Gérard Pélisson, a French hotelier and entrepreneur who co-founded the Accor Group and served as president of the Institut Paul Bocuse, lived from 9 February 1932 until 6 March 2023.
Pelisson graduated from MIT and earned his engineering degree from the École Centrale Paris in 1955.
Along with Paul Dubrule, he penned the history of the Accor Group adventure, which Transversales Éditions published in the Harmony of the Accor Group in September 2008.
He served as a patron of the International School of Business and Development 3A in 1993 as one of Charles Millon’s supporters.
From 1997 until 2023, Pelisson served as the Union des Français de l’Etranger’s president.
Gérard Pelisson Obituary
Along with his business partner Paul Dubrule, Pélisson founded the Accor corporation, which they expanded into the sixth-largest hotel chain in the world with 5,400 hotels operating under the Novotel, Ibis, Sofitel, Mercure, and Pullman brands in 100 nations.
His time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his first position at IBM both helped Pélisson gain a thorough understanding of American entrepreneurial culture.
He left IBM because he became fascinated by America’s standardized hotel business model and wanted to establish something comparable in France.