Our industry professional lecturers... veritable experts and role models!
The teaching body at Excelia Tourism School is comprised predominantly of experienced professionals working in the hospitality, events, and leisure sectors. Either French or international, currently living in France or coming from abroad specifically to deliver their lessons, these specialists impart their expert knowledge in their respective fields to students on our Bachelor and Master of Science programmes.
Frequently called upon to sit on admissions panels and on External Review Committees for both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, these industry professional lecturers are highly skilled specialists with an excellent capacity for communicating with students. The following testimonials may well inspire you to join Excelia as a student... or perhaps as a lecturer!
The importance of doing what you love!
When Eugénie Pereira began her studies, she had intended to major in industrial marketing. However, in her first year she became involved in various clubs and associations, where she discovered the world of event management. She therefore switched to international management, carrying out all her internships with a professional conference organiser in Mexico and Belgium. She then spent two and a half years working for a smaller agency in Belgium where she was responsible for organising medical congresses and setting up framework agreements with the European Commission. Following that, from 2012 to 2016 she worked for the MCI Group, a Swiss events and business tourism company, with 60 offices across 31 countries.
In 2016, Eugenie went on a 9-month trip. Upon her return, after having had time to think about everything, she felt confident that she really did love her field of work... business tourism! So, she decided to launch her own company. Her area of expertise? MICE… Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions i.e. congresses and conferences exclusively in the B2B sector.
Since the start of her career, she has organised some 40 conferences and congresses. She doesn’t work in France, and very little in Belgium... her real expertise is in the international arena, in particular England, Germany, South Africa and the Balkans.
Eugénie teaches on Year 3 of the Bachelor in Tourism and Hospitality Management programme on both the French Track and the English Track, delivering some 25 hours of lessons to 3 different groups of students, including a large number of international students.
“Sometimes I have 6-7 hours of back-to-back lessons, teaching about 50 students in an amphitheatre... it’s like giving a stage performance, you have to really motivate and inspire them!”
But Eugénie loves her job, and her passion for teaching is what drives her!
The importance of doing what you love in life and then sharing it with others… this is what she wants the students of the Tourism School to understand.
She teaches them about how exciting but complex organising a congress can be.
“Anyone can handle logistics! However, a congress has to be profitable, it is a very long process, a collaborative effort with calls for papers and so on”, explains Eugénie. “Apart from the technical aspects, and the health and safety constraints, in Europe everything is highly controlled and structured… sometimes one single matter entails more than 50 emails! And, sometimes, although the project itself might stay the same, your client representatives may change”, she adds.
Her aim is to make students understand that every time a decision is made, it can have a domino effect on someone or something.
She also conveys the message that despite two years of COVID… “people haven’t stopped living, there is still plenty of work in tourism!” She teaches them that “in these professions, you can’t work alone, it’s all about teamwork”. Although Eugenie has a wealth of experience, she is aware that she is also constantly learning from the students... a veritable exchange of knowledge!
Developing an openness to the world, gaining new perspectives!
Exchanging ideas, being listened to, feeling reassured... Yes, this is a need felt by students, but also by Frédéric Dumoulin. “It’s not just a mere teacher/student relationship... it’s all about considering the individual and creating links”, says Frédéric. This industry professional lecturer explains that back in his day he would have loved to have had the same opportunities as Excelia Tourism School students, namely an impressive variety of resources available and a quality collection at the media library, offering access to an extensive range of content.
Frédéric himself raises many questions about the hotel and tourism industry and its capacity for resilience, relaying a number of positive solutions based on his international experience. Twenty years working for the Accor Group took him to various countries including the United Arab Emirates, South Korea and Singapore, where he held various regional and managerial positions in Sales, Marketing, and Distribution. He then worked in Sales Support, Digitalisation, and Sourcing (supplier identification and appraisal), again in the Asia-Pacific region, this time for the German group HRS. The health crisis prompted him to move into the sharing economy through a Renault-Nissan subsidiary based in England, ‘Karhoo’. Then in 2022, he began working as a freelancer for a hotel group in the Maldives with various roles and responsibilities such as identifying new trends, digital structuring, distribution, and transformation.
