Following on from introducing the new Alumni Association Entrepreneurship Commission, we’re shining a spotlight on a number of Glion alumni entrepreneurs. Here we meet class of 2015 alumnus Hugo Libert who, after heading into law, made the switch to hospitality, specializing in finance, before becoming Managing Partner of luxury property management and concierge consultancy, My Hôtel Particulier.

After falling out of love with his French law degree, Hugo went in search of a Bachelor’s that went beyond academics and offered a more international student experience. He found it at Glion.

“I joined Glion to be a GM in a hotel, but then I discovered I was more interested in F&B; and later on I realized I liked finance better. So I did the finance specialization and loved it. And then through finance, I discovered real estate finance, which I really liked. And then from that, when Bloomberg came on campus I applied for a role.”

“I knew how to adapt to different situations, how to speak in public and how to present myself…”

Like many alumni, once in the interview Hugo found that the multicultural fluency, international exposure, and soft skills he possessed were highly valued by top employers. “I was a bit shy, but pretty much half of the interview was about my international experience in Glion, including my internship in China and how I adapted to different working styles and cultures.

“They said ‘we like the fact that you know how to deal with clients because obviously you went to hotel school, and here we deal with clients’. Once in the role I felt I was successful in Bloomberg because of this, because I knew how to behave in such a set up and how to adapt to different situations, people, cultures and languages, how to speak in public and how to present myself. All the stuff you learn in Glion.”

Fresh thinking for the family business

After starting with Bloomberg in real estate finance, Hugo moved to market finance and stayed with the software and media giant for five years, before heading back into hospitality with his family’s company, My Hôtel Particulier.

“We do property management and consultancy services in Paris – real estate and hospitality together pretty much. We manage properties for foreign owners, maintain them, oversee renovations, ensure furniture or art can be delivered, and also fill up the fridge when they fly in. We take care of the properties just like the owners would if they were home.

“My role now is to manage the company and the transition from my mother being CEO, to me being CEO. My mother hired me three years ago saying ‘I don’t have the energy to get the company into the next ten years, so I’d like you to rethink whatever needs to be rethought’. That’s pretty much my role on the operational side and also managerial and administrative. I’m in charge of finding new clients, managing finances, and I work on the strategy with the rest of the team.”

‘No’ is never an option

When it comes to the needs of his clients, Hugo’s hospitality mindset keeps him flexible, and focused on delivering a luxury service. “Every day we have clients asking for something new and if we started saying ‘no’, they would become quite disappointed. The clients create the needs and you have to adapt. In the hotel industry if you have someone showing up at the desk saying ‘I want this’, you say ‘okay, let’s make it happen’. That’s a valuable lesson you learn in Glion.

“I’m booking flights and holidays, meeting with his lawyer, representing him at the law firm because he’s too busy.”

“Recently, a client of mine was supposed to fly from Ibiza to Paris landing at 5pm, but he’d promised his daughters that he would pick them up from school. He asked me to change the flights, so I did it and I got him a refund on the existing flights. We started the relationship with this client around four years ago when he was refurbishing an apartment and needed someone on site to supervise. Now, I’m booking flights and holidays, meeting with his lawyer, representing him at the law firm because he’s too busy. We start with the apartment and we end up being like a family office.”

The five-year plan

Hugo is clear on what he wants to achieve for himself, the team and the business. “I want to double in size in five years, that’s the objective. We have roughly 25 clients and I’d like to have 50, and I’d like to hire a few representatives. Bottom line from a financial perspective, I feel I want to pay myself a certain amount in five years, and if I want to do that, if I want to get this much revenue for myself and my mom and my brother, and for the other people who work in a company, we need to double in size.”

An entrepreneurial education

When you’re an entrepreneur, you need to be comfortable doing every role in the business in order to get a startup off the ground. In Hugo’s eyes, Glion is the perfect preparation. “When people ask me ‘I’m considering a hospitality school, do you think it’s a good call? I always say you’ll be able to choose from a lot of career pathways when you graduate and you’ll probably be successful in the one you choose, because you will apply all of the social skills that you learn.

“Studying in Glion qualifies you to do great stuff in any company, a lot of people that graduated with me are working for big hotels, or in finance or real estate. A few of them work for Amazon in California, and when I was in Bloomberg there were around 15 people from Glion who were very successful.”

Thanks to Hugo for taking the time out to talk to us, and if you’re looking to invest in Parisian property, now you know who to contact within the Alumni network! And don’t forget to look up our previous alumni entrepreneur profile in the series, featuring Konstantinos Dimopoulos.

• To discover more about My Hôtel Particulier, follow the company on Instagram

Photo credit

Main image: Eva-Katalin/Getty