What is your immediate priority at the moment?
Our priorities at PIF have not changed with COVID-19. We are focused on the long term and continue working towards developing Saudi Arabia into a world class tourism destination with a unique landscape of hospitality offerings.
What investment opportunities do you foresee emerging?
The drastic decline in revenue across the global tourism industry has been extremely disruptive. Many previously healthy businesses have encountered serious liquidity challenges and the impact on hospitality employees across the world has been immense. Much depends now on the speed of recovery. In any event, consolidation will likely continue.
Has this crisis shone a light on the risk associated with hotel investment? Will there be a reluctance to invest in a business that can be completely shut down in two weeks through no fault of its own?
The hotel industry is unfortunately not the only sector which has faced a complete shutdown. Although a global pandemic was seen as a possible, albeit unlikely scenario, no one could really predict the dramatic implications for the global economy and the steep decline that resulted in such a short space of time. What this challenge has shown us as an industry is that we need to be more diligent in planning for extreme scenarios, testing the robustness of our systems in light of strong revenue volatility and regularly visiting our contingency plans.
How do you envisage this will change travel behaviour?
In my view this will depend on the length of the shut-downs across the world. I am convinced that tourism will recover to its previous levels gradually. However we can expect the prolonged period that people spent at and worked from home to have an effect on travel behaviour. Will remote working and video conferencing take-off? Will new safety measures be permanently introduced at airports? All this is possible. COVID-19 has clearly shown that we are all connected. We as people across the world, we as sectors across industries, we as humanity with nature. We have also seen how important certain roles and professions are in society. This has been a humbling experience for many of us. I believe that in the future we will all travel with a new sense of humility and gratitude.
What is your hope for the hospitality industry in a post COVID-19 world?
I hope that the hospitality industry recovers quickly and continues to be one the major employers and a key facilitator in connecting people from across the world, whether in leisure or in business. I also hope that notwithstanding the expected acceleration in consolidation, we retain a high level of variety and diversity in the sector which makes our industry beautiful.
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Olivier will be taking part in the ‘Investors Panel: Resetting the Risk vs Opportunity Balance’ during In Sync.
In Sync is a virtual event from Questex Hospitality Group that commits to uniting senior leadership within the global hospitality sector. Taking place on the 18th and 19th May, the event will look at the global hospitality investment landscape and how to plan for its future. To register for this complimentary event, visit www.HospitalityInsights.com, click Attend an Event from the drop down menu and select In Sync.
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