Power of the unpredictable… Just a few weeks ago, with the decline in the pandemic’s impact, we were looking to the year 2022 with a note of reasonable optimism. With the war in Ukraine, the black swan chain sequence at work since 2019 makes adapting to uncertainty the only possible course of action for our organizations. Planning and stability are to be put away.

For the business travel professions, the pandemic crisis had already caused an acceleration of the seeds of change towards greater agility, technological innovation and consolidation. We must pursue this path with determination. The context we live in requires ever more shared reflexivity, perspective, ability to anticipate and solidarity. It is for this reason that CDS Groupe, in partnership with IFTM Top Resa, wished to host in 2022 the Grand Live du Voyage d’Affaires, successfully inaugurated mid Covid crisis. This exceptional format of exchanges between professionals and experts, in all their diversity, aims to support four dimensions essential to our professions: collective reflection, communication on change, human and emotional value of exchanges, usefulness and sense of action. This new series of Grand Live notebooks allows us to extend and deepen the reflections and proceed to share them within our organizations.

Ziad Minkara , CEO of CDS Groupe

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]The entry of Patrick W. Diemer, former Managing Director of Airplus, to the CDS Group Board of Directors is of major importance because it will enable CDS to establish its growth strategy at European level.

As CDS plans its growth in Europe, the arrival of Patrick Diemer within CDS is an asset and an accelerator. After becoming the leader on the French market, the group wishes to extend its ambition to the European market in order to become a major player there. Patrick Diemer is a specialist with an excellent network and alot of experience in the sector, his exceptional knowledge is essential to the future of the group.

During his career, Patrick Diemer was the CEO of AirPlus where he led a global expansion strategy and built AirPlus into one of the leading issuers of card payments. Previously, he led Visa Germany and was SVP consumer marketing at Commerzbank. For several years, he has been active as a business angel, member of the board of directors and investor in start-ups in the travel and payment sector, such as HtoH in France, eco.mio in Germany and The Apartment Network in the UK and Germany.

In 2017, Patrick Diemer was named one of the “25 Most Influential People in Business Travel” by Business Travel News.

Currently a volunteer at VDR, the German Business Travel Association, he is leading their ‘Restarting Business Travel’ working group where he pushes companies towards a new normal in business mobility.

CDS Groupe will be able to count on his advice and his vision to accelerate its international development and meet the needs of the business hotel industry which, despite the crisis, has recorded significant growth rates. The group will thus be able to internationalize its activity and obtain strategic partnerships and therefor strengthen its service to travelers and agencies.

Patrick Diemer ‘s experience will be a major strategy in the growth of CDS Groupe at a European level, particularly in Germany, Benelux, Italy and the United Kingdom.

His great mastery and his diversed career in the business travel sector will also allow him to continue the work carried out on innovation. CDS is working for this purpose to provide solutions related to new means of payment and management tools in order to continually improve the user experience. With the arrival of Patrick Diemer in the board of directors, CDS acquires a fine knowledge of European countries and will be able to adapt to the needs of each.

« I am delighted to welcome Patrick at my side. His international vision and his knowledge of payment will undeniably contribute to strengthening our hotel & payment strategy at the European level of business travel » Ziad Minkara, CEO of CDS Groupe.

CDS Groupe aspires to change the way travel and accommodation buyers use the hospitality industry.

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In linguistics, the word seven comes from the Latin septem , its root of which is found in all Indo-European languages. From Tintin to the Bible, and through our calendar rhythm, the number 7 is very present in our daily lives and in our collective imagination. The number 7 represents: the 7 colors of the rainbow spectrum: 6 colors + white, synthesis of the 6 others; the 7 orifices of the head: 2 ears, 2 nostrils, 2 eyes, the mouth; the 7 metals associated with the seal of Solomon: tin, iron, gold, copper, mercury, silver, lead; the 7 hills of Jerusalem and the 7 hills of Rome; the 7 deadly sins: pride, envy, lust, laziness, anger, gluttony; 7 days of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I could still continue this list but you would have the impression that I am going astray!

In our news broadcasts and in our ecosystem, the number 7 also corresponds to these years: 2001; 2008: 2015; 2021… Do you see it? Yes, these are the years where the crises that we have lived through for the past 20 years took place. This is not a divinatory theory, in any case, I do not wish to announce here a crisis for 2028! It is nevertheless surprising to note that since the end of the glorious 30s, a serious economic and financial crisis has taken place every 7 years. Expansion, boom, recession, depression, is this the inevitable cycle of the economy? Is our industry condemned to undergo this every seven years?

Personally, I cannot bring myself to do it and prefer to see what has come out of these troubled times.

The crisis has always affected an aspect of the professional travel journey, and every time, our ecosystem has shown all its agility and all its ability to innovate and emerge stronger from the difficulties.

In 2008, the subprime crisis in the United States, shook the world and Europe was not spared. On our scale, it is the means of payment that have made a leap forward. Remember! In 2015, the attacks hit us hard, in the heart of our capital. Companies then developed the fledgling concept of risk management to make it a real policy at the service of employees on the move, with the help of specialized players in the sector. In 2021, the Covid crisis shook up – to put it lightly – our communication habits and forced us to go 100% digital. We have been able to reintroduce face-to-face meetings over the months and they have become extremely valuable as we now know their true value today, but the good fact in digital also brings great richness to our subjects. At CDS as elsewhere, 2022 will be headed towards innovation, “humerical”: human & digital at the same time!

