SPECIAL FEATURE
SPECIAL FEATURE GASTRONOMY & WINE TOURISM 29 Adding Taste (and Flavour) to the Hotel Trade French “art de vivre” moves to another level with AccorHotels’ partnership with Potel & Chabot Franck Jeantet Chairman & CEO, Potel & Chabot Amir Nahai CEO, F&B Group, AccorHotels Potel et Chabot, an iconic luxury event gastronomy brand, is now part of the AccorHotels portfolio, adding a great deal of value to the group’s F&B and events segments. To find out more about this “new adventure”, we spoke to both the Chairman & CEO of Potel & Chabot, Franck Jeantet, and Amir Nahai, CEO, F&B Group, AccorHotels. Firstly, we asked Mr Jeantet to tell us a little more about his company. FJ: Founded in 1820, leader in high-end event organisation and delivering global experiences to its clients around excellence and “French art de vivre “, Potel & Chabot manage a unique portfolio of exclusives venues in Paris and also manage major events (sports, cultural and industrial) in France and internationally (Roland Garros, air shows around the world, Saut Hermes, 24 h du Mans, FIFA World Cup in Moscow, etc.) What will the partnership with AccorHotels and Edmond de Rothschild bring to your business? FJ: This new partnership will leverage several opportunities for Potel & Chabot especially with AccorHotels. Potel & Chabot will take advantage of the international coverage of AccorHotels to accelerate its international expansion and growth. The recent acquisition of FRHI, John Paul, One Fine Stay offers to Potel et Chabot and AccorHotels majors opportunities to bring synergies WE’RE CREATING THE “MARIE- ANTOINETTE” EXPERIENCE FOR A MARKET THAT APPRECIATES AND VALUES ALL THINGS FRENCH in the luxury experience for our guests. In addition, the MICE segment is offering our companies an occasion to create specific offers to these clients, combining rooms, event organisation and F&B offers. How will the association with AccorHotel’s digital concierge services allow you to strengthen your leadership in the luxury sector? FJ: The AccorHotels digital concierge service will allow us to propose to those clients a new and exclusive experience in the F&B and luxury event segment. Our clients are now not only looking for a premium F&B offer, they are looking for premium and exclusives global experiences. AccorHotels digital concierge should help us to bring those experiences to life, combining, for example, premium F&B offer as well as premium transportation or premium concierge demands. By combining our expertise, we will be able to bring a new dimension to the event and hospitality segment, offering a one stop shop to those clients. Amir Nahai, what does the new partnership with P&C bring to the offering of AccorHotels? AN: AccorHotels CEO Sebastien Bazin talks a lot about the importance of reinforcing our market leadership in key markets. Paris is one of the most important markets in the world and Potel helps us reinforce our position as the most important player in Hospitality “with a capital H”. Together with our hotel brands such as Noctis and Accor Hotel Arena, our goal is to be the reference player in one of the most important destinations in the world especially with the Olympic Games around the corner. In addition, there are clear go-tomarket benefits for us where we can cross-sell especially for high end gatherings and meetings. Beyond Paris, this is about learning from each other and in select cases collaborating globally on unique experiences for our guests (weddings in China examples) Why bring P&C into the equation rather than developing your own offering? This partnership does not replace our existing knowhow, but rather complements it. Potel has 200 years of knowhow, unique locations in Paris and deep relationships with key customers What kind of new services will be on offer? This is not necessarily about new services per se. A lot of the benefits will come from joint go-to-market of existing services. Having said that, we are working on many exciting new services. One that I can talk about and that I am really excited about is a branded French-style wedding for our most luxurious hotels in China. We joke that we’re creating the “Marie-Antoinette” experience for a market that appreciates and values all things French. We hope to have our first married couple in the next twelve months ITB BERLIN NEWS • Thursday 8 th March 2018
