“The finest projects are not always born from a market study or a business plan. They are sometimes born from an intuition, an encounter, or a conviction strong enough to give meaning to what one builds.”
Entrepreneurs are often asked why they started their company. They are more rarely asked why they chose hospitality to do it.
Yet the question deserves to be asked.
At a time when hospitality talks of artificial intelligence, international development, financial performance or new business models, this special feature tells a rather different story.
That of women who chose to devote their time, their energy and, at times, part of their professional lives to imagining experiences for others.
Their own story might come down to three verbs: to welcome, to create, and to pass on.
But over the course of these interviews, another conviction emerged.
This feature does not simply tell the story of the birth of four companies. It also tells five distinctive ways of looking at the world.
One still writes her projects in notebooks that never leave her side. Another continues to believe that true luxury lies in feeling seen, understood and expected. A third admits she prefers to witness the birth of projects rather than simply their operation. Two others champion the long time it takes for the places they imagine to emerge.
None of them appears to have chosen hospitality for quite the same reasons. Yet all give it the same place: that of a profoundly human industry.
That, perhaps, is what surprised us most.
We asked them the same questions. None answered in quite the same way. And yet their answers sometimes echo one another in surprising ways.
THE ENTREPRENEURS AT A GLANCE 👀
5 entrepreneurs – 4 companies – 3 continents covered – 1 shared conviction: the human always comes before the experience.
One question, five answers
They don’t know each other. They are not building the same companies. They do not imagine the same places, and they are not responding to the same challenges.
At first glance, nothing seems to bring them together.
One supports the digital transformation of hotel properties. Another envisions a new generation of African boutique hotels. A third contributes to the birth of premium hospitality and dining concepts, while two others reinvent the links between strategy, interior architecture and guest experience.
Their paths differ. Yet their answers sometimes echo one another in surprisingly similar ways.
All of them speak of legacy before speaking of success. Of emotion before performance. Of encounters before careers.
More surprising still, they speak remarkably little of themselves.
They prefer to tell the story of a mentor who changed how they saw their profession, a client whose particular request they never forgot, a region whose emergence they wish to support, or places whose identity has yet to be imagined.
As if entrepreneurship in hospitality were less about wanting to build a company than a certain way of looking at others.
It is perhaps there, even before the first pound of revenue or the first funding round, that the true birth of a project takes place.
This special feature tells that shared conviction.
FIRST MOVEMENT | The Time of Encounters
In each of their accounts, one word recurs with striking regularity: encounter.
Mentors, colleagues, investors, chefs, general managers and entrepreneurs all appear, people they readily credit with having taught them a great deal. They speak more of the people who shaped their paths than of the roles they held.
As if hospitality were still, to a large extent, passed on through the people who bring it to life.
For Fatimata Bailly Nafo, encounters seem to have accompanied every major step of her professional life. She was, however, originally destined for international diplomacy. In hindsight, that first vocation doesn’t seem so far removed from what she is building today. It is still a matter of encounters, of territories and of dialogue between cultures. Only the settings have changed.
There is something in her that resembles a happy impatience — that of builders who fill notebooks with future projects before even finishing the previous ones. When she speaks of entrepreneurship, she speaks less of courage than of self-effacement, a word she says she learned well before founding AYOKA Group. She is also one of the few to spontaneously mention the legacy she hopes to leave behind — an exercise she returns to regularly: writing down, in black and white, the woman she hopes to become in ten years, and what she hopes to have passed on when she looks back on her journey.
There was first Maison Mixmelô, an initial entrepreneurial venture in fashion. Then twenty-two years spent learning hospitality, its demands and its paradoxes. The opening of two Sofitels in West Africa remains among her fondest professional memories. She speaks of hotel openings with the same emotion others reserve for great journeys. As if entrepreneurship had never really been a goal in itself, but simply another way of building.
When she speaks of her profession, Fatimata Bailly Nafo readily uses the phrase “test and learn.” Two words that perhaps sum up her journey rather well. Try, learn, start again. Also accepting that projects sometimes take longer than expected. Her biggest challenge, in fact, isn’t what one might think. More than financing or development, she readily points to the need to stay true to her convictions in an environment that sometimes demands speed, when she herself champions the long time needed to build.