On January 20, 2022, we will start the year with the second edition of the « Grand Live du Voyage d’Affaires », that brought together the entire profession last year around key subjects of business travel. During this day, we will unveil the barometer of the business hotel industry in partnership with EPSA, we will come back to the issues of teleworking, distribution, TMC, the role of associations as well as the trends dictated by consultants. A great journey ahead! In 2022, we will once again work in close partnership with associations and professionals to analyze current trends and prepare for the rebound of our industry, together.

Spend great end-of-year holidays with your loved ones and log in on January 20, 2022!

Ziad Minkara

At this time of the year, when the children are putting back their schoolbags, when we are wiping the last grains of sand from our bags and when everyone is taking on new organizational challenges, the temptation is great to take a divinatory approach to the coming months. Will the event I want to organize take place? Will the show I’m used to attend be similar to those of the previous editions? Will I be able to see my colleagues every day or will I still have to isolate myself? Is my job one of those that will survive the post-covid era or will I have to reinvent myself? The questions are wide, multiple and legitimate. We live in an anxious environment, we need to reassure our teams, investors, colleagues, customers, suppliers … and we also need to reassure ourselves. Reading articles, essays, prospective white papers puts us in a position of reassurance and helps us moving forward, it is human.

However, in our fields of hotel and tourism, it is quite impossible to have a vision on the economic situation or on the activity. The provided figures are based on suppositions, expectations and sometimes even rumours. How can we seriously consider forward-looking visions when we live in such a nebula that it is difficult to know what we will be able to do at the end of the month. Nevertheless, even in a Cartesian society like ours, we do not escape it.

The inability to use futurology must nevertheless be separated from the vital importance of having goals. The implementation of a strategy is essential to the smooth running of a project, an event or a company. Without clearly defined objectives, no effective action can be taken. At CDS Group, our line of conduct has been clear since the beginning of the crisis: solidarity, trust, constancy and innovation. These four pillars have enabled us to pursue a growth strategy that has been in place for a long time and has been proven by recent successes.

When everyone else was silent, we chose to take risks to be faithful to our values, our partners and our customers. We made this gamble on presence and speech because that’s what we believed was right. Time has proven us right.

Today, we have established a stable and efficient relationship of trust with our various partners, a collaborative effort that we believe serves our entire ecosystem by bringing dynamism and innovation. At CDS, we are a Hotel Booking Tool but also a Human Business Tool and this is how we see the different facets of HBT. We have chosen to invest in the future, humanly speaking. In addition to maintaining jobs, which is sometimes difficult in times of crisis, we have implemented an outstanding recruitment policy and have thus enriched our teams with new talent in various departments. The month of September is expected to be full of events, highlighted by the IFTM Top Resa trade show. You will be able to find us not only on our stand in the heart of the business travel village, but also at our Digital event focused on innovation: The Hackathon! All these moments, where we will be able to meet on site or remotely via communication tools are in line with the guideline that we have maintained since the beginning: transparency and innovation for a service of trust and efficiency.

Without taking out a crystal ball, I will therefore wish you all a dynamic start of the new year and hope to see you in one of the many meeting places in the coming weeks!

Ziad Minkara

After many difficult months during which CDS Group has acted with determination and, I believe, efficiency, summer has arrived, hope has been reborn, and it is time to take a well-deserved break without interrupting the momentum of the recovery.

Over the past 18 months, CDS Group has demonstrated determination and strong commitment to the profession. We did it out of solidarity, duty and above all, conviction. The strong belief that the recovery would come, that business travel would continue because it is essential to any economic activity and that the business hotel industry would be at the center of the ecosystem. We have also done this alongside our clients, remaining open to their needs and above all remaining mobilized to accompany them in the continuous evolution of constraints and the need for reassurance of travelers, of the obligation to travel safely, while remaining in compliance with a well-defined travel policy.

To achieve this, we have worked for a recovery through innovation. Our participation in the Vivatech trade show was the high point of this R&D development policy, that we have always supported.

But innovation would be nothing without women and men, experts in their field, driven by the desire to work together and supported by a strong group dynamic. CDS’s human resources are one of its greatest strengths and were enhanced this spring with new teams. These new arrivals have brought either a reinforcement of the expertise already existant amoung our teams, or new skills to develop our services and our positioning.

Relying on human resources at CDS Group doesn’t only mean working with internal teams, but also knowing how to surround oneself with a whole ecosystem, both with the historical players in the sector and with newcomers. We are also aware of the importance of new arrivals who intermingle, sometimes disrupt and always innovate in a dynamic and flexible universe that has raised agility to the level of an art. We support these new players and create partnerships with them because we are convinced that evolution is essential.

I warmly thank my team, our customers, our partners, both historical and new, and the entire ecosystem and wish each one of you a refreshing summer break.

Resolutely optimistic, CDS wants to see the alpha and the omega of the business hotel industry and leave aside the delta… The upcoming season promises to be rich in projects, events and innovations, rest assured that CDS Group will be there!

Sincerely,

Ziad Minkara,

CEO of CDS Groupe