The Challenges of Building a New Brand

First and foremost, the ALT concept came about, I would say, more or less 20 years after we opened the first in 1988 in Quebec City. It was slightly different than a pure start-up because, obviously, we took some pretty strong foundations into determining exactly what that product was going to be. So, we designed a concept basically around the fundamentals of the family, the core values of the family, which is hospitality, hosting people and human serving humans, but trying to streamline the project and the product into something that is simpler, more affordable and trying to locate across the country. Besides the obvious challenge that we had when we were developing a new product, whether it be site locations, whether it be design or anything like that, we are incorporating ourselves into dynamic mixed-use concepts. I guess the biggest challenge we have encountered was to, basically, make sure that through the growth, because we had a very big growth plan for Canada, was to make sure that the same attention to detail, the same attention to service was going to be multiplied across our crews in the country. So that means, making sure that we were transmitting the culture in the right way, make sure the values of the family were also transmitted the right way. So, I guess that was the biggest challenge and it still is. Right now we are looking into developing more and more locations from coast to coast, and were very attentive to that as we speak right now, to make sure that if you are having a good experience in Quebec, you’re going to have the same great experience in Saskatoon or in British Columbia. So that’s our challenge right now.