2. AIEUROPELONDON 2016
by
[AI]CE
BREAKER
HOTELS DISTRIBUTIONS IN THE COGNITIVE AGE
ACCORHOTELS, THE ULTIMATE HOSPITALITY LEADER
POWERED BY AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AN ORGANIZATIONAL
STRATEGY
DRIVING THE AI REVOLUTION
THE NEW CO-WORKER OF THE INTELLIGENT AGE
CULTURAL SHIFT & TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH
LEADING THE TRANSFORMATION, THE ULTIMATE GUIDELINES
[P4]
[P6]
[P8]
[P10]
[P12]
[P14]
[P16]
3. [AI]CE
BREAKER
Artificial Intelligence is positioning itself as the core technolo-
gy of our digital age, offering all business leaders an unrivalled
opportunity to harness the power of data for good! The holy grail
of converting its company through the learning process of a data
driven culture is finally becoming real…
Countless discussions have taken place recently about the un-
limited opportunities that cognitive technologies are bringing to
the business world. But no one has clearly addressed the ultimate
challenge that leaders are currently facing in integrating AI in the
decision-making process of their organizations: The cultural shift!
In fact, according to Accenture’s “Technology Vision 2016” study, it
will be impossible for business leaders to thrive in this intelligent
economy without integrating the workforce as the ultimate defining
factor of their success and growth!
According to that, it gets increasingly crucial for executives to fully
re-envision their corporate culture in order to use intelligent au-
tomation as the ultimate enabler of a new relationship between
people and machines! Achieving this ambitious goal will go through
a long-term change-management strategy lead by developing new
skills, inspiring people and most of all empowering them in order
to build the workforce of tomorrow. A workforce that
is more adaptable and agile than ever. Reaching a
point of agility has clearly become the ultimate goal
for all business leaders that wish to speed up their
go-to-market, and take their companies into the
future.
To understand the strategic challenges that execu-
tives face today with integrating AI in their organi-
zations, the editorial team of AI Europe has been
thrilled to interview, one of the leading figures of
this changeable world: Fabrice OTAÑO, SVP, Chief
Data Officer, ACCORHOTELS GROUP!
Fabrice Otaño
SVP, Chief Data Officer
ACCORHOTELS GROUP
AIEUROPELONDON 2016
by
5. [AI]CE
BREAKER
The entrance of digital natives into the hospitality market
and the unprecedented rise of cutting edge technologies
has completely transformed the way traditional players
are leading their businesses across the world. This is
resulting in a change in core priorities where time-to-
market agility and accuracy have become crucial ele-
ments to success in the digital age.
According to the unrivalled complexity that the whole
market is facing, AccorHotels has launch its digital
strategy and has, since then, completely re-assumed its
role as a pioneer hotelier that never stops innovating!
Since then, data science and artificial intelligence have
been the ultimate enablers of our growth strategy!
AIEUROPELONDON 2016
by
[P5]
How is the intelligent revolution
impacting your field?
What challenges do you face?
Time-to-market agility
and accuracy have become
crucial elements to success
in the digital age
7. [AI]CE
BREAKER
According to the competitive landscape of hotels distribu-
tion, it was vital for our group to fully embrace the break-
throughs in innovation that was coming to the market. For
this reason, we have been investing in cognitive technolo-
gies and data science for 2 years now.
Integrating algorithm as a core element of our group
strategy has allowed us to re-think our organization
and team under the spectrum of our main marketing
and commercial challenges:
- THE CUSTOMER WORKSTREAM, in charge of enhancing
customer life time value potential through on and off line
CRM strategies
- THE REVENUE MANAGEMENT WORKSTREAM, in charge
of increasing revenue of our hotels by optimizing demand
forecasting, channel management and pricing strategy.
- THE DIGITAL WORKSTREAM, in charge of optimizing our
media investment and, most of all, target the right digital
audience through multi-device and multi-channel strategies
We open new fields of business empowerment with AI accor-
dingly to the maturity of other business domains: RH, fraud,
audit, and we support heavily our team of growth hacking…
The intelligent strategy that we are currently driving is ope-
ning up new and exclusive opportunities that allow us to
maximize our performance potential and greatly upgrade
our know-how! In fact, thanks to Artificial Intelligence,
we are now able to measure that our profitability is
heading for a 15% improvement where applied!
AIEUROPELONDON 2016
by
[P7]
Can you present the state
of your AI strategy?
