Face of the Week: Natassa Tzikou, e-Commerce Manager at Domotel Hotels & Resorts

“Face of the Week” is GTP’s weekly column that introduces the young professionals of the Greek tourism industry. Every week, a young Greek professional will refer to issues related to their profession, the travel & tourism sector and Greece as a destination.

Natassa Tzikou

“My everyday task is to FEEL LIKE the guest, BE the guest, so as to provide unique, personalized services and advanced customer care. Care is the key word.”

Company: Domotel Hotels & Resorts
Location: Athens

Born in Thessaloniki, Natassa Tzikou, is passionate about connecting brands to people through delivering ideas designed around the user’s experienced response to sound, sight, motion and data visualization. She is currently holding the e-Commerce Manager position at Domotel Hotels & Resorts. Natassa is a Graphic Design graduate and a holder of a Diploma in Digital Marketing.

Her expertise includes technology, experience navigation and new media opportunities while she takes a 360-degree approach to fully align with the customers’ needs.

She facilitates the path for the rest of the team to define and design sustainable ideas, quality engagement initiatives and memorable experiences across digital channels.

Natassa tells us that she is in love with social media.

• What are the things you like best about your job and how would you describe your hospitality/tourism management philosophy?

Operating in the worlds’ largest service sector industry, aka tourism, I myself as well as Domotel Hotels and Resorts are fully aware of our responsibility, not only towards the environment but mostly towards the foundations of the human communities; and that is what I love the most. Therefore, my philosophy is fully aligned with the guest’s needs and up-scaled expectations one might have from a luxury boutique hotel chain. My everyday task is to FEEL LIKE the guest, BE the guest, so as to provide unique, personalized services and advanced customer care. Care is the key word.

• Have you had to face any challenges in your career to get to where you are today?

Every day is a challenge in the digital world. Having to cope with big data and acquire never-ending knowledge that is needed to properly “decode” facts and numbers in order to transform them into key messages and services and better understand the market is both challenging and exciting. So, to answer the question, the challenges never stop and I am still facing them.

• In regards to hospitality and tourism, where do you think Greece needs to improve the most?

Greece needs to focus more on on-line promotion and hyper personalized services. We need to understand that hospitality is like a living organism. As the years pass, the needs are shifting, changing. The expansion of the digital cosmos, its ever-growing personalized services and its constant revenue rise, point to that direction.

• Which is Greece’s best kept “secret”? (In other words, what shouldn’t be a secret in your opinion and should be promoted more abroad?)

Greece is mainly branded for the islands, sea and sun. But Greece has much more to show off than that! We need to promote the fact that Greece is an “all year round country resort”. Our mountain resorts, our ski centers and the beauty of our mainland are not being efficiently promoted abroad and, in my opinion, that is the area we need to work on.

• If you could pass on a message to the hospitality/tourism industry about Greece, what would it be?

In relation to my previous answer I would say that we need to promote Greece for what it is: A unique place on earth with exquisite landmarks, breathtaking sceneries and well-trained hospitality professionals. Greece can provide both low and extremely high budget vacations all year long. We Greeks have known hospitality since antiquity; we have passed it on from generation to generation. There is no need to be modest about it.

• What are your plans for the future?

Well, I have high expectations. I want to promote Greece worldwide as a safe, top destination with unique colors, geology and services. I would like to see our on-line revenues go sky-high all year long, not just during the summer!

• If you didn’t work in the tourism industry where would you be?

I have worked in several sectors before consciously shifting to hospitality, which has captured my very soul. So, I truly believe that hospitality is my terminal. Hopefully, I will stop working in and for hospitality when it’s time for my retirement!

Connect with Natassa Tzikou on LinkedIn