Gaurav Bhushan will succeed Christian Karaoglanian who, after 40 years with the Group and in full agreement with Group management, has decided to pass on the baton.

Gaurav Bhushan has been appointed Chief Development Officer at AccorHotels. In this capacity he will report directly to Sébastien Bazin, Chief Executive Officer of AccorHotels, and will continue to be directly responsible for the development of the Asia Pacific region under Michael Issenberg, Chief Executive Officer of HotelServices Asia Pacific. The appointment is effective from 1 July 2015. He will succeed Christian Karaoglanian who, after 40 years with the Group and in full agreement with Group management, has decided to pass on the baton. Christian will be on hand during the transition to help Gaurav Bhushan set out the new organisational arrangements. From January 2016, Christian will act as Adviser to the Chairman. He will continue to represent the Group in the various Executive Boards and will be responsible for specific dossiers.

Gaurav Bhushan has an MBA from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Finance & Investments from the Securities Institute of Australia. He began his career with AccorHotels in 1995 in Australia, where he held various posts in operations and finance. In 2000 he took up his first development post as Business Development Manager for Australia and New Zealand. He was then appointed Chief Development Officer for Australia, New Zealand and Japan and extended his area of responsibility to become VP Development for North Asia and the Pacific in 2004.Since 2006, Gaurav Bhushan has headed the Asia Pacific development teams and coordinated the development of joint ventures and partnerships in the region. It was in this capacity that he was able to secure the acquisition of Mirvac Hotels & Resorts in Australia and New Zealand and, most recently, the alliance with Huazhu in China.

On January 1, 2015, Accor is the sixth largest hotel group worldwide in terms of number of rooms listed each year by MKG Hospitality. At that time it had a network of 3,717 hotels and 482,296 rooms worldwide. (Read our report)