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Visionary and often seen as a humanist, Gérard Pélisson, who has just died following a long illness at the age of 91, formed with his accomplice Paul Dubrule a mythical tandem of French capitalism, which gave birth to the giant of Accor hotels.
Their black and white portraits have adorned the halls of Accor hotels for decades, today the 6th largest hotel group in the world with 5,400 establishments under the Novotel, Ibis, Sofitel, Mercure or Pullman brands in 110 countries. ” All great projects only came about because we agreed “, he said about his partner Paul Dubrule, whom he will use as you all his life.
« He was Bac +10, Dubrule was Bac -2. He was the numbers man, Paul the strategy man. They had an enormous complementarity, a very great complicity, an extraordinary respect… and legendary shouting matches, but always in private “, reports the biographer Henry Lang. Small while Paul Dubrule is tall, which is a source of tension between them, he will buy a Bentley because, he will say, he can ” enter standing ” inside.
Premier Novotel a 1967
Born on February 9, 1932 in Lyon, Gérard Pélisson left, engineering degree from the École centrale in his pocket, to the United States where ” odd jobs of his wife paid for his studies at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before IBM hired him.
Back in France, he met Paul Dubrule, like him an admirer of the American “success story” Holiday Inn, with standardized rooms on the outskirts of towns, when in France the hotel business was not yet an industry. In three years, they raised three million francs and opened a first Novotel near Lille in 1967, on a former beet field near the northern motorway.
Immediate success. Two other Novotels sprang up in two years, in Colmar and Marseille, and in 1974, Bordeaux welcomed the first Ibis, the embryo of the first network of budget hotels in France and then in Europe. In the 1970s, the SIEH (Hotel Investment and Operating Company) invested in Africa, the Middle East, South and North America, and became Accor in 1983.
The “McDonald’s of the hotel industry”
With takeovers – Courtepaille, Mercure, Sofitel… – the duo breaks the codes, innovates, inventing “the 99-franc room” for Formula 1 cars, and rises to become one of the world leaders in the sector. In 1990, they even wanted to create the “McDonald’s of the hotel industry” by opening 150 establishments a year.
From 1994, all-out acquisitions weighed on Accor’s accounts: the duo gave up operational management in 1997, but retained co-chairmanship of the supervisory board until 2005. The following year, Gérard imposed his nephew Gilles Pélisson at the head of the group, after a battle of shareholders.
(With AFP)