GOSTELOW REPORT—”Being actively involved in setting up a hotel school is actually quite like opening a hotel,” says Dagmar Woodward, honorary president of France’s newest hotel school, Ecole Ferrières, Hôtellerie Gastronomie Luxe, an hour’s drive east of Paris.
Her extensive hotel career included two openings. She was F&B at the launch of The Willard InterContinental in Washington, D.C., in 1986 (“its GM, Graham Jeffrey, still remains my number-one mentor”). The swan song to a 30-year career was as opening GM of Jumeirah Frankfurt, Germany.
“When that was up and running, in August 2014, I called it a day. I did a volunteering course in integrating refugees into German life, traveled between our bases in France and Germany and caught up with a lot of friends.”
At that point a one-time colleague from her InterContinental Paris – Le Grand days, Pierre Frangieh, comes into the story. He had been asked by another member of the city’s Lebanese diaspora, Khalil Khater, to oversee the stately Château de Ferrières in Brie.
Designed by English architect Joseph Paxton for Baron James de Rothschild, it was inaugurated in 1862 by Napoleon III. Two of the Baron’s descendants, David and Edouard Rothschild, gave the building and its 32 acres of magnificent grounds to the Municipality of Ferrière en Brie. Khater, whose many professional interests include owning mid-level hotels and running a highly successful outsourced cleaning company, has a 70-year lease on the whole complex.
“Khalil Khater thought France, his adopted home, needed a hotel school for the 21st century. He had the location, and then he persuaded me, and a few other managers,” Frangieh explained.
The school was announced to top media on December 3, 2014, but, in a chicken-and-egg situation, it had no students. By the start of the first semester, September 2015, it had 36 students: The initial 20-strong faculty was augmented with visiting professors, employed one class at a time. “Again, in a which-comes-first situation, we needed, and got, a whole sheaf of educational and legal permits from the municipality.”
Woodward’s involvement grew naturally from a visit to the château in summer 2015. She was soon giving friendly professional support, and, in September 2018, she assumed her official role, for a three-year term.
“I am at the school at least once a week. The first graduating class of our 46 bachelors’ students, from 23 countries, was memorable: They and their families were entertained in the Rothschilds’ ballroom, hung with historic family portraits with a delicate touch of modern design by Pierre-Yves Rochon. That initial graduating class are already working – one is at Four Seasons Bora Bora, in French Polynesia,” Woodward said.
The next intake, which starts this September, will see a total of 250 students, a mix of those on three-year BA courses, their choice English or French, plus MBAs and short-term trainings. One lure, to new students as well as their parents, is a contract guarantee that sees graduates receive a monthly €1,500 (US$ 1,700) stipend if they do not get suitable jobs. Prospective students also appreciate stated values that include adaptability, humility and openness to such ideas as technology integration.
“Khahil Khater believes that without tech any hotel school will die. We are setting up Human Tech Valley, which will eventually have four areas. Its Learning Home with School 89 technology opens June 2020, as does the Hospitality Lab: these will be followed by a Start up Farm and a Human Tech Jungle”, explained Woodward and Frangieh.
All areas will complement the curriculum’s mainstream hotel skills, such as front office, housekeeping, revenue and the extremely important culinary, which is led by Patrick Juhel MOF (for Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, granted to France’s best in over 200 varieties of skills, including graphic design and taxidermy: In culinary, the last assessment saw 500 hopeful entrants, of whom only seven won the MOF designation).
Thanks to three supporting banks, Khater’s budget for Ecole Ferrières, Hôtellerie Gastronomie Luxe is €70 million (US$79 million). Just as if it were her own hotel, the complex’s honorary president shows off an already operating block of some of the 280 student apartments that are next to three-floor classroom blocks, 300 yards from the main château.
Sports and entertainment facilities are scheduled, as is a 100-room luxury level hotel, right in the château grounds (“we already have planning permission”, said Woodward).
As well as running their own canteen, and helping with two château restaurants, highly profitable because of the large number of prominent French companies within 20 minutes’ drive, soon students will also be able to help out in an additional bio-organic dining venue at the château, plus a fun Italian restaurant opening in the center of Paris within the next few months.
They already do stages in the Khater-owned 232-key, 4-star hotel Paxton, 10 minutes from the school, and a second Paxton, with 150 rooms, in Barcelona, Spain, will open before yearend.
Woodward is intricately involved in helping Frangieh in all these activities. “I am always amazed at how much is going on here, in and around the château. Every day, too, there are an average of 600 covers produced and served, not only in the students’ canteen but in the other restaurants, and there are weddings and other one-off functions, inside and out, sometimes up to 1,500 guests,” she explained.
Her main motivation for involvement at the school, however, is the exhilaration of sharing with a younger generation.
“We want to go up to 1,000 students in all, and perhaps open a second campus in Barcelona. Many of the more established hotel schools have been to look at us but we are not for sale, we do not want to be too closely affiliated. And yes, I could do this without having had a hotel career but all those years working my way up have given me more depth.”