GOSTELOW REPORT—”People do not follow managers, they follow leaders, and I want all our GMs to stress leadership, to motivate their teams,” says Alexandre Desseigne Barrière, chief transformation officer, board member and shareholder in Group Barrière, based in Paris.
The privately owned company was founded by Lucien Barrière in 1952. His grandson, Alexandre, is officially titled EVP hotels F&B and group transformation, but he prefers the simpler chief transformation officer. He admits he has considerable power, but, as with any family organization, there are some long-standing team members who seem averse to change.
“I often quote Steve Jobs, who said if he had a dollar for every time someone said something could not be done he would have made more money than at Apple. I have talked to many change scientists, to see how Groupe Barrière could come up to date, quickly,” he explained.
The company currently has 18 hotels and resorts (2,300 rooms) in France, and 17 riads in Marrakesh, Morocco. There are, in addition, more than 120 restaurants and bars, three golf courses, and, annually, over 3,000 shows, events, headline acts and other revues. Groupe Barriere also has 28 casinos in France, three in Switzerland, two in Egypt and one in the Ivory Coast.
“One challenge is that younger gamers today are not as enthusiastic about one-armed bandit slot machines as their parents, so we are bringing in e-games, with significant effect,” said Desseigne Barrière, adding that the company’s total employee count is around 7,000.
The group’s roots, indeed, can be traced to a casino in Deauville, on France’s west coast, that opened in 1912 – what had been a sleepy fishing village quickly became Europe’s version of Disneyland before Mickey and Minnie had ever been heard of (in the first year of operation, that casino attracted 1,500 visitors).
Still today, the town, which now has a year-round population of under 4,000, sees a regular influx of visitors, coming for weekends and longer vacations. They are served by a range of renowned restaurants, and gaming that is French style, more discreet and less noisy than, say, Vegas (under French law there must be sign-in at the entrance).
“Our family has a history of developing and revitalizing small regions, which bodes well for expansion. We are also looking east, which I consider the future. I am hopeful that what we have done in Deauville will be inspirational to Asia-based partners.”
Expansion also includes diversification. There is, for instance, a partnership with Paris’ top nightclub operator, Moma Group, on the renovated Hotel Barrière Le Fouquet’s Paris, on Champs Elysées. “Fouquet’s has been a Paris café institution since it opened in 1903 but far too many people, especially locals, did not realize we had gradually been able to buy the residential units above and turn them into a fully functioning hotel.
The public areas in the hotel part needed spice, so Moma Group came in and themed the lobby, called Marta, for my late grandmother. Designer Jacques Garcia hung some walls with black and white photos of easily recognizable celebrities, plus members of the extended Barrière family, and Moma Group runs the DJ, the bar, the whole ambience,” Desseigne Barrière explained.
He always knew he would enter the family business, but perhaps there were some who did not anticipate he would shake it up so much.
“By September this year I want to replace separate casino and hotel loyalty programs with one cross-group system so that someone staying in any Barrière hotel can dine in a free-standing restaurant or go to a casino, and charge the experience. By the end of December, I want to minimalize customer pain points, and I want all our employees to feel they have unique career paths. With an MBA in hospitality management (from ESSEC in Paris) I believe strongly that happy employees lead to happy guests, which leads to happy owners, which in the case of such a family company as Groupe Barrière, includes me, of course.”