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High Profile: Georges Le Mener
President and CEO, Accor Lodging North America

By Steve Quinn / The Dallas Morning News 
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News 

October 27, 2002 - Several years ago Georges Le Mener stunned Armand Sebban � a man he had known for nearly five years � during an annual performance review. Mr. Le Mener is chief executive and president of Accor Lodging North America in Addison, and he listed two goals for Mr. Sebban, his chief financial officer. 

First, take golf lessons. Second, take four weeks of vacation. 

The message was clear: Enjoy your work, but cherish your time off. 

"He meant it," Mr. Sebban says. "He's critical about balance between business and pleasure, but he does it with a sense of humor, and not many company presidents can do it." 

Georges Le Mener has been doing it since 1992. 

That's when Accor � a French lodging company � entrusted Mr. Le Mener with turning around the recently acquired Motel 6 operations. 

He took a motel chain that was losing $40 million a year and, within five years, turned it into a $100 million-a-year-plus hospitality business. And he did it while taking strokes off his golf game. 

He did it by convincing the Accor board of directors to invest $600 million for an 86,000-room upgrade, to be completed in a six-year period. 

He did it by following through on a pledge to visit each of the 750 Motel 6 properties, an endeavor that took two years. 

He did it by spending time with and listening to hotel managers, front-desk staff and members of the cleaning crew. 

No one factor drove the turnaround. But by renewing the faith of customers and employees, he reinvented the brand and brought back profitability. 

"You can't understand what's happening unless you meet people who work for you and the customer," he says. "The real business is done by the people on the front line. "As a CEO, I always believe if you stay near the headquarters and rely on the structure you cannot rely on what is happening. "You need to be out there and see things for yourself. You spend one hour in the lobby and talk to the customer, that's how you learn. Not by reading reports." 

A boy in Paris 

As a child growing up in Paris, Georges Le Mener thought he was going to be a chef. At age 12, he started working at his parents' restaurant, Au Repos De La Montagne, a neighborhood brasserie. For the next four years, young Georges cleaned tables and waited on patrons, but his third duty � cooking � was his passion. 

In 1963, at age 15, he decided to forgo a college education � and risk being labeled an uneducated man � to pursue the culinary arts. He enrolled in Ecole Hôtelière de Paris, a hospitality school with a curriculum that included summer training at the Sagamore Hotel, in Lake George, N.Y. 

The budding chef fell in love with working in New York and wanted to stay, but with relations between France and the United States strained in the mid-1960s, he could not get his visa renewed. 

Still, the time overseas was well-spent. "There was a sense of freedom and belief that anybody could make it in the U.S.," he says. "It was a much more open society than France at the time. 

"It didn't matter what school you went to here, but in France, it was much more important. What you have done at school follows you for the rest of your life. "In France, what school you went to was so important that you would see people putting the school they graduated from on their business cards." 

He returned to France with his sights still set on the family business. But somehow he knew he would be back in New York. 

Before Mr. Le Mener could resume working at Au Repos with his parents, he had a two-year military obligation to fulfill. He spent most of his service working as a maitre d' for Prime Minister Georges Pompidou, a man who loved to entertain. 

Military duty ended in 1968, and Mr. Le Mener managed his parents' restaurant while his father, Roger, recovered from a heart attack. When his parents returned to work the next year, however, there was not enough room in the kitchen for everyone. 

"My mother [Simone], she had a strong personality, and I inherited her personality," he says, "so it became clear that there was no way we could work together." 

So, in 1969, he wrote a letter to Paul Dubrule, co-founder of Novotel. The 3-year-old hotel company hired Mr. Le Mener to be food and beverage manager at its third hotel, a facility comparable to a Holiday Inn, in Marseille. 

There he met his wife, Annie, and began embarking on a career of professional growth that mirrored the company's ascent in the lodging industry. 

By 1983, Novotel owned 150 hotels and had changed its name to Accor � something short and easily pronounced by most foreigners. Mr. Le Mener was overseeing operations and human resources training when the company decided it was time to have a decision-maker based in the United States to oversee its properties here. Mr. Le Mener accepted a transfer to New York, where he spent six years working to build Accor's global hotel network. In 1989, he was recalled to Paris to serve as director of the office of the chairman. 

"I was put in the ultimate political job," he says. "It was like being the chief of staff in the White House. You are involved with everything, but you are not the one making the decision. 

"You are the one preparing the decisions. I find that absolutely frustrating. But it was a great experience. I was exposed to basically every kind of problem the chairman was involved with." 

In August 1990, Accor purchased the Dallas-based Motel 6 chain. It was a transaction Mr. Le Mener had pushed for when he was in New York. It also represented a chance to become a decision-maker again. 

Almost two years later, Mr. Le Mener moved back to the United States, but this time things would be different. 

Coming to Dallas 

Georges Le Mener came to Dallas with a plan. Motel 6, a company losing millions a year, would be respected and profitable. 

Each change would take the kind of time and patience not readily found in the U.S. business world that seeks immediate returns and places credence in quarterly results. 

Mr. Le Mener's path to profitability may have sounded ambitious, but former Motel 6 executive Emmett Gossen says Mr. Le Mener is a realist. "He doesn't sit around and invent things that cannot be done," says Mr. Gossen, who retired last year. "That's what makes him an effective leader. 

"Whatever direction he gives, people know they are going to be able to carry it out. He's not a financial officer, but he's good with numbers, and that's the trump card he's got." 

By 1995, Motel 6 began turning profitable. In 1999, Accor introduced Studio 6, an extended-stay hotel, and purchased Red Roof Inns. All are under Mr. Le Mener's umbrella. 

"I like the way of American life better now than ever," he says. "I'm 10 times more independent here than if I have the same responsibility in Paris. "It's very difficult for any European country to succeed in the U.S. But I'm a competitive guy; give me a challenge and I'm ready for it." 

While helping Acccor Lodging North America grow, Mr. Le Mener never veered from the balanced-life philosophy he imparted to Mr. Sebban, the company CFO. 

When he wasn't traveling, Mr. Le Mener saved evenings for family dinners and weekends for rounds of golf with his wife. 

"He works hard because of the position he's in, and he needs to be informed because of the position he's in," says son Loic, 24, who works in customer service for a large investment firm. "But I picture a workaholic as someone who goes above and beyond because of having a lack of something to do and that's not him." 

Mr. Le Mener still cherishes dining out but rarely passes up the chance to prepare his own meals � Dover sole, pepper steak and bananas flambé. 

"Your life shouldn't be 100 percent work; you need to concentrate on the positive things and be happy. I'm just trying to take advantage of the things I love." 

E-mail [email protected] 

To see more of The Dallas Morning News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.dallasnews.com

© 2002, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.



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