We won’t ask you to tell us about your whole career, it would take too long, but would you be able to choose the one moment that stands out the most for you?

I was lucky to live and take part in the launch of a winter sports resort: Avoriaz. I learned that the main qualities a manager can have are: reactivity, creativity, being willing to take risks, some common sense and a lot of will. From managing hotel units and tourism residences to commercializing them worldwide, while participating to the creation of the wonderful Avoriaz film festival, it was an experience I will never forget and refer to all the time.

You travelled worldwide and visited almost every country on the planet… It is time to reveal what your favorite place in the world is!

My home in the south of France…  and Paris. I am a citizen of the world and I feel at ease everywhere but there is no place like home.

Interface Tourism France, Spain, Italy… When will we hear about Interface Saigon or Tombouctou?

Tomorrow is another day! In a globalized world, it would be absurd not to reach more than one market, or even two or three. Indeed, the bid solicitations we are answering to are more and more multi-market, often European and now global. Of course, we have a network of partners more or less occasional, which enables us to answer to one-time requests. However, this does not fit the scale of the challenge we will be facing in the near future when the International Tourism market will have 1.5 billion consumers per year. It is a necessity to create a real integrated network, first at the European scale, and then worldly… We are working on it!

When you are travelling whole around the globe, what is your favorite hobby?

Reading. But mostly essays. I would also like to play golf again.

Your whole career is based around the tourism industry. This sector has known a lot of transformation throughout the years. For you, what is the main challenge of this constantly shifting ecosystem?

Its industrialization. I don’t mean massification. Not only do we have to think about added value, but also about the creation and the necessary evolution of products with respect to the diversity and the constant changes of consumers’ demand and technologies.

If you hadn’t work all your life in the tourism industry, what would you have liked to do?

When I was young, I had a passion: astronomy. But when I was 16, I was granted the Zellidja travel grant. I travelled though Great Britain with a bicycle to discover the astronomical observatories of the country. This is when I discovered my second passion: travelling. Later, I discovered Jack Kerouac and “On The Road”… This confirmed my answer: tourism, without the shadow of a doubt!

An idea of the number of travels that you may have done? How many miles have you accumulated? Would it be enough to fly the whole Interface Tourism team for a workshop in Bora Bora…?

You don’t keep record when you like something…

© Gabriel de Castelaze – Flickr CC 2.0 (Header)