/ Interview with Ms. Susanne Kraus-Winkler, President of HOTREC

A  bit more than two months after the start of her Presidency, HOTREC asked its new President, Ms. Susanne Kraus-Winkler, a few questions about her opinion on the major recent changes affecting the hospitality industry, her vision for the future of HOTREC activities and the biggest challenges currently faced by the industry.

Looking back on 2014, what have been the major agents of change for the industry and how have they impacted the industry?

Well, we are facing the biggest technological change since the industrial revolution, which brought up a lot of new business models and possibilities to our industry, especially when it comes to distribution and new product development. This creates a lot of new opportunities for our industry but also a lot of new challenges as well.

One of the most challenging innovations is the development of the new type of the so called "Sharing Economy” initiated by AirBnB & Co. This is a big business selling non-registered products and creating unfair competition to our industry. Also the OTAs' new ways of creating distribution systems are a big challenge and a lot of new innovations are more or less rolling over our industry in a tremendous speed, which, in addition, prevents us from staying updated.

The problem with all of that is, that the traditional hospitality industry is stuck in the old system of rules and regulations, but the new businesses are not within that frame. So we have a kind of 2 class economy, threatening specially the SMEs, which are still the main backbone of the economy. We have to make sure, that the political parties understand this challenge and that they have to focus on all participants in both the real and this new pseudo economy.

Could you share with us your vision for 2015 and beyond, and which priorities should HOTREC focus on to build a sustainable future for its members?

When it comes to the political and legal issues, new legislation and bureaucracy is burdening our industry much more than ever before and has reached an unacceptable level. It is threatening the industry more intensively than ever before. Especially the small and medium size enterprises are heavily affected.

Besides that, there are, as already mentioned, lots of developments going on out there around us, which effect our industry in totally new ways, which we have to get adapted to and find our way into the future. What I learned, particularly during the last months is, that we have to become more aggressive and demanding in the way we act and we communicate vis-a-vis political bodies. We might even have to change our tone and approach. HOTREC has to learn to fit in this new way of business and political life in the way it acts. We have to act much quicker than before, we have to fight until the last possible moment, we have to explain in detail to political bodies and representatives what exactly is the result of every wrong legislative decision to our industry. I do not understand, why the EU is ruled more or less by the consumer protection institutions or big industries and that the Council is overruling the Parliament with political decisions, as it was the case with the Package Travel Directive right now.

What do you consider the biggest challenges and biggest opportunities for the time to come and which advice would you give to HOTREC Members to address them?

We have to work much closer together, closer than ever before. We have to share all our views and Know How and use all our networks and connections between all members. We have to assemble our expertise within the members and make sure that HOTREC is the perfect platform for all members and countries to create the perfect orchestrated strategy and action taking. This than can work towards the EU institutions as well as towards the individual institutions in the member countries themselves. We did this already, but are not using this intensive enough. We started already, but have to make sure, that we are focusing on EU legislation as well as to all industry developments outside.

We have to make sure, that even outside of EU we have best possible connections and work together with other non-European institutions, when it comes to general industry developments. For me even a newly awakening IH&RA would be important, as it would guarantee a platform for the worldwide tourism economy and specially ensure a perfect communication tool within the whole tourism industry worldwide. At the last UNWTO and IH&RA task force meeting in Berlin we learned that the IH&RA has interesting approaches when it comes to sharing economy and we thought afterwards, that it was inspiring for our strategy to know their standpoints on that topic. So time is changing and we have to change too. It might be time for HOTREC to think about new ways of working and of creating a new organisational structure, as well as to find new connections. In my perception some of the old connections within Brussels are stuck in their system and I am wondering if they are still efficient enough and fit to the needs of today and tomorrow.