Meet Arnaud Lecompte, independent hotelier and owner of the Tiercé Beach Hotel!

Arnaud Lecompte, Independent hotelier and owner of Tiercé Beach Hotel took part in the interview game: “Hotels, a profession, a meeting”. Thanks to him for taking the time to share with us his experience and his vision of the world on our sector.

Can you present yourself and your professional background?

My name is Arnaud Lecompte, I am the owner and director of the Tiercé Beach Hotel, a 3-star hotel with 23 rooms in Cagnes-sur-Mer.

I have spent my entire career in tourism: I first started with a tour operator from Marseille that marketed a hotel in Guadeloupe, then the offices were transferred to Paris and I stayed there for several years.

Then, I created a travel agency near Roissy-en-France for 5 years. After that I became a hotelier and operated a 2-star hotel with 33 rooms in Nîmes for 5 years.

Finally, I had the opportunity to take over the Tiercé Beach Hotel about ten years ago.

As the owner and manager of a hotel, what are your daily missions?

So it's very eclectic... This ranges from managing breakfasts to managing staff schedules, including small repairs or even supplier orders and room maintenance.

Obviously, taking reservations and managing all the hotel's upgrades to standards are essential. The missions are quite broad and diversified but that is what makes the job so charming. One of the big difficulties in all of this is managing deadlines.

It is a job that is very rewarding, very tiring too, because when you are responsible, you always have your head a bit busy and you are not always focused on what you are doing right now, because you are already thinking about the next task.

Relationships are also very important, with institutions for example, but the most important thing remains the relationship with customers and with the team.

You are also in charge of management, how long does that take you?

So, as it is a small business, I manage both the implementation of the dashboard, so there is of course technical assistance for that, but there is nothing like entering certain data yourself to be able to be certain that you will have the information you need to manage your business. In my opinion, you can have all the schedules in the world, if the data that is presented to you is not what you are looking for or need, you cannot move forward. So, you must be able to compare from one year to the next, a simple excel table can still be enough to manage the business well and plan ahead, which remains difficult in these short times, because people are booking more and more later.

And are repetitive tasks such as accounting and administrative tasks not too heavy?

This takes time but luckily over the years, we are offered tools that allow us to save time, such as accounting entry for example or even when it comes to a bank statement. Before, it was line by line, while now there is already a pre-entry that is done by the software which helps you save time.

Okay, thanks for that very comprehensive response.

What is your favorite thing about your job?

Undoubtedly, it is the exchange with the customer because I am a bit talkative, regardless of nationality. This is something that small hotels especially allow. This is, I think, in the opposite direction to what the major hotel industries are leading us. As a small independent hotel, the core of the job is to love people and interact with them, and that's what I like the most. Also, in fact, the drift in the new ranking of the hotelier, which leads us to put a tool for any task in order to avoid interactions with customers as much as possible, who wants us to put a robot that records the information, that does the “welcome”, it is not the same hotel and it is not the one that I like.

So you're really the contact?

This is the basis of our job, we are not sleep merchants. From there, we bring well-being and comfort and the exchange with the customer is part of it. After that, for some customers, it's not the time when they don't want it, you have to feel it. And I told you that I was talkative so that's the whole problem, I have to know how to stop. When I was a travel agent, I traveled everywhere by proxy with our customers, and that continues with the hotel. I remember meeting a Colombian woman who was full of color and empathy. It's been 15 years since I met her and I still have it in my head.

But it is true that in all this, the tools that are offered to us in the hotel industry such as schedules etc. allow us to regain this relationship with the customer that we tended to lose because we had our heads in statistics and schedules, and we forgot that we had to talk again and above all with the customer.

This therefore allows you to save time on other tasks to give priority to this time of exchange and welcome.

That's right, there is a very stupid thing, we are being pushed to have cards for opening doors in order to streamline the customer journey, to save on electricity, which is good if only for management. Here, we still have keys and asking to leave the keys at the reception allows for an exchange, even if only a “hello”, a “Is everything ok?” Thanks to this, we immediately have feedback that makes it possible to manage and prevent problems, to ensure that the customer's stay is pleasant.

What are the moments of interaction that are important?

Exactly, you don't have to go on a long tirade to have an exchange. However, there are also difficulties in this profession, namely the time-consuming side and the fact of being responsible for the activity that works 24 hours a day.

Things are changing very quickly in recent years; whether they are legislative, in terms of consumption, etc... Everything is happening very quickly and it is not easy for us, as a small independent person, to follow all this, but precisely, we have tools that allow us to monitor this, and you are one of them.

After the two years of Covid which were quite complicated, what do you think are the main challenges for independent hoteliers?

The first is financial, namely that for most of us have subscribed to PGEs, we are currently starting to repay them and this will greatly reduce our investment capacity over the next 3 to 4 years.

To this must be added the economic situation announced for the last quarter of 2022 with problems in Ukraine, energy problems and ecological problems.

The last point in my opinion concerns the teams, over the last 2 years we have increased salaries by an average of 10%, but we can see that this has already been erased by the current crisis. Currently it is very difficult to find motivated staff even if we provide training.

All these elements place us in a corner that is very difficult to grasp.

In general, what do you think of digital technology in your job?

As I said earlier, digital technology saves us time and that's great and important. There is feedback before and after stay, help to optimize additional sales... All this makes it possible to streamline and facilitate the exchange of information with customers who appreciate it more and more.

Beware, however, of the risk that this may cause: the loss of contact with the customer.

Yes, shouldn't we rely only on digital technology?

Exactly. Many large institutions are trying to change operational processes in order to replace teams with robots, cash registers.

To illustrate my remarks, I can take the example of supermarket cashiers where it is clear that everything is being done to make this profession disappear.

My fear is that the same thing will happen to hotel receptionists.

But I insist, we can clearly see that digital technology in the last few years like the evolution of the Internet, where, at the beginning, information arrived by drop and when we see today what fiber gives us, it is another world.

Digital technology is a phenomenal sales tool. But, we must not lose sight of the Human being who remains and will remain the basis of our profession.

What advice would you give to people who want to start as an independent hotelier?

First of all, it's a great adventure!

The basis is that you have to like people, if you don't like people and human contact is not worth it. You don't have to be especially commercial but you have to be a merchant, it's not the same thing. You have to know how to welcome.

Then, I would say that you should not count your time but you must know how to give yourself time to breathe. Maybe it's the danger, going to burn out and exhausting your head and body.

You also need to know how to delegate and that's not always easy. Often, it's not a question of trust, you can easily trust some employees, it's just not to be afraid.

Finally, you have to pay attention to the financial aspect, not to miss out and buy too expensive for example. In this sector of activity, these are not investments of 2 years but rather between 7 and 12 years.

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