Over the past two weeks Accor has announced a brand refresh for Pullman Hotels and Resorts and laid out a strategic timeline for the company under the new leadership of interim CEO Yann Caillère.

　　Over the past two weeks Accor has announced a brand refresh for Pullman Hotels and Resorts and laid out a strategic timeline for the company under the new leadership of interim CEO Yann Caillère.

　　The Pullman brand refresh includes lifestyle-inspired design features as well as a new brand symbol and US$30 million marketing campaign.

　　Meanwhile Accor’s new strategic timeline centers around the number three, with three weeks to implement a new organizational structure and define the company’s strategic priorities, three months to provide evidence of the transformation and lastly three years to finalize the transformation of Accor’s business model. The priorities of Accor, Courcouronnes, France, are likely to include a more rapid implementation of its asset light strategy, which Accor’s board of directors said was an impetus for previous CEO Denis Hennequin’s ouster last month. Caillère has said the company is moving ahead with reconfiguring its portfolio to comprise 40% managed, 40% franchised and 20% owned and leased hotels.

　　To find out more about the Pullman refresh and Accor’s future direction, HOTELS spoke with Caillère.

　　HOTELS: Yann, is it your goal to become Accor’s next CEO?

　　Yann Caillère: I am a candidate to be the CEO of this company and I am acting like I am the CEO. This is what the board asked me to do. Even though I know that the company has launched a search and I will be a part of picking the next candidate, we are a listed company, we are part of the CAC 40 and I am not going to sit at my desk and wait until the good news will occur. I think the group needs now to be working hard in a focused way. That is what the group needs and this is the way I am acting with my team. I have been with Accor for seven years now and I know exactly what has to be done and we are doing it.

　　HOTELS: How does the Pullman refresh fit into the larger picture of the company’s strategy moving ahead?

　　Caillère: The strategy of Pullman is a part of the Accor’s overall strategy for the upscale and luxury segment.

　　If you look at the history of Accor, most of the growth was not in the upscale segment as we are well-known for our economy and midscale brands. Basically when I joined the company I tried to push the focus of the group on the upscale segment. That is what we strated with the repositioning of Sofitel, and from our feedback from our partners, owners and clients, I think we have succeeded to reposition Sofitel in the luxury segment.

　　If we take into consideration that today the biggest hotel segment is the upscale segment at 32% of the global market, we think we have a true role to play in that segment and so we have relaunched Pullman.