For Nina Pierquet, the word that naturally comes to mind is collective intelligence. Her path resembles a series of diagonals, where foreign languages, sustainable development, change management, local government and upscale hospitality eventually converge.
Nothing, however, destined her to build a technology company dedicated to premium hospitality. Her early professional ambitions took her elsewhere, until several professional lives eventually met.
There is, in fact, something almost paradoxical about her. The woman who now develops a technology solution talks, in the end, remarkably little about technology. She speaks more about the teams she wants to give time back to, the attentiveness that should never be lacking, or that collective intelligence which she seems to see as the real engine of the guest experience.
True luxury, she explains, now lies in the feeling of having been seen, understood and expected. And that, she readily reminds us, is something no technology can produce on its own.
DailyBird was born of attention paid to a gluten-intolerant guest whose particular request required nearly an hour of coordination between several teams. An hour spent organising what should have taken only a few minutes. Behind this anecdote, however, lies a much deeper conviction: staff are rarely short of talent, they are sometimes simply short of the tools that would let them express it fully.
Her entrepreneurial journey was not, in fact, built without hesitation. She readily speaks of projects that never came to fruition, decisive encounters, and the necessity of learning to win the sector’s trust one property at a time. Nothing in her account suggests any form of immediate or obvious success. Entrepreneurship appears more as a path made of successive convictions than as a destination.
As for Alicia Vegezzi, she once dreamed of medicine. Today, she recounts with a smile that she “failed at medicine.” The anecdote might raise a smile, but it perhaps says something deeper. Hospitality and surgery, it turns out, have more in common than one might imagine: precision, rigour, and a desire to care for others.
She readily admits to being more inspired by builders than by media personalities. What she loves above all are beginnings. The first pages of stories still to be written. Property openings. Projects that exist only in the minds of those who carry them.
“I wanted to be there from the very first page of the story,” she confides. This sentence probably sums up quite well what characterises her journey. She prefers witnessing the birth of projects to running them. Designing before developing. Imagining before executing.
Her work, in the end, is less about building concepts than about letting them reveal their full coherence. Behind every project, she seeks not so much economic performance as a balance between strategic vision, creativity and operational excellence.
Finally, Camille Richez and Claudia Scaraffiotti readily explain that Kraft Places was born of their own meeting. They claim the right to take the time needed for the projects they support to mature. Because a place is not shaped by its interior architecture alone. It also tells a story, reveals a region, and carries a promise that must be kept long after its opening.
They speak as readily of lost competitions as of completed projects, convinced that small victories often say more about an entrepreneurial journey than the greatest successes. There is something in their approach to hospitality that borders on craftsmanship: a preference for the sincerity of a project over the ease of a passing trend.
The Château du Portereau is perhaps the project that best illustrates their approach. They were involved from the earliest discussions, long before the architecture took shape. As if places, too, had their own timing, and it was sometimes necessary to learn to listen to them before beginning to design them.
As if hospitality itself were still, to a large extent, passed on through the people who bring it to life.
These are not simply companies they are bringing into the world today. Each, in her own way, is also carrying forward what she herself received.
And this is perhaps what most distinguishes these five journeys from more conventional entrepreneurial narratives: the debt is never left unspoken. On the contrary, it is claimed as a driving force — the debt owed to a mentor, a decisive encounter, a team, or a region to which one wishes, in turn, to give something, to contribute.
Creating then becomes less a personal conquest than a way of passing something on in turn.
DAILYBIRD IN A FEW WORDS 👀
“True luxury is feeling seen, understood and expected.”
What drives her
Giving hotel teams back the time to fully express their talent with guests.
What convinced her
A gluten-intolerant guest whose personalised attention required nearly an hour of coordination between several teams.
Her conviction
No technology replaces collective intelligence — it simply allows it to be fully expressed.
What she envisions for tomorrow
A more collaborative, more human and more intuitive hospitality, for teams and travellers alike.
SECOND MOVEMENT | The Time of the Builders
The finest projects are not always born from a market study or a business plan.
