Sean Tribull, our Hospitality & Leisure Lead, has launched Suite Talk, a new series for the Venari Podcast covering the latest insights on hospitality leadership. His first guest is Orient Express Group CEO and Chief Strategy Officer at Accor, Gilda Perez-Alvarado. You can watch the interview below, as well as read the transcript of their conversation below!
Hi everyone, and welcome to the Suite Talk Podcast, where we speak with executive leaders in the hospitality industry. In this video series, we are diving deep into leadership and talent with top industry voices.
For our first episode, we're thrilled to have Gilda Perez-Alvarado with us. Gilda is the CEO of Orient Express Group, Chief Strategy Officer at Accor, and the former CEO of JLL’s Hotel & Hospitality division. We will explore her insights on leadership, strategy, and the evolving talent landscape of hospitality.
Gilda, thank you for joining us today.
Thanks for having me, Sean.
I was very keen to have you on the show. So, I really appreciate you joining us today.
To get into it straight away: I think ‘leadership’ itself is a buzzword we all very much like to use. All of us, probably in some form or way, think we're a good leader. So, to kick us off, I would love to get what your approach to leadership is, and particularly what you think are the key attributes of being a good leader, particularly in hospitality.
Thanks very much for the question. It’s quite loaded. We could definitely talk about this for days on end!
Listen, I think everybody's leadership style is quite unique to themselves. Mine, personally, I like to be very honest. I like to be very straightforward. And I am one who likes to be in the trenches. You know, I've never worked at a restaurant, but I do think of being with my team and my people as just being in the kitchen of a very successful restaurant and having it be chaos, but organised chaos in a way that is quite harmonious, if you will.
I know it's a little bit of an oxymoron, but my entire life I've been very lucky in that I've had many different managers and have been exposed to many different styles of leadership. I don't think I’ve emulated anybody in particular. I do think that it's very important to be authentic, to be yourself.
Maybe one of the aspects that has been very interesting so far is that some people may associate being humble and being very approachable and being in the trenches as maybe being a bit too familiar. But to my mind this is how you build trust and how you build understanding. For me, those principles are absolutely critical.
Oh, absolutely. Authenticity, trust, and being out there, right? Just because you're a leader, you're not necessarily sitting in an ivory tower and delegating from there. I think that's an incredibly important point.
That's right. It's good for people to follow you with conviction, as opposed to following you because you've told them to do that, right? That’s more of a long-term way.
The other thing that I think is really important is that all of us are very different. What drives you may not be what drives a different colleague or somebody else. And the trickiest part of leadership is really managing the team and making sure that you get people from different backgrounds and mindsets to work in a very collaborative fashion. For you to be able to do that, you need to make sure that you have shared goals, that you're working with people who are very open-minded, nimble, and flexible as well. That’s very important.
It has been great to work with all different types of people during my career: to be exposed to many different managers, and to be able to develop my own style of leadership.
Absolutely. And I think diversity itself and being open to the diversity within teams is something we'll come back to in a bit.
But first, obviously you're currently CEO for Orient Express, and Chief Strategy Officer for the Accor Group, with a long previous stop at JLL as Group CEO for their Hospitality division. So being a CEO is not necessarily new to you, but I think it's going to be interesting for a lot of our listeners who are on that trajectory to hear what the biggest lessons you learned were, and also the challenges you faced during your journey towards becoming a CEO. How has that influenced your leadership style?
It's been a really nice journey, I would say. I've been very lucky. You know, during the 19 years that I was at JLL, I started as an analyst. And, you know, I finished my time there as Global CEO, as you mentioned. So, it was great to climb up the ladder, not really skipping a step, and have a very good understanding of everyone's position. Then, you know, when you're having a conversation, you definitely have more context. You appreciate what your team members are going through across all levels. That was vital for me.
I have to say that the change I made about a year ago – to come to Accor from JLL – was something that I very much looked forward to. I was very excited when I joined Accor to try something different. It requires putting yourself out there. It was quite a vulnerable thing to do. There's a great friend of mine, who said to me, ‘You know, Gilda, when you make a change, you're like a mountain climber.’ With your hands, you know, you grab onto the rock, but you're also holding onto the rock or gripping to the rock with your feet. And it's important to at least have one of those secured. For me, nothing was secured. I changed countries, I changed languages. It was a change of career. Same industry, but, you know, a 180 from what I was doing before. I didn't bring any of my team members with me. So, everything was absolutely, absolutely new.
I knew it wasn't going to be easy. But if you approach everything as a learning experience, you definitely get through it. You learn; I am one who learns by doing. So, it's been, I would say, a very nice journey. Definitely a very vulnerable one, because you go from dominating what you do or, you know, knowing very well what you're doing, to a point where everything was new. You’ve got to know how to recover from some of the mistakes that you'll make, intentionally or unintentionally. Well, I guess all mistakes are unintentional, but you know, you're not aware that you're making a mistake. Still, the journey has been great. And I can tell you that what I've learned over the past year probably would have taken me five, ten years under normal circumstances.
