For a man who’s spent the past seven months leading the integration of a US$3 billion acquisition, involving 115 hotels across 40 countries, Michael Issenberg, the chairman of AccorHotels Asia Pacific, was looking decidedly relaxed when I caught up with him in Sydney.

Michael Issenberg: “Content is king, content is the experience, we own the content, we must give a great experience.” (Image credit: AccorHotels)

Since Accor’s acquisition of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts last December, Issenberg’s been shuttling to and fro between Paris and Toronto to head the integration and last week, the acquisition was formally completed and now everything that Issenberg has been planning and strategising can be put into action.

“We couldn’t really execute on anything until the acquisition was finalised, we had to operate as two separate entities, but now it’s full steam ahead.”

Issenberg says it’s been an “intellectually stimulating and challenging” exercise �" to learn about the history of the brands, Fairmont, Raffles and Swissotel �" and how to put the brands together. Out of the 115 hotels, 70 are Fairmont, 32 Swissotel and the rest Raffles.

It’s not his first integration project �" he also led the exercise after Accor’s acquisition of Mirvac in Australia “but that’s one country, 40 hotels. This is way bigger and more global”. But he did learn one lesson �" “keep it whole until you are ready to integrate”.

He also wonders if destiny has a part to play in it. He grew up in North America but left 31 years ago and has never done business on the continent. As such, this was an eye-opening exercise.

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