They are sometimes born from an intuition strong enough to never let go.
A gluten-intolerant guest whose simple request will require nearly an hour of coordination between several teams. A mobile-money payment impossible to complete when booking a hotel room. A restaurant still missing its story. Or a château in the Nantes region where everything remains to be imagined.
At first glance, these stories have nothing in common.
Yet they tell exactly the same thing: that very particular moment when one stops simply noting an obvious fact and begins wanting to change it.
There is nothing spectacular, in fact, in their entrepreneurial accounts. There are no grand declarations, no instant successes. They speak more of paths taken sometimes almost in spite of themselves, of convictions that stand the test of time, or of projects that took several years to reach full maturity.
This may be the time of the builders. The kind that forces one to accept that the finest projects are also those that take the longest.
DailyBird was not born of reflection on technology, but of attention paid to a guest. AYOKA Group was born of the certainty that African boutique hospitality can now be reimagined. Oversees was born of the desire to support projects from their very first lines. As for Kraft Places, the agency was born of a refusal to think separately about what is, in fact, one and the same project.
The entrepreneurial spark never seems to be about status. It is about the impact sought.
None of them tells the story of the day she decided to become an entrepreneur. They tell, rather, of the day they realised they could no longer do otherwise.
For Nina Pierquet, it is a matter of an hour spent coordinating a particular attention when a few minutes should have sufficed. For Fatimata Bailly Nafo, it is a matter of a continent whose travellers evolve faster than the models sometimes still offered to them. Alicia Vegezzi readily speaks of projects she would have liked to support earlier, at the moment when everything is still possible. Camille Richez and Claudia Scaraffiotti, finally, champion a holistic approach to the places they imagine, convinced that a successful project is always one that tells a coherent story.
Their companies address different challenges. Yet their intentions sometimes echo one another.
They rarely speak of growth before speaking of building. Rarely of development before speaking of legacy. Rarely, finally, of success before speaking of the road travelled.
As if entrepreneurship were, in the end, less about a desire to succeed than a certain way of caring for the projects one chooses to carry.
The company then becomes less an end in itself than a natural extension of a conviction that already existed well before the first line of a business plan.
AYOKA GROUP IN A FEW WORDS 👀
“Test and learn.”
What drives her
Building an African hospitality shaped by its territories, its travellers and its ways of life.
Her fondest professional memory
The opening of two Sofitels in West Africa.
Her biggest challenge
Taking the time to build without ever giving up on her convictions.
What she envisions for tomorrow
A new generation of African boutique properties deeply rooted in their economic, cultural and human environments.
THIRD MOVEMENT | Imagining Places, Imagining Others
Another constant strikes the reader of their accounts.
They rarely speak of products. They speak of places. They rarely speak of performance. They speak of human experiences.
The true luxury Nina Pierquet speaks of is that of feeling seen, understood and expected. Fatimata Bailly Nafo envisions an African hospitality capable of welcoming its travellers differently. Alicia Vegezzi champions her taste for properties that become destinations in their own right, while Camille Richez and Claudia Scaraffiotti readily explain that a successful place is always one whose identity naturally makes sense.
The words change. The conviction remains.
To welcome is never simply about opening a door. It is about designing for those who will walk through it tomorrow.
A guest is never just a booking. An investor is never just a source of capital. A team is never just a sum of skills. And a place is never just a building.
It always tells something of those who imagined it.
The Château du Portereau thus tells a certain idea of long-term thinking and project coherence. DailyBird conveys the attention to details guests may never see but whose effects they immediately feel. AYOKA Group embodies the emergence of another way of thinking about African hospitality. Oversees, finally, carries forward a love of beginnings and of projects whose finest pages have yet to be written.
There is perhaps a paradox in hospitality that all of them speak to in their own way. The most successful places are often those whose full complexity guests never perceive. They seem natural, even though they are the result of hundreds of invisible decisions.
The greatest compliment paid to a hotel is, perhaps, not the one you might expect. It is not always the one celebrating its architecture, its technology or its operational excellence. Sometimes it is simply that of a guest who says they felt expected.
