Ukens navn: Adriaan Coppens

Adriaan Coppens
Co-Founder and CEO
OTA Insight

Adriaan will be part of our new HSMAI Region Europe Advisory Board on Distribution.

Q: What does a day at work consist of for you?

A: I spend most of my time meeting with customers, recruiting new team members, working on the product roadmap and discussing the strategy with our board.

Q: What’s the best part of your job?

A: I’m a product person so I genuinely enjoy discussing new functionality with the development team, gathering feedback from customers and launching new features.

Q: Do you have anyone you’ve looked up to?

A: I really admire the leadership Steve Jobs displayed on his return to the almost bankrupt Apple. He made 2 hugely controversial decisions that I really admire:
1) His first decision was the legendary “think different” campaign that rallied the employees and put Apple back on the map. Which CEO of an almost bankrupt company would consider spending so much money on a marketing campaign that is not even promoting a product?
2) Every successful PC manufacturer at the time was proud of the 100s of models they offered. Steve Jobs defied conventional wisdom and simplified the Apple lineup to 4 models and eliminated everything else. There was only enough money to release one new model under the leadership of Steve Jobs, so he bet the company on the iMac.

The rest is history.
Q: Do you have any nice traditions at your office?

A: We have offices at Wework and they have a tap with free beer available, so we usually take advantage of that on Friday evenings.

Q: How long have you been a member of HSMAI?

A: We’ve been members for over 2 years, I came from outside of hospitality so HSMAI has been an invaluable source of information.

Q: What do you think is the best thing about HSMAI?

A: I really enjoy the conferences, HSMAI manages to gather together many thought leaders in the industry so I always return with plenty of new ideas from every conference.

Q: Are there any activities or projects you think HSMAI should start up?

A: It would be interesting to do a study around the cost of distribution in Europe, HSMAI has the network to gather the necessary data from hotels and you could work with a partner (e.g. university or technology provider) that could do the analysis. There is a lot of discussion about the increasing cost of distribution but surprisingly few hard numbers especially about the situation in Europe.

Q: Describe your perfect weekend.

A: A citytrip to one of Europe’s beautiful cities, it feels like a real vacation and you can do it in a long weekend.

Q: If you were trapped on a desert island, what would you take with you, if you could choose one thing?

A: I would love to take my wife with me but I’m not too sure that she would enjoy being trapped on a deserted island with me for a long time. So I might have to go for my Amazon Kindle as a backup plan.

Q: What is your next travel destination?

A: I’m going to do a road trip in Norway in July. I’m really looking forward to enjoying the beautiful nature, it will be a welcome change from London 🙂

Q: Do you have any special hobbies?

A: My unlimited cinema subscription is probably the envy of many movie lovers. I try to go once a week to the cinema if I find the time.

Photo: Adriaan Coppens, Co-Founder and CEO, OTA Insight