Grégory Sion (Pierre & Vacances): Share Your Power - Episode 14

How do you take a customer satisfaction indicator from 19 to more than 50 in five years? That is the story told by Grégory Sion, Chief Executive of Pierre & Vacances, in this fourteenth episode of Share Your Power, the podcast powered by OneFlash. A conversation with Lucas Di Franco about rebuilding a brand through an obsession with customer experience.

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Taking the helm in the middle of a storm

A trained engineer who came up through strategy consulting, Grégory Sion took over as Chief Executive of Pierre & Vacances in May 2020, in the middle of lockdown, with no visibility on cash and no certainty of lasting until the end of the year. He looks back frankly on this professional gamble taken in total uncertainty, driven by the conviction that the brand, known to more than 70% of French people at the time and 79% today, had largely untapped potential.

NPS as the single compass

The central element of the transformation described by Grégory Sion is the choice to focus all the teams' energy on a single indicator: the Net Promoter Score, measured every week and tied to a significant share of variable pay. Starting from 19, a level considered mediocre without being disastrous, the indicator now exceeds 50. Grégory Sion describes how the first months were marked by a defensive stance from site managers, who justified every underperformance by the weather or external circumstances, until comparisons between neighbouring sites, subject to the same conditions but with different results, put an end to these justifications.

The Reinventing 2025 plan and its four pillars

This obsession with the customer is part of a four-pillar transformation plan: rebuilding attention to the customer through cross-functional projects (wifi, mattresses, televisions, welcome, service); financial and operational overhaul, with the share of loss-making sites brought down from 35% to less than 10%; CSR anchoring, with a carbon trajectory halved, a year ahead of the target set for 2030; and finally massive investment in internal talent, illustrated by the appointment, at 34, of a managing director for Spain, a country that accounts for 130 million euros of revenue for the group.

Attention to detail rather than grand reforms

Grégory Sion insists on one point: the transformation did not come from a single grand reform, but from the accumulation of small irritants finally being dealt with. By spending time in the field from the moment he took up the post, he found that customers like the brand but consistently list small details that were never fixed: a lift out of order for months, an imperfect service. This culture of detail, measured and tracked week after week, became in his view the real engine of the recovery, far more than a change of product strategy.

Value for money, rather than moving upmarket at any price

In a tourism market where the big players benefit from a post-Covid ring-fencing of the holiday budget, Grégory Sion claims a deliberate positioning: no move upmarket at any price towards an out-of-reach five-star offer, but a value-for-money proposition that remains the central indicator of the group's strategy. With two million customers a year and 200 destinations in Europe, the aim is to let everyone trade up at their own pace, without excluding the more price-sensitive customer base.

European expansion and market consolidation

Grégory Sion sees the group's future being played out largely internationally: openings in Italy, Switzerland and Portugal, with the ambition of adding more than 5,000 new units by 2030. He expects a consolidation of the European tourism market around big brands able to provide a reassurance that Google reviews, important as they are, can no longer guarantee on their own. On climate change, he mentions the growing appeal of destinations in northern France and Belgium, without giving up on the south, where the group selects locations protected from the most extreme heat peaks.

AI as a tool, never a substitute for people

On artificial intelligence, Grégory Sion shares a clear conviction: it is there to meet customers' expectations when human teams are not available, a concierge available 24/7 being a concrete example, but it never replaces people in the dream customer experience he imagines for the next ten years.

What this conversation says about customer experience

What this episode illustrates with rare clarity is that retaining a tourist customer is not decided by one grand marketing gesture, but by the addition of dozens of small comfort details handled consistently. In this logic, access to reliable mobile charging during a stay in a holiday residence is one of those everyday irritants that, once solved, quietly contribute to the customer's overall satisfaction.

This is exactly the service OneFlash offers. A self-service mobile charging station, installed at the reception of a residence, near the pool or in a shared area, meets a very concrete need of holidaymakers in a holiday residence: staying reachable, sharing the moments of the family stay, without ever being held back by a dead phone. A phone charging station accessible in a few seconds fits the philosophy of detail that Grégory Sion places at the heart of the rebuilding of Pierre & Vacances: every irritant solved counts, and every extra service strengthens customer loyalty.

In summary

This conversation with Grégory Sion sketches the trajectory of a tourism brand rebuilt not by a strategic revolution, but by a methodical obsession with detail and customer satisfaction, measured week after week. In this equation, looking after every touchpoint of the stay, including the holidaymaker's digital comfort, remains one of the simplest levers for turning a satisfied customer into a loyal one.

Hear the full conversation between Lucas Di Franco and Grégory Sion by listening to episode 14 of Share Your Power.