Emmanuelle Tulliez : Alban, can you tell us how and why you created JOST?
Alban Ruggiero :I come from a catering background, I started my career in the hotel business and I always knew that I was an innkeeper, that the hotel business was my field and that I wanted to develop this sector.
When I started thinking about what I could do, I had several convictions. The first was to target as broad a market as possible, and in particular a market where nothing much had happened for some time, where there was a real status quo, particularly in the budget hotel sector. Of course, there were the big French players already present, but nothing new was disrupting this market.
That’s when the idea came to me. I started by thinking about hostels, because France is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, yet we didn’t have a structured chain of quality hotels. When you travel, you don’t find homogeneous, structured offers. So I started with hostels, thinking we’d develop this vertical.
But I soon realized that we also needed to find solutions for winter. A hotel can be full in summer, but it also needs to generate income in winter. That’s why we created this hybrid budget hotel brand, capable of attracting business travelers, backpacker groups and families alike.
And the final point, which is a strong business conviction of mine, is that when you attack a market, you must always aim for the top end. So, even in the face of brands like JO&JOE, we wanted to position JOST in a premium segment, to offer something more.
Emmanuelle Tulliez : Benjamin, can you tell us a little about Turenne Capital before we get into the details of why you decided to support JOST?
Benjamin Altaras…
