20170817_daines_HL1
An out-of-the-box interview with Steven Daines
08/17/2017
2 min

Steven Daines has been COO “New Businesses” and CEO HotelServices Africa & Middle East since the end of 2016. He’s as happy managing his teams as he is manning the radar on a car ferry bridge. In this interview, Steven Daines has agreed to play along and answer a redesigned Proust personality questionnaire.

Your off-the-cuff response to the word “innovation”

Innovation is life. Every living creature’s genetic code, or DNA, always includes something new by comparison with its “parents”, something minute, but real. So basically, we are programmed to innovate, and society, which is conservative by nature, is what often holds us back. To innovate all you have to do is let go, be true to yourself, and dare to break away from the routines imposed on us.

Finish this sentence: In the future, our guests will have … 

… access to a host of enriching, invigorating and transforming travel experiences through AccorHotels’ vast ecosystem.

An innovation in your pocket

On my mobile, I have an app that allows me to track real-time marine traffic and weather conditions in The Channel. I look at it at least once an hour, a bit less at night…

I can’t think how I survived without this app which is perfectly useless in Paris, but certainly stirs my imagination.

The craziest thing you would request from John Paul

It wouldn’t be a request for myself! I’d ask them to handle the concierge service for our private rental ecosystem straight away. The request in itself isn’t crazy, but getting it done at the drop of a hat would be.

A message for the “New Businesses” team

Don’t over-listen to outside advice: just keep going!

If you were a great place to live

I’d be a ship exploring the southern Antarctic.

If you were a startup

I’d be an online agency specialized in disruptive, uncomfortable, high-risk trips organized spontaneously by members. I’d call it  Shackleton ", after the outstanding British Antarctic explorer who recruited his crew with the promise of extreme hardship and a doubtful safe return. 

If you were a 140-character tweet                                                                                         

“A day without doing something totally absurd and outside your routine is a day lost."