MIGUEL VELEZ

CEO & FOUNDER UNLOCK BOUTIQUE HOTELS

Graduated in 1997 by the Catholic University of Porto in Management and Business Administration, he concluded in 2001 an Executive MBA in Marketing at the Porto Management School (currently known as Porto Business School), having been one of the top 3 students and has since been updating his knowledge with courses for executives at London Business School and INSEAD. Miguel Velez was a professor at the Portuguese Catholic University for several years in the Master in Hospitality.

He joined the hotel business in 2005 and ended up taking over the General Management of Porto Palácio Congress Hotel & Spa. He was responsible for Sonae Turismo Hotels, passing by the American multinational Mercer Consulting and taking over the General Management of The Yeatman. He was a member of the Executive Committee of Grupo Pestana and Director of Pousadas de Portugal.

He is currently the CEO and founder of Unlock Boutique Hotels.

Since March 2020, when Covid-19 arrived in Portugal, we are going through a very complicated crisis worldwide in several sectors. How can tourism make people come back together soon?

Miguel Velez: Society has already been experiencing a great disruption, with extremist movements, debates in areas apparently of little interest for the common good and sustainable development. Tourism was what allowed a stronger bond between people, what used to put down borders and helped peace in the world, being the "escape" of billions of people.

Covid-19 came to create frontiers that no longer existed, it came to alienate people, to remove free movement and to make countries and people close themselves. What we feel is that globally people want to travel, most of all, they want to enjoy life and that is what tourism allows.

Therefore, I think that we will see a historic moment of regaining what was lost, with tourism being the biggest and main motivating agent. It is always at these times that there is enormous innovation and new opportunities.

Honoring the deaths and the associated destruction, the search for new experiences, the search to live what was lost and that reminded us of the fragility of everything we thought we had, they will be very strong and demanding and we need to be prepared as never before. It is up to all participants to have the wisdom and art to respectively create and anticipate this demand and needs.

Last year, tourism in Portugal fell by more than 50%, but on the other hand, the Portuguese took advantage of the year to "Rediscover Portugal". What were the resources used by Unlock Boutique Hotels to try to minimize this drop and attract the Portuguese?

Miguel Velez: At Unlock Boutique Hotels we see the theme in two ways.

Internally, UBH was created, from the beginning, highly based on technology, in the search for talents for management and innovation with a focus on the optimization of processes and procedures, based on flexibility, versatility and speed of action . In this sense and when COVID-19 was installed in mid-March, we had to make decisions and we chose not to close the hotels and always keep them running when the most obvious and safe would be to close. In order to make it possible, we had to change and adjust the way of working very significantly.

Whether through process automation, simplification and streamlining, or the creation of new rituals with business partners. The same happened with the operational management in each hotel, where we had to review and adjust. In external terms, we have to divide by each of the areas, the focus being to always keep hotels active and close to customers, always adjusting the service according to the existing time and needs. We did a huge job of adapting in the commercial area. In the social channels we had a “brutal” dynamic and the results were incredibly positive with several revenue records in some of our hotels.

The pandemic forced us to change the way we live and a whole model of sustainability is at stake. Could this be a new opportunity to rethink the hotel sector?

Miguel Velez: Unlock Boutique Hotels has been aiming, since its creation, to join and aggregate boutique hotels giving them the strength of the big hotel chains without removing the unique and exclusive character.

What happened with COVID-19 is that this need, which was already very evident and strong in the past, has become even more evident and necessary. We have had approaches from many hotels, both nationally and internationally, especially in Spain, so it seems very clear to me that the aggregation of independent hotels will happen.

Additionally, the new technologies will create a new business model, whether in associative models, loyalty models or others that we do not know yet. More and more brands will associate themselves with tourism and what it has to offer.

This publication, EvoqueMag, is an excellent example of this. It appears in this period of COVID-19 to look to the future and to want to fill a new space. This entrepreneurship will accelerate and go through a new moment of innovation, creating and reinforcing networks, services and products.

Almost completing five years of existence (with anniversary scheduled for May 2021) what are the biggest challenges and rewards that the brand has gone through over these years?

Miguel Velez: We had everything, we went through everything that was possible, I think. It was very intense! I don't think you can even repeat and do it twice. They were unique moments at all levels.

We start with the vision and then test its viability in the market.

Unlock has been growing in hotels and in constant new negotiations and new associated hotels. When COVID-19 arrived and so the total collapse of the sector we were able to overcome the challenges and keep ourselves up and running.

One of the most challenging moments has been to always be able to keep our course without giving in to "new temptations", the result of other opportunities that have arisen.

A strong restart will be critical and previous work performance levels will need to recover immediately. These stops cannot affect the commitment, on the contrary, more than ever it will have to be a joint effort by everyone to start to recover and more than that, to reconstruct what was lost at all levels, this may even be the most important and crucial point ,to have endurance and performance.

What does the future hold for Unlock Boutique Hotels?

Miguel Velez: The vision is the same, the strategy too and therefore the orientation.

We have to analyze it in several ways, with the growth of hotels being the most obvious and natural. A focus on hotels with 40 to 80 rooms, but always unique, authentic and boutique wise.

In the commercial perspective, we will launch new services based on the approach to the customer and the use of technology to benefit them. In the teams, we continue to invest in talents and their development, as well as in the mutual development of the partners that accompany us and with whom we privilege long-lasting relationships.

We will work hard on the innovation component and in a way that Unlock may always be at the forefront of what we expect the market will be in the coming years and on the strong and positive post-Covid19 impact.