Maarten van den Nieuwenhuijsen

Responsible for all Hotel Opening and Conversion project of Raffles & Fairmont Hotels globally as well as the Guest Experience Division for these Luxury and iconic Accor brands.

I oversee the operational performance of all Fairmont properties in Europe and Morocco, e.g., The Savoy, Fairmont Le Montreux Palace, Fairmont Vier Jahreszeiten and the recently opened Fairmont Rabat Tazi Palace in Tanger. I maintain good owner relations and cooperate closely with the general managers to maximize each hotel's performance. In addition to my regional role, I am responsible for new Fairmont hotel openings and conversions worldwide. Interesting signings include the Fairmont Golden Prague and the Fairmont Tokyo.

I successfully coordinated the opening of over 40 properties per year across all Accor brands in the Middle East, Africa, India, and Turkey. Properties I was particularly involved with include Fairmont Tazi Palace Tangier, Fairmont and Raffles Doha, Raffles The Palm Dubai, Banyan Tree Al Ula - just to name a few. As part of my responsibility for monitoring guest experience at over 430 hotels, I led the rollout of ALLSAFE, Accor's covid response program. I also had the lead role in Accor's Global Operational Support Council, liaising between sales, marketing, distribution, loyalty, and operations.

As the leading link between brand and operations, I translated the DNA of Accor's luxury brands into operational delivery. I successfully set up the hotel opening templates for all luxury brands (incl. Fairmont, Raffles, Sofitel, M Gallery) with each brand's essentials.

I headed up brand compliance across all hotels in the company's portfolio and ensured all corporate business units followed brand direction and strategy. I was in charge of the executive relationship between Mövenpick Fine Foods Switzerland and Mövenpick Hotels.

I was responsible for the operations of all 16 Mövenpick properties in Africa, plus eight Nile cruise ships, including the luxury steamer SS Misr.

I set up the company's new regional office in Cape Town. I was in charge of all operating hotels and opening projects in the Southern Africa Development Community member countries and Nigeria.