Vatel Hotel and Tourism Business School: the French network of more than fifty campuses, its bachelor and MBA, the French and English tracks, and what the French chefs and hoteliers in my books say

Vatel is the hotel school a French student is most likely to be offered and the one an English speaking student is least likely to have heard of, because most of its teaching happens in French. It is also, by the QS subject table for 2026, ranked above Cornell, PolyU and every school in the United Kingdom. Fees and intake dates are left out; the school’s site carries them.

What the school is

Vatel was founded in Paris in 1981 by Jocelyne and Alain Sebban, according to the school’s own FAQ, and has been led since 2023 by their daughter, Karine Sebban-Benzazon. Alain Sebban died in February 2026. The school’s network page describes “more than 50 schools across four continents,” though other pages on the same site give 50, 53 and 55, so the count is a moving target. In France the campuses are in Paris, Lyon, Nîmes, Bordeaux and Nantes, with sites in Réunion, Martinique and Mayotte, and there are campuses in Brussels and in Martigny, Switzerland. The school says it has more than 50,000 graduates.

Vatel is a private school whose degrees are French state registered professional titles rather than university degrees. The bachelor is listed in the national register as a level 6 title, “Responsable en management opérationnel en hôtellerie internationale,” and the advanced MBA track as a level 7 title, “Directeur d’hôtellerie internationale.” EHL’s bachelor, by contrast, is a Swiss university of applied sciences degree. Both open doors; they are not the same kind of paper.

Programs and how they are taught

The core is a three year Bachelor in Hospitality Management and a two year MBA in International Hotel Management. Alongside them sit an MBA specialization in Wine and Spirits at Bordeaux, a foundation year for students not admitted directly to the MBA, and vocational programs in cooking, pastry and restaurant service that can be taken as apprenticeships.

Teaching alternates theory with practice in real venues. Alain Sebban described the method in an interview with Hospitality ON as “essential for a better assimilation of what is taught,” with students training in hotels, restaurants, cafés and catering services that serve actual customers. The FAQ lists what that means: at Nîmes, a four star Hôtel & Spa Vatel with 42 rooms and 4 suites, a public brasserie and a gastronomic restaurant that is the main training room; at Bordeaux, the restaurant Les Tables Vatel and a four star hotel; at Paris La Défense, a restaurant and a practical reception area.

The internships are written into the calendar. In the bachelor, the second semester of the first year is an operational internship the school’s pages describe as four to six months; the second year ends with a six month internship in Europe or abroad; the third year’s internship of five to six months is optional. The school says all but the last are mandatory and paid. In the MBA, the first year carries an optional internship and the second a management internship, each five to six months. Sebban’s interview adds that the MBA can be taken in 23 destinations with 11 specializations in the final year.

Language comes first for an international student. Paris, Lyon and Nantes teach in French, with English classes compulsory. Bordeaux teaches the bachelor and MBA “100% in French or 100% in English.” Nîmes, Brussels and Martigny offer French or English, and most campuses outside France teach in English. A student who wants Paris must speak French.

Who it is for and how to get in

For the bachelor, the school asks for a high school diploma or its equivalent. The process is an online application, then an entrance exam of about three hours, with written tests in language and hospitality knowledge, two personality tests and a motivation interview of about fifteen minutes, then a decision; the school says it takes about six weeks. For the MBA, the applicant’s degree and hospitality experience decide whether she enters the first MBA year or the foundation year, and the exam adds a questionnaire on management, finance and marketing. The Wine and Spirits MBA asks for a relevant bachelor plus at least six months of work in hotels or restaurants.

The school suits a French speaking student who wants the French hotel and restaurant world, a student who wants a network of campuses to move between, and one who wants internships from the first year. It suits less well a student without French who wants Paris, or one who wants the Swiss schools’ depth of placement with the luxury groups.

Who hires the graduates, and the ranking

The school names alumni at the Château de Chantilly, the Hôtel Lutetia in Paris and Maison Barnes. It does not publish an employer list of the kind PolyU or Surrey publish, so a student should ask each campus where last year’s graduates went.

On rankings, Vatel is 11th in the world in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 for Hospitality and Leisure Management, up from 12th in 2025, and the highest placed French school. QS scores the subject on academic reputation, employer reputation and citations per paper. Vatel’s own pages call the result first in France and Europe, which is not what the table says: nine Swiss schools and Hotelschool The Hague sit above it, so read the claim as first among French schools. Vatel does not appear in CEOWORLD’s 2026 survey or the top twenty of ShanghaiRanking’s research list, and Eduniversal’s 2026 French ranking of hospitality masters places the Vatel MBA 14th. None of these measures teaching quality.

What the French chefs and hoteliers in my books say

None of the people in my books trained at Vatel. The closest honest connection is the French path itself. Luc Delafosse, who grew up outside Paris and became managing director of Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, studied hotel management and cooked at the same time, the alternation Vatel builds in.

“While studying hotel management, I served as a chef at the one-star Michelin restaurant Auberge de la Poutre, run by Chef-Owner Denis Moureau. I learned a great deal under his mentorship, but not long after, I realized that I really wanted to be on the service side of hospitality, and not in the kitchen.” Luc Delafosse, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

Ralph Radtke, then general manager of Çırağan Palace Kempinski Istanbul, took the same order of steps: a room service waiter at Le Bristol in Paris at twenty, hotel school afterwards, and two trainings at the Cipriani in Venice while studying. On the kitchen side, Guy Savoy of Restaurant Guy Savoy in Paris is the clearest voice in my books on the French way of learning, and it is the apprenticeship, not the lecture hall.

“The best way to hone your skillset is through apprenticeships. The acquisition of these precise crafts demands daily practice. I always tell young chefs that to be a cook is to possess a true skill that is hard-won, and once acquired, has the potential to open up the world.” Guy Savoy, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

Vatel’s bachelor sends students into a kitchen or a hotel in the second semester. Whether a given campus delivers Savoy’s daily practice or a tour of it is the thing to find out on a visit.

How to decide

Settle the language first, then the campus, because at Vatel the two decide each other. Ask the campus how many months of the bachelor are spent in its own hotel and restaurants, where the second year internship sent last year’s students, and which employers took the graduating class. Then read the chapter of The Luxury of Attention on the apprenticeship. “No one in this book taught themselves. Every master in these pages is the product of another master.” The Luxury of Attention (2026), Chapter 2. A school with a hotel in Nîmes and a restaurant in Paris can put you in front of a master. It is up to you to be worth teaching.

Sources

• Vatel, Frequently asked questions
• Hospitality ON, Vatel: the role of a hotel school is to ensure the profile of its graduates perfectly matches needs, interview with Alain Sebban
• QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026, Hospitality and Leisure Management, table reproduction
• QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025, Hospitality and Leisure Management, table reproduction
• Eduniversal, Classement des meilleurs Masters en Management de l’Hôtellerie 2026
• CEOWORLD magazine, Best Hospitality and Hotel Management Schools in the World for 2026
• ShanghaiRanking Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2025, Hospitality and Tourism Management, table reproduction