Search

×

Gostelow Report: Putting InterContinental Marseille on map

“The aesthetics of my job, with beautiful flowers and team fashion and the overall feel, remind me that as a child I wanted to be an architect,” says Madelijn Vervoord, general manager of InterContinental Marseille – Hotel Dieu, France.

The 194-room hotel is a blend of beautiful experiences, from the moment you arrive at its entrance, off place Daviel above Marseille’s historic Vieux-Port (Old Port). You look up, past gardens, 59 stone steps and the steep driveway, at the six-floor, C-shaped and sand-colored stone building, designed as a hospital in 1753 by the architect to King Louis XV of France. Today’s owners, the AXA insurance giant, spent, well, millions, lovingly converting it into what quickly became, after its 2013 opening, the city’s top-rated hotel.

“Marseille is a city that has always rebelled against the French norm,” said the Dutch-born GM. “You would have expected its signature hotel to have a French man in charge, but then I have always broken all the rules, I was a rebel from birth.” Fortunately her French is flawless, and as well as her native Dutch, she speaks fluent English and German, she is learning Spanish and she would like to learn Italian.

Madelijn Vervoord at front desk, InterContinental Marseille – Hotel Dieu, France
Madelijn Vervoord at front desk, InterContinental Marseille – Hotel Dieu, France

“I had to take six years of English in school plus three years each of French and German,” she explained. “At 18 I really had no idea what to do next—as well as architecture, I considered journalism. Then I met someone who had been at hotel school and it sounded like a good career opening that would lead to lots of travel, which I had always enjoyed (my father was an entrepreneur, trying different jobs, and I think we moved 15 times during my school days,” she recalled.

She went to Hotelschool The Hague, in The Netherlands, and they sent her to Paris for a temporary work-experience “stage,” At 10:28 a.m. on Aug. 29, 1988, she arrived at Le St-James & Albany, near Le Meurice. A young manager, Régis Lecendreux, was asked to look after her, as he has done ever since (they married in 1998 and now, in Marseille, he runs his own nationwide consultancy helping owners of independent hotels). “It makes such a difference to have an adviser and a sounding board, someone who every now and again tells me to take a step backward—at one time there was a spate of really vicious and personal online comments and he took over monitoring them,” she said with her characteristic cheerleading smile. Their jobs have worked in tandem. They both wanted to work in New York—he got a job first, but she soon joined Carlson’s Radisson empire. Back in France, she first worked for Castille Paris, a Preferred hotel next to Maison Chanel, and then InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel, where she reported to Didier Boidin, now head of luxury brands Europe for IHG.

“I loved Paris and the continuous challenges of running that historic hotel. In 2011 Didier Boidin asked me to look at the Marseille project and I refused, but he invited our family—our sons were then aged 9 and 11—to come for a weekend,” she recalled. Afterwards the elder son said no way he would move, because Marseille did not have an Apple Store. Three weeks later he learned Apple was coming to Marseille, and told his mother “that M. Boidin, he can work miracles.” Vervoord agreed to move and immediately threw all her energies into 18 months of pre-opening frenzy.

“Marseille needed putting on the global map before we could sell the hotel, but fortunately the mayor and the tourism board really listen. Near to opening we flew in Virtuoso agents for a hard-hat lunch, and later a laser show illuminated the entire building. The city was a world capital of culture in 2013, and it will be world capital of sport in 2017, which will bring in 250 different disciplines,” she explained. Sixty percent of her 250-member team are locals, who spread the word.

At that, she turns to look across Vieux-Port and up to the hilltop church opposite. “Every day I say wow, and urge everyone to come to France, especially right now,” she declared. 

Comment