Eleven students in the hotel industry in Dieppe, France, are on a training course with the Constance Hotels at the moment. This training lies in the framework of an exchange programme between Constance Academie and the Formation Développement Novation (FODENO) – which is the counterpart of the Industrial Vocational Training Board in Mauritius. Marie Vasselin, a Mauritian who has lived in France for more than 20 years, is the person responsible for this exchange.

“I always talk of Mauritius during my course at school. When I contacted the Constance Academie and when Claude Narain immediately showed an interest in the project, I seized the opportunity and brought some of my pupils here to Mauritius to see one of the most efficient hotel industries in the world,” she says with enthusiasm.

Before the project was launched, Claude Narain actually went to the French school to do the selection of pupils himself. And the 11 trainees are now in place at the Belle-Mare Plage Hotel and assert that they have “a lot to learn from people there”.

The school where she started</B>