9. [AI]CE
BREAKER
First of all, it is really important to have in mind that you simply
can’t reach the potential that artificial intelligence has
to offer without building the right ecosystem to ana-
lyze and manage your data assets. At AccorHotels we have
been driving our transformation by:
- building the right infrastructure to capture the data
- creating new positions and developing new internal skills to manage it
- shaping quick win uses-cases to capture all its potential
Second, it is crucial to understand that machines cannot replace
your internal team: Human must be at each stage of your AI strategy:
• At the beginning to set up the right questions and algorithms
• During the process to train it
• And at the end to enhance it
At AccorHotels we are testing the performance of our
algorithm by playing it “against” the best internal ex-
perts like what has been done with Go game. Usually it’s
a 2-month contest that aims to improve the performance of our ma-
chine process!
But moving to a data-driven company, and most of all an intelligent or-
ganization, takes time and cannot be achieved without integrating the
workforce as the ultimate competitive advantage of our future. Hence,
at AccorHotels, we are currently centering our change-management
strategy around 2 main challenges: breaking silos between the diffe-
rent business units and readjusting the skills of our people to make
them much more adaptable and data oriented than they are today!
As I have previously mentioned, driving this data-driven transforma-
tion requires time, a dedicated budget and above all a very strong
executive sponsorship to implement it.
AIEUROPELONDON 2016
by
[P9]
How do you drive the
intelligent transformation
within your organization?
11. [AI]CE
BREAKER
The data governance board, that is dri-
ving and managing the quality of our
data assets and mobilizing volume for
business demands.
And steering committees “data for bu-
siness” in charge of implementing our
Business Intelligence, Big Data and
Artificial Intelligence strategies at the
operational level for each and every
businesses – customer, hotels, web.
The data ethics board, in charge of our
privacy by design policy and security.
AIEUROPELONDON 2016
by
[P11]
What type of governance did
your company develop to
implement its AI strategy
Our governance strategy is organized around 3 main pillars:
13. [AI]CE
BREAKER
I believe that machines will enhance our
team capabilities by ridding them from
repetitive tasks. Thus, the rise of AI
technologies will allow us to keep our
internal team on strategic and more
meaningful functions that can’t be
handled by machines as it is impos-
sible to rationalize board vision.
AIEUROPELONDON 2016
by
[P13]
In short, how do you envision
the relationship between
human and machine?
It is impossible
to rationalize board vision
15. [AI]CE
BREAKER
We are at the beginning of this break-
through in technology. Achieving the
full acceptance of our employees will
require a lot of communications and
discussions to help them embrace this
new future of intelligence automation
and, above all understand the strategic
challenges that are behind it.
Since the launch of our cognitive
strategy, we have set up a “quick-win”
policythatisledbythegoalofdemons-
trating the full potential of AI through
operational uses-cases. For example,
we have developed a corporate pricing
tool powered by AI dedicated to our
sales team, that has permitted to
improve the accuracy of their price
offers, hence enhancing their nego-
tiation capabilities!
When our team experienced the be-
nefit and most of all saw the result,
they were enthusiastic about using an
AI-powered tool.
AIEUROPELONDON 2016
by
[P15]
How do you empower your
employees through this new vision?
17. [AI]CE
BREAKER
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AIEUROPELONDON 2016
by
[P17]
Cultural shift : If you have to give
TOP 5 recommendations to the
AI community, what would they be?
1. Sponsorship from the executive team to implement an AI strategy
2. A good partnership between departments to kick-start and go fast
3. Leveraging external data to add maximum value what is already
known internally
4. Implementing ‘Quick-win’ use-cases to empower team and change
the mindset regarding a machine-human relationship
5. Convince with results, no with rationales. So Storytelling is crucial.
![AIEUROPELONDON 2016
by
[AI]CE
BREAKER
HOTELS DISTRIBUTIONS IN THE COGNITIVE AGE
ACCORHOTELS, THE ULTIMATE HOSPITALITY LEADER
POWERED BY AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AN ORGANIZATIONAL
STRATEGY
DRIVING THE AI REVOLUTION
THE NEW CO-WORKER OF THE INTELLIGENT AGE
CULTURAL SHIFT & TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH
LEADING THE TRANSFORMATION, THE ULTIMATE GUIDELINES
[P4]
[P6]
[P8]
[P10]
[P12]
[P14]
[P16]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)