" Hospitality means knowing how to welcome and care for peoplesays Sébastien Bazin, CEO of Accor. We wouldn't be doing our job properly if we didn't take care for those in distress" . As part of the social component of its CSR policy, the French hotel operator has joined forces with the Fondation des Femmes to offer a temporary accommodation solution to women who are victims of domestic violence.
The associations all note that finding a safety lock the time to find a long-term stay in permanent facilities is essential. " It's when women leave the house that violence increases and men bring out their weapons" says Julie Gayet, patron of the Fondation des femmes. Yet 4 out of 10 women are unable to find accommodation because of the saturation of emergency services and are forced to return home.
To make up for these shortcomings, Accor is going to finance the " Emergency shelter" . This initiative is based on the CEDA platform, which was launched at the start of the pandemic and has been used to offer one million nights at cost price to the homeless, care workers and 700 women and their children, for a total of 13,867 nights. " We saved lives together" Julie Gayet points out. " It has worked very well, enabling associations to find solutions in less than a day, compared with 5 to 10 days generally." explains Anne-Cécile Mailfert, President of the Women's Foundation. Unfortunately, due to a lack of funding, this solution was suspended until it was relaunched with Accor, the project also being financed by the BNP Paribas Foundation and Alternative Patrimoine.
Since last March, the Emergency Shelter programme has already benefited 148 women and their children, with an average stay of 19 days. With a nationwide presence, the Accor hotels taking part in the programme have the added advantage of offering a degree of discretion compared with the emergency solutions offered by the 115 helpline, which are familiar to violent men. All of this in conditions of comfort that are naturally far superior to social housing. " Hotel teams are mobilised and involved" says Brune Poirson, Accor's Director of Sustainable Development. It's a way of demonstrating, as Philippe Averseng, the Group's Director of Operations for France, did, that " hotels are places to live, in good times and bad" .
