FAB TALKS
The power of loyalty and togetherness
‘A Conversation on Purpose, Not Compliance’
SSP Chief Executive Officer Patrick Coveney and Minor International Founder and Chairman William ‘Bill’ Heinecke delivered an animated discussion on their shared values and how they have overcome their biggest career challenges, including COVID-19 most recently.
In a segment titled ‘A Conversation on Purpose, Not Compliance’, moderated by The Moodie Davitt Report President Dermot Davitt, the pair revealed what they learned from the pandemic, their hopes for future expansion together and the power of deeply loyal staff.
“Our relationship goes back some 30 years, and we certainly share common values,” said Heinecke as he touched on how both companies are continually learning from each other. “Since we operate many brands domestically, we are able to give targeted, expert support, whether it is a fast ramp-up for an airport location or something else. We want to be a global player, we can learn a great deal from SSP and we would certainly like to partner with them in other locations going forward.”
Patrick Coveney: “What COVID taught me was the power of purpose”
This power of collaboration and shared learning was enthusiastically mirrored by Coveney, who added: “What has mattered so much for us is finding a way to bring the capabilities that we’ve got into markets that we wouldn’t necessarily understand brilliantly by ourselves.”
Heinecke spoke about how his company is focused on levelling the playing field for all staff and working on sustainability in a measurable way. “We are very focused on diversity and in our company globally there is no differentiation between male or female,” he said. “We are very broad in our nationalities with over 62 countries represented. It’s an area where we’ve found very similar thinking to SSP and, being a public company, we are also focused on the environment.
“SSP is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2040 and we say we are going to be by 2050. Let’s see who gets there first because we are very focused.”
On sustainability in the hotel business, Heinecke added: “Half the world is short of water and everyone always brings up our request to ‘not use our towels more than once’. A lot of people think we are ‘green-washing’ and trying to save a bit of money but when you see some countries in Africa where they have no water at all, you realise we are all on the same planet and have to respect it. We have made a huge impact just by trying to reduce the amount of laundry we do.”
Bill Heinecke: Reflecting upon the role of people in surviving crisis and rising again
“We lost a billion dollars during COVID because of hotels that we had to shutter – 500 or so hotels. I never knew that I could afford to lose a billion dollars. That was a very rude awakening for me but we survived.”
Minor International Founder and Chairman William ‘Bill’ Heinecke
Surviving the pandemic
Heinecke said he had been humbled by the devotion of his staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, telling a remarkable story about a group of workers who had lived in a store for 45 days straight.
“At one stage we had all 500 hotels shuttered and many of the airports were too. In China, we were only allowed delivery in Shanghai but nobody could move around the city. We managed to get two or three stores open but that meant that staff had to live in the store, had to shower there, dress there. It really makes you feel proud of your teams and amazed by the spirit of the people.”
He was frank about the financial impact of the pandemic on the company. “We’ve lived through tsunamis, economic crises, SARs and now COVID,” he said. “I’m not afraid of high interest rates, high oil prices, airlines that go bankrupt, or tsunamis, but what I’m really terrified of is the things that we haven’t experienced yet.
“We lost a billion dollars during COVID because of those hotels that we had to shutter – 500 or so hotels. I never knew that I could afford to lose a billion dollars. That was a very rude awakening for me but we survived.”
On the lessons of crisis, Coveney said: “What COVID taught me was the power of purpose. Through this period we found we were working with a much more emotion-driven set of responsibilities. I have tried to take the lessons of how that felt to doing what we do every day since. That’s particularly relevant in F&B as you cannot prosper just by yourself. We can only deliver a compelling experience to the traveller if we do it in partnership with our 40,000 people, with our brand partners, our airport partners and our JV partners where appropriate in markets where we cannot do it ourselves.
Dermot Davitt (left) spoke to Patrick Coveney and Bill Heinecke about their ambitious joint aspirations
“We try to bring that to life with our stakeholders as consistently as we can wherever we are. And that notion of purpose should be central to how we operate.”
On aviation in the round, he added firmly: “We should not be apologising for the industry we work in. Aviation facilitates people seeing the world, seeing their families, engaging in business or leisure, and it connects us. We have to believe in that as an industry. It’s not enough just to mitigate any consequences of travel – we have to understand the impact we have and to do something about it. We have sustainability targets, which again we can only do with our partners. That’s the climate piece on ESG.
“In other areas we have made encouraging progress on diversity. Half our board are female, 38% of our senior team are female but are not where we need to be everywhere. Diversity will help us work through unanticipated crises in the future. We are pushing hard in other areas, to be inclusive and encourage participation. We have to do this to be a vibrant, relevant, 21st century business.”
On where the partnership with Minor International might go next, Coveney said: “We have aspirations to do much more together. With all we have planned we’ll go quickly from 90 to 100 to 150 outlets in Thailand in the next two to three years. But the evolution of our two businesses gives us the ability to look beyond Thailand. There is room to take what we do well here, in terms of brands or other capability, and bring that to life in other geographies.”
Heinecke added: “Where our group has been successful is in creating brands for specific markets, such as China or Singapore, and then taking them to new places. What I hope is that our partnership with SSP will give is the opportunity to do this on an even broader scale. SSP has created some wonderful brands in airports that have great opportunities in domestic markets. So there is more to come on our path together.”
FAB eZine
January 2024
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