Oh, absolutely. And I think the key part that I take away from it, which I think also makes people connect with a leader better, is when leaders show vulnerability. When they go in with the understanding, like, ‘Yes, I’ve been in this position before, but I don't know everything and I'm still here learning just like you.’ I think that is something that is incredibly humbling and builds that trust.
Absolutely. And you'll be faced with experiences where, because you faced so many different experiences in the past, you'll definitely grab onto that. There have been moments where I've said to myself, ‘Oh yeah, this resembles this time period X number of years ago.’ Or, this is, in fact, something that I learned in school, or somebody that a friend of mine was telling me about. It is definitely important to expose yourself to as many different experiences and as many different types of people so that you can draw on them. They're part of your toolkit when you're faced with a situation that is new and or maybe difficult.
Absolutely. I like that you bring up the toolkit, because it’s relevant to my next question. Obviously, a lot of people ask, ‘Oh, what can I do? Where should I look? What are the networks to utilise?’ And I'd be interested to know what resources or networks have been the most useful along the way in your career?
Listen, I've been influenced by so many people, moments, books, experiences, or just aspirations, if you will. So definitely my biggest source of energy is my family. I really rely on them a lot. And you know that I use them also as a source of inspiration. But in fact, it's just the people that you meet, Sean, and the books that you read, that create little aspirations and social comments that you hear.
I remember somebody once said to me, ‘You’ve had a very brilliant career, but maybe you could do better with a bit of operational experience.’ By the way, that comment was made years ago. When I was making my decision to join Accor, that comment came into my brain, and I thought about it for a while. I said, ‘Okay, well, you know what? I'm going to go and I'm going to do it.’
I love people. This is hospitality, right? And I love hearing stories, and getting to know and talking to people from different backgrounds, all walks of life, different age groups. Because they always have something to teach you. And it's the same thing with books. Absolutely the same thing with books. All of that knowledge that you can grasp, or situations that you can experience – I think it's all very, very important.
Absolutely.
Speaking of people and hospitality: being a people business, we all know, at least if we spend a while in the industry, that talent and people are always scarce. And there are always challenges coming along with that.
This is kind of a two-part question. In the current market, I’d be interested to hear what are some of the key traits that you look for when it comes to hiring for senior roles? And what are the biggest challenges you are facing? Then particularly, I would love to know how important DEI is in the hiring process?
When you're interviewing someone, thinking about a specific skillset that you need for your organisation, or the type of people that you need, it's always a three-way combination. You need the IQ to be technically very competent. EQ: that level of emotional intelligence needs to be there. Then people who are adaptable and who can be taught, who want to continue to grow, who are nimble. That is extremely important.
So, you know, when I'm, when I'm interviewing folks for whatever position, the first thing I look for is, is there a connection? You know, will we be able to develop trust? Of course, I'm looking at their experience. And going back to your question on DEI. For me, you know, I do not believe in quotas whatsoever. I believe in diversity of background and experience.
Going back to what we discussed, when you're faced with, with a particular situation and you have somebody who's come from maybe this particular side of the industry, or somebody who's got 20 years’ experience in this, combined with somebody who's just really great at problem-solving and looking at different things from a different angle. That’s the best team.
And by the way, if you hire for diversity of background and experience, I will guarantee you, you will for sure have the most diverse group of people that you've ever seen. So that's what I'm looking for. I look at the human behind the potential colleague, potential worker. It is very important. Character is everything. If you say teachable, of course, you know, you can learn a new skillset.
That was, for me, the biggest motivation to change my career. I wanted to learn. That was my fundamental principle in life, for my career. I want to learn as much as possible. You have to stay teachable. And again, that's also part of being vulnerable. I want to make sure that I enjoy being with the people with whom I’m working. That I'm learning from them. Of course, I'm also contributing, to the job, to the function, to their wellbeing. It’s all pretty circular. It's almost all very circular.
Oh, absolutely. And I think it's great, obviously, with you coming from a cognitive-diversity kind of background in terms of having a different skillset. Even though it was within hospitality it was still a different sector. Accor must have thought, ‘Hey, let's bring in someone who maybe sees the world from a different point of view and brings in a completely different angle and skillset into this position.’ I think it's exciting and a great example to the overall industry. Setting that standard and showing that we don't need to do things how we've always done them. So, I think it's obviously great that you’ve been part of that transition, and the kind of change that I think needs to happen.
Yeah. And, you know, I'm in the CSO role. That's a very big-picture global role. Right? You're looking at the organisation. I would say what I've really enjoyed from my other role, of being in the trenches with Orient Express, is this principle has come into the fold. You know, from day one, we are working with train and boat engineers while also dealing with construction right now. We're dealing with artists as well, with hospitality people, with people who are coming from the luxury consumer goods industry. So, we've created an ecosystem of people who normally don't get to work together that often to create something that doesn't exist – you know, launching a new way of enjoying the travel and tourism industry.
And if we were looking to hire people who look and speak like us and think like us, we would have had completely not the appropriate team. The fact that this is so diverse is incredible. And the golden thread, the glue that holds us all together is that we have a shared mission, a shared purpose, and we trust each other.
Absolutely fantastic.
I really appreciate you taking the time, Gilda, to speak with us today. It's been a real pleasure.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.