Christiane Germain, Co-President of Germain Hôtels.Germain Hôtels
The Problem
It’s safe to say the pandemic affected all businesses to varying degrees, but few more dramatically than those in the hospitality sector. Case in point: When the pandemic and ensuing travel restrictions hit, Germain Hotels—a family-run business with 18 boutique hotels in seven provinces across the country—lost 95% of its revenue overnight. “It was a real nightmare,” says co-president Christiane Germain. “All we could see was endless cancellations. When we opened our Toronto hotel in 2003, it was right in the middle of SARS. We thought this pandemic would have roughly the same trajectory. And yet, it just won’t seem to end. "
The Solution
The first step was creating a crisis team, and working to keep the hotel’s partners and investors on board. A monthly update meeting kept all relevant parties in the loop. But the creative gears started turning when the company’s leaders made the call to keep the hotels open. That meant finding new ways to attract customers—even while no one was travelling, and all with a skeleton crew. (At the start of the pandemic, the business laid off 1,000 of its roughly 1,400 employees.)
“A few months in, which is about how long it took for me to come to my senses, we started…well, not having fun, exactly, but experimenting,” says Germain. “We decided that since we were going through this, and the hotels were open, it was the right time to try new things. The financial strain was one thing, but the psychological component was just as important. We had to keep ourselves and the people working for us as happy and excited as possible.”
The first idea to gain serious traction with guests was an in-room dining experience paired with an overnight stay. It worked like amped-up room service: Guests would arrive to a restaurant-style dinner table set up in the room and receive a multicourse meal via no-contact corridor drop off. Thanks to the pivot, Germain’s properties in Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa saw a significant uptick in traffic.
In an unconventional pivot, Germain also partnered with Occupation Double—a Canadian French-language dating show that’s extremely popular in Quebec. The show’s contestants stayed at various Germain hotels—including those in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and St. John’s—and the properties were featured on TV.
Dating show and stately French Canadian hotel brand is far from an obvious match, but it turned out to be a serious boon for the hotel’s business. Besides showcasing Germain’s cross-Canada hotels to a large Quebec audience, it doubled the proportion of 18-to-24-year-olds who came to stay at the hotel—that client segment accounted for 16% of the hotel’s revenues (up from 8%) in 2021. “The result of the partnership, which I probably would not have considered before the pandemic, was that our brand resonated with a younger audience, and now they’re visiting us in much greater numbers than before,” says Germain.
“Germain is creative in every aspect, from its robust financial structure to the approach it took to attracting guests during the pandemic,” says Benoit Desjardins, Deloitte partner and Germain’s coach of more than 20 years for Canada’s Best Managed Companies program, which is sponsored by his firm. “Whether in a pandemic or when the business is running at full-speed, Germain has a one-client-at-a-time approach. That’s a big part of what gives it its strength.”
With continued travel restrictions, it’s still far from smooth sailing for the hotel brand, but quick, creative pivots kept the brand afloat when it could have floundered. “It’s only when things aren’t going well that you learn how strong your ability to innovate is. When I look at the past couple of years, the upshot is that we were able to think outside the box and execute new ideas well,” says Germain. “They say necessity is the mother of invention, and that was certainly the case for us.”
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