My dear colleagues and friends,

With Summer tentatively emerging from the cold and rainy

reality of the Netherlands, it is a welcome reminder that
six months of 2019 have already flown past.
For our company, I am proud to see that despite some
challenges, our collective hard work, from India to Vietnam,
New Zealand to Ireland and Russia, is making a difference.

When people work together, movements happen. One person
is all that is needed to make change. One plus one plus
one plus one plus one, and on and on it goes. Think about
the moment you really noticed someone do something that
frustrated you, or annoyed you. It gave you a reaction, you
noticed it, and it produced a result: probably you let yourself
carry that annoyance for longer than you needed to.
You will hear more about “Attention” in the coming months,
and between now and then, I urge you to start practicing
attention. Start making giving attention, or expressing
attention, part of your daily mindset.
Let’s see what we can do together.

Now think of a moment where you felt appreciated. Where

you felt noticed. Are you smiling now? Did it conjure up a
warm feeling inside? This is attention. And this is our secret
ingredient, setting us apart from our competitors and driving
strong relationships with our associates, with our guests and Walter Seib
with our (business) partners. Driving strong results. CEO of HMSHost International

https://hmshost.international
 Another thing that I want to see more of in our company
is celebrating success. In whatever form this takes,
celebrating success brings people closer together,
gives well-earned recognition to the people behind
our projects, and inspires us collectively to keep going.
> Across our countries, I’d particularly like to shine the spotlight
on our four new stores at Chhatrapati Shivaji International
Airport and seven stores at Shantiniketan Shopping Plaza in
India, alongside Harvest Market in Bangalore Airport.
> Our new LEON at Cheshire Oaks in the UK opened,
as well as two stores in Hoge Catharijne, and one in
De Verspillingsfabriek at Schiphol in The Netherlands,
and the already open Pronto by Renaa at Stavanger will be
followed by Crafts Gastro Pub and Brenningen later this year.
> Costa Coffee also opened a 2nd store at Soekarno-Hatta
International Airport, while our Costa Coffee and Ocean
bar & kitchen opened in Langkawi, The Juicery kicked off
in Auckland, and in Istanbul we opened KFC, Starbucks,
Puro Gusto and lately Happy Moon.
> We redeveloped the Broodzaak concept at the Dutch
Railways and our first TRECK stores opened in Haarlem,
Amersfoort and Leiden last month. By all accounts our
associates, the general public, and the Dutch Railways are
happy and impressed with the new look and assortment.
Congratulations to all involved, it was a great example of
a cross-disciplinary team giving the opportunity to
collaborate and contribute strengths from all angles.
https://hmshost.international
While we celebrate ...
... our incredible openings and tender wins, at the same
time we have had to make some difficult decisions. In close
collaboration with Pret A Manger, we have made the decision
to close our Pret store in Utrecht Centraal. We remain proud
of our relationship with Pret, and our reputation of success-
fully translating brands into new geographies and high-traffic
areas - and we are particularly proud of our team and are
glad to welcome them into alternative roles in other stores.
We will continue to work together with Pret abroad while we
explore other options in the Netherlands.
Our overall growth has certainly been felt in the international
office too, and our move to additional floorspace in an
adjacent office begins next month. We will have our Dutch
Finance, Dutch HR and International HR teams moving across
to the new premises, handily located directly above our
Starbucks café, and this makes way for a musical chairs
arrangement in the current building with different depart-
ments moving to be situated more in line with their working
needs. Collectively, our work is being recognised. In the UK
we were named as best franchisee of the year by LEON
Restaurants, and in Sweden we won Max Burgers ‘Franchise
Restaurant of the Year’ at their annual Ebba gala.
Our Netherlands staff dominated at the Dutch Horecava
awards, bringing home multiple awards of excellence, and
in India we won the Bangalore Airport’s Pinnacle Awards
for Customer Choice F&B and Outperforming Commercial
Partner F&B. We are proud that our operations in
Indonesia were recognized as Bali Airport’s Best F&B
Operator by Angkasa Pura Airports, and our Dutch
operations won three Schiphol Business Awards, namely
the Innovation, Connection and Sustainability awards.
Sustainability continues to be an important topic in our
business, and I continue to be inspired by the local CSR
initiatives across all our countries. From stopping the use of
single use plastics, to recycling plastic, donating clean water
to sponsoring orphanage, raising money for less fortunate
or regenerating local forests - all contribute bit by bit to
preserving this planet of ours. I look forward to sharing
more about our CSR plans later this year.
In the beginning of June I spent time with our Autogrill
colleagues for their Capital Markets Day. Presenting to a
room of 20+ journalists, I had the honour to speak about
the work we have been doing across our company in the
last twelve months. Overall the Group projects a three-year
outlook of solid top line growth, along with a substantial
increase in profitability and cash generation.
We’re confident of our growth and expect it to accelerate
based on our global leadership teamed with our role as
innovators and position as operational experts.
You can watch our newest corporate film that we put
together for the Capital Markets Day here:
https://vimeo.com/342257766.
Speaking of Autogrill, each year we submit for the annual
Food and Beverage (FAB) awards together as a Group,
and this year we had an impressive 28 shortlisted! For our
company we have had 9 of our 13 nominations included
in the shortlist, and we wait with excitement to learn of any
