France

After Rennes last March - and before Nice in 2024 - Mama Shelter is continuing its expansion in France's major provincial cities, with an opening announced for Dijon in July. Already present in Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Marseille and Toulouse, the lifestyle brand launched by the Trigano family and now part of the Mama Shelter network, has...

After the programme that gave birth to the TGV forty years ago, a project on the same scale - 100 billion euros - is preparing to revolutionise the French rail world in the decades to come. Not at high speed this time, but at the gentle pace of commuter or regional trains. A...

Beauvais, Ajaccio, Calvi as well as Paris-Orly, Bastia, Biarritz, Marseille, Montpellier and Nice. The first three will have managed to have passenger traffic above that of 2019. As for the other six airports on this list, they recorded a fall below the national average. In all, 14 airports in mainland France recorded...

Belambra is providing further proof of the sustained growth of the MICE sector in France. The French leader in holiday clubs will be dedicating four of its sites entirely to business customers during the peak seminar season. In May and June on the one hand, and in September-October on the other, the clubs at Anglet, La Grande Motte,...

Beauvais airport, 90 km north of Paris, has to manage its success. The hub, set in the middle of the fields of the Picardy plain, is in fact the only French airport to have managed to exceed in 2022 the traffic of the key year 2019, the last before the Covid crisis. Last year, Beauvais was...

Private jets have been in the eye of the storm for several years in France, particularly with the problems associated with pollution and global warming. Many left-wing and ecologist MPs are simply calling for a ban on general aviation in France, describing it as "aviation for the rich" in addition to the nuisance it generates. According to a...

With another day of general strikes against pension reform - the tenth - scheduled for Thursday 6 April, business travel in France is likely to be disrupted, but to a lesser extent than during previous strikes. As far as air travel is concerned, the French Civil Aviation Authority (DGAC) is not forecasting any disruption...

Following the success of Ouigo in Spain, SNCF plans to roll out its low-cost concept in Italy by 2026, according to information presented by Le Parisien on 15 March. Called Allegro, this project - which is due to be made official by SNCF shortly - involves operating high-speed trains on the Turin-Milan-Rome-Naples routes...

Choice Hotels has just announced a refresh of its Ascend Collection brand, which now focuses on a "world dedicated to Hygge". Why this change? Jonathan Mills - Without all travellers being aware of it, the Ascend Collection, which now includes almost 70 hotels in Europe, was the first 'collection' brand in the world, before it became the first 'Hygge' brand in...

While IHG has made the luxury and lifestyle hotel sector one of its main areas of development, this strategy does not obscure the fact that, in addition to all the InterContinental, Kimpton and Regent hotels to come, the Holiday Inn family of brands remains one of its most solid growth guarantees. Between them, the Holiday...

The new segmentation of Appart'City's offering will soon be taking shape. After sketching out the outline last autumn, France's leading provider of city apartment hotels has set 3 April as the launch date for its new brand architecture. Previously, its offering was based on two ranges, Appart'City and Appart'City Confort...

Euroairport Basel-Mulhouse is steadily strengthening its position in holiday destinations to the Mediterranean. This can be seen in the timetable for the summer 2023 flight plan (valid from 26 March 2023 to 28 October 2023). The Franco-Swiss hub will nevertheless offer 100 destinations on direct flights. The Mediterranean and North Africa in the spotlight On...

Air France is returning to a similar schedule of services this summer as in 2019. The airline is responding to strong passenger demand and will be offering up to 835 flights a day to 191 destinations in 89 countries from the end of March. This development particularly concerns long-haul, with 85 destinations. The reopening of...

"A very, very good year", as Olivier Cohn, General Manager of Best Western France, describes it. Unsurprisingly, in line with the results published by other major players in the global hotel industry, Best Western had a very positive year in 2022. The reservation centre's worldwide sales rose by...

How would you present the advantages of the Logis Hôtels Group to a business customer who doesn't already know you? Karim Soleilhavoup - An extraordinary network, with a hotel every 11 km throughout France, an experience that will be different every time, a guarantee of a good night's sleep and good food, particularly through...

B&B Hotels has just announced its expansion ambitions in the United States. Why has the time come to tackle this market? Fabrice Collet - It's always time to lay the foundations for our future growth. Historically, B&B Hotels has always set its sights on new territories, be it Germany in 2000, Italy in 2010,...

Hyatt and Marriott are continuing to develop their brands outside Paris, particularly in Normandy. Already announced in 2018, the opening of a Hyatt Place in Rouen will take place at the end of this year. The result of the transformation of a former school building dating back to the 19th century, the École normale d'institutrices, this new hotel is part of a project to...

On Friday, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne made official what she described as the "new deal for rail". And she confirmed the figure that had already been circulating for a few hours - and even for several months, in Jean-Pierre Farandou's speech - i.e. 100 billion euros. "We are choosing to give priority to investing in...

The B&B Hotels group is preparing to cross the Atlantic. This is not a first, since the budget hotel specialist has already set up in the West Indies, with a first establishment in Martinique, Fort de France, as well as in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in particular. But this time, the challenge is huge....

Eklo is currently setting up near Paris CDG airport. What other developments can you expect? Emmanuel Petit - After Eklo Roissy, this year we will open our tenth establishment in Montpellier, opposite the TGV station. And we now aim to double in size over the next five years....