A few words that, in the end, sum up rather well what each of them, in her own way, is trying to build.
OVERSEES & BOUCHÉES DOUBLES PARTNERS IN A FEW WORDS 👀
“I wanted to be there from the very first page of the story.”
What drives her
Imagining projects whose strategy, creativity and operational excellence tell the same story.
What she prefers
Beginnings. The first pages of stories still to be written.
Her conviction
The finest projects are always collective adventures.
What she envisions for tomorrow
Places capable of becoming destinations in their own right.
FOURTH MOVEMENT | Building Differently
When asked about entrepreneurship among women, their answers take an unexpected turn.
All acknowledge that certain lines continue to move more slowly than others. They sometimes mention access to financing, the need to prove themselves further, youth, or the persistent under-representation of women in certain professional environments.
Yet none truly makes this question the heart of her entrepreneurial story.
As if the essential lay elsewhere.
To build rather than convince. To pass on rather than accumulate. To imagine rather than reproduce.
Their advice resembles more than it differs. They readily speak of continuous learning, humility, curiosity and boldness. They urge against waiting for the perfect moment, and remind us that the most sincere projects are often those that will have allowed themselves to evolve over time.
Doubt, too, naturally finds its place in their answers.
They speak of projects that never came to be, competitions lost, the hesitations that sometimes accompany the biggest decisions, or the need to learn to start over. As if entrepreneurship were less a string of successes than an ability to keep moving forward despite uncertainty.
There is, finally, something deeply reassuring in their accounts. None of them seems to feel she has arrived where she wanted to go.
All of them already speak of tomorrow.
Of a children’s book still to be written. Of a property whose first pages remain blank. Of a continent that needs support through its changes. Or of the thousands of daily attentions that will continue to need time given back to them.
Perhaps this, too, is what characterises their five journeys.
Creation is never conjugated in the past tense.
KRAFT PLACES IN A FEW WORDS 👀
“A successful place is a place that makes sense.”
What drives them
Taking the time needed for the projects they support to emerge.
Their strongest conviction
Places, too, have their own timing.
What they champion
Preferring the sincerity of projects to passing trends.
What they envision for tomorrow
Creating experiences that are desirable, lasting and deeply human.
FIFTH MOVEMENT | What They Are Building, In Veritate
One last question deserves to be asked after reading their accounts: what remains, once the companies, the business models and the ambitions have been told?
The answer is perhaps simpler than it appears.
None of them truly begins by talking about her company.
They speak of others before speaking of themselves.
Of an African traveller who doesn’t always find his place within international standards. Of a guest whose simple request will require nearly an hour of coordination. Of investors who deserve more than just a concept. Or of places whose identity deserves to be considered before their outline is even drawn.
They also speak of teams, of legacy, of doubt, of encounters, and sometimes even of failures.
As if the essential lay elsewhere after all.
Places evolve, habits change, and business models reinvent themselves. But one conviction seems to run through all five journeys: a project only makes sense when it is conceived as a profoundly human adventure.
Creating is then no longer just about imagining a company or a concept. Creating becomes a way of inhabiting the world and of taking part, on one’s own scale, in the stories of others.
This, perhaps, is the finest surprise of this special feature.
We thought we were writing an article about five hospitality entrepreneurs. In the end, they spoke to us of legacy, of intention, of encounters and of humanity.
Because before any experience, there is an intention.
Intention, then, naturally precedes experience.
AT A GLANCE
Why 5 Women Still Choose to Build in Hospitality
5 founders, 4 companies, 3 continents addressed
DailyBird (France): operational coordination SaaS for premium and luxury hotels, founded by Nina Pierquet
AYOKA Group (Africa): hospitality investment, operations and distribution, cofounded by Fatimata Bailly Nafo
Oversees & Bouchées Doubles Partners (France & international): hospitality development and restaurant concept acceleration, founded by Alicia Vegezzi
Kraft Places (France & international): strategy, interior architecture and global design for hospitality venues, cofounded by Camille Richez & Claudia Scaraffiotti
Shared conviction: entrepreneurship in hospitality is driven by human connection, mentorship and long-term vision, not by market studies or business plans alone
