Travel Club: "ESSEC Has an Excellence Network in this Sector"

The ESSEC Alumni Travel Club brings together graduates and students on all the ESSEC programmes in the travel, transport, tourism, hospitality and leisure sectors. Stéphane Chirié (E98), the Club’s volunteer head, presents its activities.

ESSEC Alumni: What does your club offer? 

Stéphane Chirié: We organise 6 to 8 events a year, attracting anything from 30 to 120 participants, around topical themes in our sector, its key figures, leading brands or the most innovative start-ups. The aim is to maintain the momentum of our community and help our members boost their professional networks.

EA: What type of events do you organise?

S. Chirié: There are diverse formats, such as conferences, panel discussions, networking workshops or exclusive visits and so on. Some events are organised alone, others in partnership with the Tourism & Management Club (TMC), which encompasses HEC Tourism and ESCP Europe Travel, Food & Hospitality, or with alumni clubs of institutions such as the Lausanne Hospitality Business School (EHL) and ISAE Sup’aéro (National Higher French Institute of Aeronautics and Space). We sometimes offer special admission rates to exclusive events like the Next Tourism Fair. 

EA: Do you organise activities alongside other ESSEC Alumni clubs?

S. Chirié: We co-organise certain events with other clubs. For instance, we teamed up with the Transition Club  for an Air Transport fresk or with the Real Estate, Cities and Territories Club for a round table on the roles of project management support, designers and architects in hotel building. Within the ESSEC network, we’re also lucky to have alumni from IMHI, the world’s best hospitality MBA, who we meet with regularly thanks to Monika Moser (IMHI 10), President of the AAIMHI.

EA: What other projects does your club have?

S. Chirié: We’d like to organise more informal after-work events in unusual and offbeat venues, team up with other schools to launch joint events, recruit correspondents from the sector’s major companies or encourage ESSEC faculty and students to get more involved in sustainable development issues.

EA: How can alumni contribute to the actions of your club?

S. Chirié: First of all, join our group on the ESSEC Alumni website, and also subscribe to our ESSEC Travel page and the ESSEC Travel group on LinkedIn, so you can follow all our news. Don’t hesitate to share your suggestions for themes, guest speakers or venues with us, or any other ideas you may have, via the email address clubtravel@essec.edu. Lastly, as I mentioned, we’d like to recruit company correspondents. If you work in the travel, tourism, transport, hospitality or leisure sectors, send us an application by email. We’re looking for motivated individuals to help us contact their managers and invite them to speak at one of our events, or to relay our events to their ESSEC colleagues. 

EA: How is your team organised?

S. Chirié: We have 8 members in the bureau: Jacques Bonafé (EXEC M16), Head of Construction Europe with Easyhotel Group; Agnès Brigot (EXEC M99), Project Manager at Namasté; Isabelle Daubié (EXEC M21), a freelance manager specialised in transformation and customer relations; Inès Delacour (IMHI 17), Deputy Director of the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles venue at Viparis; Guillaume Filly (EXEC PROG 14), Managing Director of GF Hotel & Travel Consulting; Alice Gay (E15), head of accommodation for La Réserve Paris – Hotel and Spa; Jonathan Raimbault (EXEC PROG 21), Sales and Programme Director at ASL Airlines France, and myself, the founder of Sab System.

Interview by Louis Armengaud Wurmser (E10), Content Manager at ESSEC Alumni 

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