Running your own establishment, or becoming a franchisee or traveling contractor, is an excellent way of achieving independence. Creating and running an accommodation facility, a restaurant or a leisure complex demands real entrepreneurial spirit.
As the director of an establishment or a franchise in the Horeca (hotel, restaurant, café) sector, you must also focus on securing the long-term future of your business.
Ranging from market research to administrative management, your activities are extremely varied:
Write a business plan:
to ensure that their concept is economically viable before buying or creating a business, an entrepreneur draws up a business plan. This document helps them promote their project to investors (banks, investment funds, etc.).
Manage administration and finance:
as the director of an establishment, you are in charge of the administrative and financial aspects of your business. You also oversee recruitment of your team.
Run the various departments:
depending on the size of their entity, the entrepreneur supervises one or more teams to guarantee standardized services of consistent quality.
Design the sales policy of the establishment:
the hotel, restaurant or tourism entrepreneur sets their own operating rules and sales policy. They also write their quality charter. If you start running a restaurant or an accommodation facility, you must also apply health and safety standards stringently.
Listen to your clientele:
as a hotel owner-operator, a restaurateur or a self-employed professional, your main focus is your clients’ wellbeing. Heading a full team, you also help look after your clients.
Monitor sales and profitability:
for an entrepreneur, tracking the profitability of their business is key. They endeavor to optimize sales and control business expenses.
Being your own boss doesn’t happen overnight. The role of entrepreneur is something that you learn and refine. It calls for certain technical skills, such as:
Any professional experience can be enough to start your own business. But given the huge number of parameters you have to deal with, specific training is a serious asset. The Entrepreneurial Management specialization offered by Vatel provides deeper expertise. It prepares you to run a business, while acquiring an in-depth knowledge of hospitality and successful strategies.
Your salary as a business owner will depend on your sales, so it is impossible to say. In 2021, the French tourism sector generated more than €28 billion, despite the global health crisis1 – which points to a healthy outlook for this market.
After building up their business, an establishment director can relocate, run several entities, create a new business…
The Vatel Hospitality Business School in Nantes, which specializes in Hotel and Tourism Management, equips you with a full set of tools to become an entrepreneur. In addition to the MBA in Hospitality, the school offers fifth-year students a specialization in Entrepreneurial Management, which is highly rated by industry professionals With 40 years of experience, the Vatel Group has four other campuses in France – in Paris, Lyon, Nîmes and Bordeaux – and over 50 campuses worldwide.
