Today, 12 months after, WAAG is active in more than 60 countries and already counts over 1,500 women and men members worldwide. Sophie Stabile, Accor Chief Financial Officer and head of WAAG explains, “With more than 50 million women hosted in our hotels every year, it is essential to reflect this diversity and amplify women’s voices within Accor. WAAG is here to be proactive on our objectives of having more women in management positions, but also on offers and services created for business women who are customers at Accor’s hotels.”
To foster dialogue and encourage women to feel more confident, this network is sharing experiences through “role-model” testimonials, organizing one-to-one support through mentoring programs, and providing training and networking opportunities. So far, the mentoring program that WAAG is building has paired up more than 60 tandems worldwide, including 25 in France. To provide its members with opportunities for networking and personal development, WAAG also took part in international initiatives such as the Women’s Forum in Deauville and Myanmar in 2012. WAAG has likewise teamed up with HR and the Accor Academy to build, in some countries, training programs that will empower women to progress into hotel management positions faster, and organizing exchanges on topics such as “Getting to know yourself”, “Learning to say no” and “Managing your emotions”, for example.
Lastly, a task force set up within the network focuses on understanding preoccupations and expectations of female customers who stay at Accor hotels, in order to serve them better and create preference. Today the workgroup is publishing a survey it ran with a panel of 250 Le Club Accorhotels women members. This survey focuses on the concerns and factors that businesswomen take into account when they decide which hotel to stay at, namely:
- Safety and a hotel brand’s reputation are decisive factors for businesswomen traveling alone. When they check in or out, they especially appreciate that staff is welcoming, accommodating and discreet, respectful of confidentiality rules regarding their identity and their room number.
- Comfort: they care about cleanliness and the essentials (hairdryers, mirrors, Wi-Fi access and good lighting), and about efforts to provide more feminine services and amenities (fewer sports newspapers, magazines and television channels, more hangers designed for the clothes they wear the most, flowers, chocolate and so forth).
- Food services: when dining alone, women point out the advantages of room service at no additional cost with a healthy and balanced choice, light meals with smaller portions; more lady-friendly dining areas are a few of the things they also value the most.
One year after, the WAAG reaffirms that its goal is to reach 3,000 members by the end of 2015 and plans to roll out all its action programs and task forces on all five continents. It is celebrating this anniversary by organizing activities for all Group employees. In France, for example, they will be welcome to take part in a workshop to learn how to manage their profile and image in professional communities and on social networks such as LinkedIn, Viadeo, Facebook and Twitter.
