New head of Sofitel to raise salaries and responsibilities

Bruno Vinette, who worked in Moscow for three years running the operations of a Novotel hotel, became the new general manager of the Sofitel Hotel in Bucharest this January. Softiel is part of the World Trade Center Bucharest (WTCB) complex.

He took over the management of Sofitel after the mandate of the former manager, Luc Gesvret, expired.

The main objectives of the new manager will be increasing the hotel’s visibility, implementing a new employee rewards policy based on performance and revenue boosting through developing the conference segment.

“To hit these targets, we will not hire additional staff, but will increase the responsibilities of existing employees in parallel with salary rises. We will implement a rewards policy for each department, depending on the degree to which certain objectives, established on a monthly basis, are achieved,” said Vinette.

A four-star hotel, Sofitel has 202 rooms and 250 employees. The hotel is operated under a management contract with the French hotel chain Accor.

“Financially speaking, my intention is to achieve at least the same results as in 2004, when the hotel’s revenues rose by 15% to 8 million euros and profits grew 23%. Romania is becoming of increasing interest to foreign businessmen and this is boosting the demand for hotel services,” he added.

“We want to be more aggressive on the hotel market, but will first increase the quality of services and only then focus on marketing and promotion,” explained the new manager.

The hotel has an average occupancy rate of 70%, and about three quarters of the hotel’s guests are foreigners, mostly French, Italian, German and Japanese. About one quarter of the hotel’s revenues come from organising events, while catering operations (Food & Beverage) are increasing in importance.

Together with the French Village and the French Club, Sofitel is part of the World Trade Center Bucharest complex, which recently had to renounce some assets in order to pay its debts to creditors.

According to Vinette, last year saw WTCB negotiate and pay its debts to local banks, the Accor chain and the Chamber of Trade and Industry. It now only has debts to the General Council of Bucharest Municipality (CGMB) and the State Assets Resolution Authority (AVAS).

Last year, WTCB’s debts to AVAS fell to 5.6 million euros following the transfer of the French Village to AVAS, estimated at 14.7 million euros.
georgiana.stavarache@zf.ro