Accor has appointed Laurent Choain as Global Chief People & Culture Officer, effective 1 April 2026. Choain joins as a member of the Group Management Board and the Executive Committee of the Premium, Midscale & Economy division, placing him at the heart of the group’s leadership structure as it continues to expand across more than 110 countries.
Choain brings over three decades of experience in human capital development and organisational culture – a profile that reflects the scope of the brief he is taking on. His most recent tenure was with Forvis Mazars Group, where he spent 16 years across a succession of senior people roles including Chief HR Officer, Chief People & Communications, and Chief People, Education & Culture. He led the Mazars University for six years and, most recently, headed the Robert Mazars Institute, the group’s leadership and learning function, from 2024. His work at Forvis Mazars – a professional services network present in more than 100 countries – gave him direct experience of building organisational cultures and talent pipelines at scale, qualities directly transferable to a hospitality group of Accor’s complexity.
His connection to the hospitality industry is not new. Between 2000 and 2005, Choain served as Vice President of Education & Development at Kempinski Hotels, grounding his people philosophy in the operational realities of luxury hotel management. He subsequently joined Caisse d’Épargne – now BPCE – as Group HR Director, before moving into the role of Senior Vice President, Leadership & Executive Development at the same group. That arc across professional services, banking and luxury hospitality gives him a cross-sector perspective that is unusual for a CHRO appointment.
Choain’s academic credentials add another dimension to the appointment. He holds a doctorate in management sciences from the Université Paris Panthéon Assas – recognised with the prize for best thesis – alongside a master’s from Paris Panthéon Sorbonne and a diploma from Neoma Business School. He remains an affiliated professor and thesis director at Panthéon Assas and has served on the board of the EFMD for nearly 15 years. He also sits on the boards of Bologna Business School, the Peter Drucker Society of Europe and the Festival de Ramatuelle.
In his new role, Choain’s central brief will be to evolve Accor’s “Heartist” culture – the group’s defining people philosophy that places genuine care for guests, colleagues and communities at the centre of everything it does – while attracting senior talent and broadening development pathways for employees worldwide. The task is considerable in scale: Accor operates approximately 5,700 hotels across 45-plus brands, employs around 249,000 people globally and holds a development pipeline of more than 1,450 properties. At the same time, the group’s ALL loyalty platform has reached 100 million members, signalling the commercial ambitions that the people strategy must support.
Commenting on the appointment, Accor Chairman and CEO Sébastien Bazin said Choain’s track record in talent development and building strong company cultures aligned precisely with the group’s vision for the future, and that his leadership would be essential as Accor continued to cultivate an environment of excellence and innovation.
