more than before," says Mr Henri Giscard d'Estaing, president of the French resort chain Club Med. "Holiday moments, gatherings with friends and family - in many cases, three generations together."

Mr Giscard d'Estaing, 65, who is the son of the late former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, has been with Club Med since 1997 and at its helm since 2005. He has transformed the iconic 72-year-old chain - upgrading its resorts to fend off competition from imitators, developing new properties in exotic destinations worldwide, catering more to families, and accelerating the company's digital transformation as well as its expansion in China, where it has10 resorts. He has personally visited all the company's properties, and also makes it a point to inspect sites before they are built. "Even if it's in the middle of the jungle, I go there," he says. During his tenure, Club Med has weathered several crises which have impacted tourism, including the 2001terrorist attacks in the United States, the global financial crisis of 2008 and, most recently, theCovid-19 pandemic. The effects of the pandemic are now winding down. According to the latest data from the UN's World Tourism Organisation, global international tourist arrivals rose by 130 per cent in January this year compared to a year earlier. In just that single month, there were about 18 million more visitors worldwide - equivalent to the entire increase during all of 2021.But international arrivals in January still remained 67 per cent below pre-pandemic levels in2019. In Asia, where many destinations remained closed to non-essential travel, they were 93 percent below 2019, although they have likely picked up sharply in recent months as more travel destinations have opened up in time for the holiday season.

Like the rest of the hospitality industry, Club Med, which owns 71 resorts around the world, was massively impacted during the pandemic. "In April 2020, all our resorts were closed for the first time in our history because the pandemic was global as well as local," says Mr Giscard d'Estaing. "The first resorts to close were in China, which were also the first to reopen. Then we reopened in America and Europe. And now, nearly all our resorts have reopened. Although we were not able to do normal business for a year-and-a-half, since the second half of last year, our profit s have returned to pre-pandemic levels. "During the closure of its resorts, Club Med had the support of its bankers, with guarantees from the French government as well as its shareholders. But since 2021, it has come back into its own, benefiting from a sharp rebound in tourism. "The rebound will continue," says Mr Giscard d'Estaing, who was in Singapore last month to announce the launch of Club Med's 72nd resort, in Hokkaido, Japan. "It won't maintain the same pace, because there has been some catch-up, but the curve will be upward. "One of the effects of the pandemic for Club Med was a change in its clientele mix. After it began reopening its resorts, it was forced to adapt its offerings to cater more to local guests. For example, its resort in Cherating, Malaysia, has seen its local clientele doubled in the past 12months."Of course, this was mainly because Malaysians couldn't go out of the country and foreigners couldn't come in. We had no choice," explains Mr Giscard d'Estaing.

The proportion of local guests also rose sharply in Japan and Brazil for the same reasons. Going "glocal" - catering to both global and local customers - is a legacy of the pandemic that Club Med plans to continue. Like many other holiday resorts, Club Med has also been affected by changes in work habits that became entrenched during the pandemic. "We have seen that in many areas, people can work remotely, and quite efficiently," says Mr Giscard d'Estaing. "While I personally believe that it is also important to meet physically, it's clear that the business travel of yesterday will not be there tomorrow. Travelling somewhere for just one meeting probably will not happen. Leisure travel will be the fastest-growing segment of the travel business, and that is already the case."

One of Club Med's selling points is that it caters to families, offering a range of sporting and other leisure activities as varied as golf, tennis, skiing and archery, "mini-clubs" for children and even creches for babies, as well as huge buffet meals, which it pioneered decades ago - and everything comes at a single price, pre-paid. By adding facilities for business meetings and events, Club Med has made it possible for guests to enjoy working holidays, with their families in tow. Some of its guests already work remotely from its resorts. "We call it 'workation'," says Mr Giscard d'Estaing. "The combination of work and vacation.

"You can see people sitting in Bermuda shorts working on their computers, while the kids are enjoying the mini-club and the spouse is taking a yoga class. Even before the pandemic, and especially in Asia, the border between work and leisure was getting more blurred. With the trend of remote work having picked up, workations will become more common."

But together with the rest of the travel industry, Club Med faces challenges post-pandemic. One is the persistence of Covid-19-related uncertainties - some destinations continue to maintain restrictions and the number of available flights still falls short of pre-pandemic levels. But the main challenge globally is talent acquisition and retention. Mr Giscard d'Estaing says: "During the pandemic most of the people working in the hospitality sector lost their jobs and switched to other fields. We tried everything to keep in touch with our people, including by continuing to pay them - either with help from governments or on our own - because we thought it would be essential to have them back after the crisis passed. We were mostly able to retain them, but we also need new people, and there is now a shortage of talent in the sector." Club Med employs around 15,000 people on average, rising to 22,000 during peak seasons. 

Club Med's largest shareholder, China's Fosun Tourism Group, which is listed in Hong Kong, has added much value to the company, says Mr Giscard d'Estaing. "We have been working with Fosun since 2010, so we know each other well and have gone through many crises together. "Fosun has supported Club Med's move to upgrade its resorts - 95 per cent of which are now five-star - as well as its expansion in China, which Club Med expects will be its biggest market. It has also helped accelerate the company's digital transformation, especially to mobile digital, where China is a global leader. Mr Giscard d'Estaing is also Fosun Tourism Group's vice-chairman and deputy CEO. His vision for Club Med is to be faithful to that of its maverick founder Gerard Blitz, who proclaimed in 1950, when Europe was still recovering from the ravages of World War II: "The goal in life is to be happy, the time to be happy is now and the place to be happy is here!"

But Mr Giscard d'Estaing has expanded on it to include not only guests and staff, but also local communities. Besides hiring locals, Club Med has created various outreach programmes. For example, it allows local schools to use its sporting facilities at certain times of year. It has also created sports schools, including a tennis academy in a remote area of Senegal.

Source: The Straight Times