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INTERVIEW TO IRVING RIBOT
- We are here in Salou in the Hotel Calypso
with Irving who is Medplaya Hotels´s Tourist Animation Director
I would like him to tell us
about his job.
He can talk about the animation director of a hotel chain.
- My work is CID:
Coordinate,
innovate
and develop.
- How is your job position fitted in the chain of the organization chart?
- I think, firstly, the hotel chain needs
to have clear they want to have this job position
and what they want to get from it.
- You have been working here for 8 years,
that’s say; you have been
creating your position
because you have started from zero, haven’t you?
- Yes, yes, I have been really lucky
because I was able to
introduce my own judgement
into the hotel chain level and follow the results of the work.
- The work you’ve been doing at the beginning
and the one you are doing right now,
how has it evolved?
- I think planning has been
the challenge that has improved the entertainment.
And it gives us
more credibility today in the hotel stablishment.
- I imagine that when you started
your resources where minimum
and, along the time, the department has increased its importance
in the company structure from the budget point of view.
So now, you have more resources that allow you to do more.
- Yes, but it all depends also on the hotel chain
you work for.
If they are doing the bare minimum
for tour operators and say: “I have
an animation service”
Then that’s it.
But if the company you work for has this forward-looking approach,
if the hotel chain is sure it wants to offer you resources,
the hotel chain will know the results will be obvious.
- The hotel chain´s position
in large websites as Tripadvisor,
do you notice this work?
That’s, the client talks about it? - It is curious;
we have passed from
an internal hotel service to have a decisive voice, so to speak.
The social networks
talk about tourist animation
and create branding.
When you create branding, you create confidence
and when creating confidence you generate sales.
- The social networks offer us the opportunity
to show everything we do,
how we do it and, also, it allows us to generate
this confidence. People talk about us and the client, who is staying in the hotel,
talks about us.
What is your opinion
about this situation regarding the entertainment?
How can we continue innovating?
Which ones are the opportunities we have?
- I think that now the innovation is more addressed to sales.
Using entertainment as starting point for promotions
is the innovation in this case.
- I would say, also, that it is similar to
what is happening in destinations, where the place itself
is not that relevant, but what people can experience there,
and how it can be used for hotels branding
to promote their reputation.
- I think in the case of MedPlaya,
along the years,
we have progressed a lot thanks to the economic hotel chain support.
And thanks to their clear forward-looking approach
about Entertainment.
And now we are about to give a second step.
That’s say; we have a good product in the hotel.
Now we are going to use this as a sales tool.
Regarding the client, I think we will use more and more
technological advances,
above all, multimedia.
And more, a lot more.
- During the night, the shows
are amazing.
- Yes, because you also do live shows.
- Yes, yes.
We have achieved maintaining the allround entertainer
who spends the day with the client and in the night
goes up the stage to do the show. And night shows are high leveled.
- The important is that there is a strategy,
that there is a work behind from someone who is leading all this.
That’s way,
it is so important
your job position in a hotel chain.
- It is very important to maintain a guideline.
And, above all, to take into consideration that this is a long-term job
that requires stability, working on planning
and being clear about what we want
to achieve.
I think we have to do
more interviews as this one, because there are lots of things
to tell about entertainment.
So Irving thanks for your time.
I am sure there are a lot of things left to talk about,
but we will have
more opportunities.
- Thanks to you