Conferences, workshops, master classes, competitions and experiential pathways, as well as contacts with the exhibitors: from 6 to 10 November 2022, Porte de Versailles in Paris hosts EquipHotel 2022, the international biennial fair of the HoReCa industry, organized around four main areas: restaurants, design, wellbeing, technology & services.
The theme of this iteration is “conscious hospitality”: clients of hotels and restaurants have changed, and today more than ever they require reassurances regarding the commitment of hospitality venues to sustainability. They also want to be always connected, and to benefit from well-conceived and reasonable offerings. Local territories, slow tech and slow living, energy savings and smart mobility are the new strong points of a facility with a focus on the guest experience and the employee experience, meaning appeal, team spirit, inclusion and loyalty, as the center of the organization of a hotel or restaurant.
“Society evolves. So do behaviors and professions. In November, EquipHotel will multiply the debates and viewpoints of experts, to help hospitality and restaurant operators to foresee these changes and to cope with them. In 2022 hotels are transforming into ‘places of lives,’” says Béatrice Gravier, director of the fair and of the Hospitality & Food division of RX France (a company of the RX group specialized in services for the development of companies, communities and individuals).
The word ‘lives’ is used in the plural because clients expect to have spaces for sleeping, having lunch or dinner, but also for working, gathering, creating, relaxing, recreation, recharging, immersed in culture or in the surrounding natural setting.
There are five themes of commitment indicated this year by EquipHotel, to outline this new perspective: sustainability, appeal, the digital, design and wellbeing.
The first, summed up in the phrase “projecting forward in time in a sustainable way – offering the best to obtain the most,” addresses the corporate social responsibility and sustainable development, implying a new way of thinking about a project, managing a worksite, organizing a work team, making a facility dynamic by focusing on zero-km operation, short sourcing and upcycling.
The second, “Earning appeal – recruiting and loyalty: major challenges and feedback,” calls for reflections on the relationships with collaborators starting from the training level
and economic advancement (encouraging compensation, sharing of profits), but also human relations (recognition and utilization of expertise).
“Thinking about the digital with a human face – management, spread and advantages of digital tools” – this is the third theme. Because today’s digitalization offers applications and solutions capable of simplifying the everyday life of hoteliers and restaurateurs and of improving the performance and positioning of facilities; but it is fundamental to be able to maintain human contact.
Space, comfort, time, silence and nature are the new aspects of contemporary luxury: this is the focus of “Making beauty with good practices – layout, design and decoration in the era of taking care.” In this universe, art and craftsmanship have a place, to suggest the beauty of a gesture, the subtlety of savoir faire and the importance of passing down a tradition while respecting the environment.
Finally, the last question has to do with offerings of wellness and nature far from the big cities: the summary is “Concentrating on caring for ourselves – wellness at the center of hospitality,” which translates into the new passion of clients for spas, thalassotherapy, yoga retreats, cocooning. Five major themes around which to construct a new idea of hospitality.
