This second ” White Book on Hotel and Tourist Modernization” of the Committee for the Modernization of French Hotels , has just been published. It wins 5 years after the first one, which has been downloaded more than 22,000 times, which is exceptional for a sector such as the hotel industry! If our action and our vocation are presented on our constantly updated website, we wanted to “freeze” both an observation and proposals on paper, in order to disseminate our alert as widely as possible to the media and elected officials. national and regional authorities, public authorities, as well as decision-makers in the profession.
The aim is to make them aware of our concern: the pressing need to modernize our hotels and French tourism .
Modernization is of course not limited to the physical renovation of hotels and the tourist offer; this concerns the whole range of constituents of this extremely complex economic sector: social, marketing, commercialization, customer knowledge, regulations, etc.
This White Paper is therefore a tool for progress , certainly unpretentious and open to criticism, but which will surely have the advantage of putting the problems on the table and looking for fair and useful solutions to help our hotel industry and our tourism to get out of the doldrums. ‘a difficult situation.
We take advantage of our credibility and our freedom of expression to present independent and objective work, even if it means challenging received ideas and mistreating the good conscience that trust the sector, so anxious to muzzle those who do not go in the direction of their interests.
By our positions which seem right to us, we would almost regret to displease a handful of lobbies and other organizations which seek to play hegemony on the hotel and tourism sector. Our role is not to please or to please; it is to encourage quality and excellence.
In this book, which is much more than an update of our 2006 edition, we will talk about generalities that are certainly distressing, which are often encountered. But, we do not forget that there are in France large hoteliers and tourist actors, very professional and in large numbers . As for French hotels, many are real jewels, well kept, with seduction and charm that no one would want to dispute. And this, in all ranges. These hoteliers know what we are talking about when we talk about quality and customer satisfaction. We want to support and help these professionals.
We love tourism which is why we have gone to so much trouble over the past few years and work hard. And this, completely on a voluntary basis. However, if you still can’t travel to visit your favorite hotels and casinos, you can always play them via Agile Ufabet.
In one country, France, that its rulers constantly welcome present improperly and unnecessarily as ” the first world tourist destination “ (but that is the final 14 th in terms of average expenditure per foreign tourist), we mean that there is no quality tourism without quality hotels. There is no reason why tourists – French and foreign – who frequent our country are not happy about it. It is a concern that must be constant, collective, voluntary and professional.
• This White Paper presents in the first part an observation without dogma – but also without complacency – on the hotel industry and tourism in France, with their problems, their weaknesses and their constraints.
• A second part recalls the evolution of the situation over the last 5 years and since our last White Paper. 48 topics are thus dealt with in a documented and as impartial manner as possible.
• Finally, the third part presents in 13 points what we suggest as “emergency” and priority improvement solutions . Of course, we are not satisfied with advising or suggesting, the Committee for the Modernization of French Hotels is involved in each project of progress on which we offer concrete, useful and necessary work. The many studies offered to the profession and downloadable from our site attest to our skills and our ability to advance the sector.
Finally, if we recommend a large number of measures to help the hotel industry (and tourism) to modernize and adapt its offer to its customers, and if many of these recommendations concern communities and the State, our philosophy defends the idea that the public authorities must not supplant the private sector in its responsibility and that professionals must above all succeed in questioning themselves individually and collectively in order to move forward. But to achieve these objectives, the regulatory environment must evolve and it is likely that a lot of aid – not necessarily financial – will have to support professionals in their beginnings of questioning.
The major subjects and themes dealt with in the White Paper on Hotel and Tourist Modernization:
• France has no tourism strategy.
• France is only 14 th in the world in terms of average expenditure of foreign tourists on its territory.
• The statistics communicated on French tourism are misleading in nature.
• French tourism suffers from a lack of economic barometers and reliable and usable market studies.
• The cascade of reforms published in tourism over the past 4 to 5 years are mostly failures.
• Hospitality professionals are fed up with new regulations requiring non-productive investments.
• Hotel unions at the national level: inefficiency, amateurism and allegiance to the government.
• The over-derogation and the harmful influence of the Accor group on the sector.
• 1/4 of the French hotel industry is still outdated or dilapidated, 1/3 out of breath.
• The “anything” of the new hotel classification (stars).
• Atout France: non-performing, it has become the political arm in the service of the government and large groups.
• 4,000 independent hotels will close within 2 to 3 years.
• The impossibility of helping young people to set up their hotel business.
•… and many other subjects: 48 in all.
Here. The bosses of hotel unions only have to draw on our White Paper , to appropriate the ideas therein (by changing the data and findings a little in their own way), and finally to communicate at all costs by explaining that they are the ones who analyzed the situation and that everything comes from them. To their attention, I forgot, there is a copyright.
Good reading !
Mark Watkins – Chairman of the French Hotel and Tourism Modernization Committee & author of the book.
• Access the download page of the White Paper on Hotel and Tourist Modernization .