Just after completing his EMBA at the National University of Singapore, Frédéric participated in admissions panels at Excelia, before starting to teach on its programmes in September 2021. With around 100 teaching hours per year, divided between the Bachelor modules ‘Entrepreneurship’, ‘Marketing in the Hospitality Industry’ and ‘Sales and Distribution in the Hospitality Industry’, he introduces students to an entrepreneurial mindset, the different types of businesses, and the complexities of sales in the tourism industry.
His career and his recent return to studies have given him a different perspective from the Western way of seeing things.
“Students don’t necessarily understand the intercultural aspects. They are often wide-eyed when I start talking to them about cultural differences”, he explains. “For some, it is the first time they’ve ever heard of the ‘African economy’, for example. It’s about having a good understanding of the countries where everything is well organised and readily accessible, versus the others.”
It’s also about arousing the interest of these young adults, aged 20-25, whether on the French Track or the English Track, and Frédéric is always delighted to be back in lessons, combining theory with practice.
“I enjoy working with them, it’s so rewarding. The students and I listen attentively to each other and really appreciate the time we have together. I believe that if I can broaden their outlook, if I can get them to consider ‘the entire journey and not just the destination’, then I will have done my job!”
A profession at the forefront of change
Exactly ten years ago, Alliaume Martin graduated from Excelia with a Bachelor qualification known at the time as ‘Creation and Management of Tourism Companies’, at the end of which he was offered a permanent contract with the company Voyage privé. “However, the types of jobs that really interested me involved designing tourism products and were only open to graduates with at least 5 years of higher education”, explains Alliaume. He therefore decided to join a business school in Bordeaux to complete a Master in Hospitality Management with the idea of doing an internship in Revenue Management*, a domain he first discovered during his undergraduate studies in La Rochelle. “It was thanks to Excelia and the lessons given by Mr Chapuis that I discovered my vocation.”
He then joined the Accor group as a Junior Revenue Manager working for a 700-room Ibis hotel for 18 months, evolving to Senior Revenue Manager in charge of data for two hotels in Montmartre (Ibis and Mercure), before being appointed to actually oversee a team of Revenue Managers in 2018!
“Revenue Management is a relatively new profession, which is evolving rapidly, changing every 18 months or so. There are a lot of jobs being created and great opportunities, and at the moment there are few people trained in RM.”
As well as giving insight into the strategies implemented by destinations, RM is a subject that generates many interesting topics, such as
‘Is Booking a partner or an enemy for accommodation providers?’. “This provokes lively discussions with students, because you don’t need to be an expert, you just need to use your common sense!” he adds.
For the past 5 years, Frédéric has been involved in Excelia Bachelor in Tourism and Hospitality Management, as well as with students on a work-study track, working in tandem with another lecturer, who imparts the theory. “I talk to them about tools used on a daily basis, giving them real-life examples, practical applications”, explains Alliaume, who takes a few days off from his job at Accor to come and teach at the school “because… it is Excelia after all!” Students often end up contacting him again later in life.
“I try to advise them; I see it as a kind of ‘after-sales service’. I really enjoy being at Excelia and passing on my knowledge. In fact, passing on knowledge is what I do every day in RM: liaising with and training the personnel from the hotel’s various departments. I make Excel tables intelligible to people with very different requirements.”
To help his students gain a better understanding of the challenges of RM in the hotel industry using practical cases, Alliaume would like to design a business game involving more of a ‘competitive spirit’ rather than simply competition between the groups.
The pleasure of learning, the pleasure of teaching… the transmission of savoir-faire and interpersonal skills by industry professional lecturers reflects our desire to place companies at the heart of pedagogy. We genuinely hope that, having been taught well, our tourism students will, in turn, impart their knowledge within the companies they subsequently join!
*Revenue Management: a principle of forecasting analysis using market data