potential wins later this month. Our concept VIT has been
shortlisted for both Airport smoothie or juice bar of the year
and Airport health-centred or vegan offer of the year, while
our 40 Degrees bar in Istanbul has been shortlisted for
the hotly contested Airport bar of the year.
https://hmshost.international
The Biocups and BYO cups initiative in Cairns, and
Verspillingsfabriek in Schiphol have both been shortlisted for
Environmental initiative of the year, while the Tiffin Centre in
India has been shortlisted for Airport F&B offer best reflective
‘sense of place’. I am particularly proud of our associates,
where Adda Amrani in the Netherlands and Mai vu Binh
Minh in Vietnam have been shortlisted for F&B team
member of the year, and Murali Murthy Gantashala from
India has been shortlisted for Airport Chef of the year.
With diversity and equal rights an important interest of our
company, we strive to provide a workplace that creates space
for people based on their performance and what they bring
to the team. For this reason I was very happy to represent
HMSHost International as an ‘Industry Titan’ at the 21st
Annual Women in Foodservice Forum in the US, along
with our UK Startups Manager, Merel Hummels, who was
named as a ‘Changemaker under 30’. Merel represented
our company at an extremely professional and engaging
manner, and won the hearts of the thousands of WFF
attendees for HMSHost International.
Our Legal and Compliance team have been working hard
on updating our ethics and privacy policies in line with
GDPR, and our newest Code of Ethics and Speak Up policy
have been released. You will hear more about them later in
the year, please take the time to incorporate them into your
business practices. Central to our business is people, and so
before we step into business, I want to take the opportunity
to thank our departing Senior VP of Business Development,
Jan Willem Hilbron, for his friendship, passion and
commitment. During his 12 loyal years with HMSHost
International, Jan Willem has grown along with the company,
and at the same time has personally played a major role in
the growth of the company. I remain thankful for his hard
and dedicated work to grow our company, and wish him
all the best of luck in the future.
While we speak about people, and on a more serious note,
I wanted to pay respect to the passing of Mr Durgadutt
Shetty, our General Manager of the Maldives. Durgadutt
passed away unexpectedly in early May in Dubai, where he
was attending a Costa Coffee conference. He was a valued
member of our Indian regional team, and played an
important role in setting up the foundations of our operations
in the Maldives. More than that, he was devoted to the love
and happiness of his family.
As a company, we are thankful for Durgadutt’s energy and
professionalism in leading the Maldives team and I repeat
my sincere and heartfelt condolences to Durgadutt’s family,
friends and close colleagues at this sad occasion.
I send special thanks to Sushil Tandon, Operations GM
Middle East, for accompanying Durgadutt to his final resting
place - this is truly a strong and powerful support you gave.
Taking a step into the business side of things, we can see
that the first half of 2019 was financially challenging to our
ambitious budget. Sales is considerable up to last year and
whilst our margin is slightly under pressure we manage our
Free Cash Flow well. With cost savings and efficiency
measures across the company, we hope that by making
strong decisions and leveraging our operational and
marketing efforts we will make budget by the end of the year.
By working together as a team - with our well performing
countries remaining steady we can leverage to help over-
come challenges in other countries challenges.
In this vein we are happy to share that so far this year we
have won over thirty new locations throughout our region.
Whilst this is great and exciting news we remain focused
on our existing stores and contracts as well and still see an
improvement on our Like for Like performance. With that in
mind, we continue to pursue new business opportunities.
https://hmshost.international
The first half of 2019 have given us some great successes,
with particular mention to India and the Middle East.
Looking forward the team are working hard on various
business opportunities. Jan Willem has led the team well
over the past five years, and has provided a thorough
handover to Sytze van der Aa who will lead the team
onwards into the second half of 2019. Sytze’s background
in Business Development and Operations gives us the sense
of being in good hands and I look forward to seeing how
he grows our company to the next level.
As I sign off this message, I am heading off to take a short
break. Ap Dijksterhuis, a professor for Psychology in the
Netherlands wrote a story suggesting that traveling makes
us more happy, which in turn makes our brain and thinking
more flexible, creates extra time and takes away prejudices
we may have developed over time.
Why is this? Traveling, especially to a country which surprises
or astonishes you, works like a bucket of lather. As you
experience new things the mental dirt in your mind gets
cleaned: the worries, obligations, problems at work,
overload of mails and any other problems. In the past
humans did a lot of physical work and our body recovered
on days off. Today we do more and more heavy mental work
and in our free time we need to clean our mind.
Hence travelling plays a cleansing role and has become
more important: putting your brain in a primordial state,
living in the now from minute to minute, and from day to
day. Experiences of marvel make us happy, the real Grand
Canyon or Taj Mahal, most of us becoming happy by true
experiences like these. Initial research results suggest that
four times short vacations are better for us then one long
vacation, but scientists are doing more research.
‘Til then, I will enjoy my short vacation and mind cleanse!
Wish you all a glorious summer (or winter for those in the
Southern hemisphere!) and I look forward to seeing you all
along my travels in the coming months.
Walter Seib
CEO of HMSHost International