NORWAY. The annual Nordic Travel Retail Seminar took place on Thursday in Oslo, with the over-arching theme of culture and how it affects business. It included several inspirational contributions around leadership, management and performance culture.
The event, held at Oslo’s Scandic Holmenkollen Park Hotel, was organised by the Nordic Travel Retail Group and moderated by The Moodie Davitt Report President Dermot Davitt.
Nordic Travel Retail Group (and Viking Line Purchasing & Sales Manager) Chair Eva Rehnström introduced the day, highlighting the group’s activity in protecting and defending the regional industry. She noted that the aim of the day was to motivate, inspire and inform members and non-member guests.
Bente Bratland Holm, who is Director VisitNorway at Innovation Norway, began by outlining how Norway must tell a different story to potential visitors to become a sustainable all-year-destination. A key element, she noted, is to tell the world more about who Norwegians are, rather than focusing solely on the country’s natural attractions.
She said: “We do some things well but we fail often on value for money, food and the social aspects. We need to tell our story in new ways.”
One of the event highlights was an invigorating and challenging presentation from Morten T. Hansen, management professor at University of California in Berkeley, former professor at Harvard Business School and INSEAD, and co-author of the New York Times bestseller Great by Choice.
He assessed how people should work smarter, not necessarily harder, and why some people perform better than others in teams and companies. Over-complexity and lack of focus often hold back the potential of organisations, he noted. He encouraged managers to challenge conventions, not always to say ‘yes’ to potential opportunities and to measure success through customers, not internal processes.
He assessed how people perform against the backdrop of a fast-changing world, how the world of work itself is moving, and how blending “passion with purpose” in the workplace can enhance value and performance.
Former ETRC President and Dufry External Affairs Director Sarah Branquinho addressed the cultural context in which the industry operates.
She noted how travel retail now serves a hugely diverse consumer base, one in which we’re seeing profound demographic and generational shifts. She assessed how is travel retail responding and asked candidly what our responsibilities are to consumers, to staff and to the world around us?
Crucially, she encouraged the industry to consider how we should be responding to new pressures and a changing society and aiming to create a more sustainable future – citing the UN’s 17 Sustainability Goals as an opportunity to drive change and offer a positive message for the industry’s future.
Color Line Chief Analyst Onboard Operations and Strategic Advisor Hjarrand Hillgaar delivered some key messages about how management teams need to constantly rethink and challenge themselves and the people around them, as the industry strives to remain competitive in the face of external challenge.
He was candid in acknowledging that the cruise industry in the Nordics needed to react to a changing consumer base, with younger people less likely to travel and shop in the ways their parents do – presenting a challenge to the business. This will require flexibility in shop formats, ranging and communication, he noted.
Final keynote speaker Jan Åge Fjørtoft, former Norwegian professional footballer and now a commentator on the game, delivered a breezy view of his experiences in the game, and more broadly around performance culture.
He focused on the twin themes of effective leadership and being a great communicator, noting the prime example of Norwegian team boss Egil Olsen, who knitted his players into a team that came to be ranked second in the world in the 1990s.
With humour and insight Fjørtoft addressed key questions around pulling together people with diverse skills and personality differences for one goal, how to encourage people from many different nationalities and languages to buy into a single corporate culture and about the differences in leadership styles and cultures between the Nordic states.
A memorable event closed with a cocktail at the famed Holmenkollen ski jump facility close to the hotel and a gala dinner.
