COVER STORY
OUT of the PAST
GILDA PEREZ-ALVARADO DRIVES ORIENT EXPRESS FORWARD.
By DAVID EISEN
The late-day sun sinking behind the San Gabriel Mountains is no match for Gilda Perez-Alvarado: steelyeyed, as shafts of light creep through the blinds of a guestroom window on a high floor of the JW Marriott Los Angeles L. A. Live, coating her placid countenance. Colleagues scramble to scotch the offending beams— not like they need to: The impact on Perez- Alvarado is negligible, which makes eminent sense for someone who personifies focus and concentration, impervious to something as trifling as the sun.
Perez-Alvarado is the chief strategy officer and CEO of Orient Express for Accor. She is petite, soignée, apt descriptors since Perez-Alvarado works for a famously French company with roots that stretch back to the late 1960s. Its present-day president & CEO is Sébastien Bazin, whose frankness— ne pas mâcher ses mots— is complemented by an acute understanding of hospitality and the forces that impact it. He’ s also a good judge of talent. Bazin plucked Perez-Alvarado from JLL, where at her height she was global CEO of the commercial real estate company’ s hotels and hospitality group. Stints at EY and PwC helped prime her for the position. After several years of Bazin courting, she joined Accor in 2023, first as chief strategy officer, then, shortly after, was conferred the title of CEO of Orient Express, one of the most famous names in travel: The author Agatha Christie wrote about murder on the train.
In the late 19th century, the Belgian businessman Georges Nagelmackers luxurified train travel, which up until then had been modest, even dangerous. Through his company Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, he developed an international network of trains beginning in Europe and spreading south and east from there. The most famous of these trains, the Orient Express, gained the sobriquet“ Train of Kings” for its gourmet dining and sleeper cars with silk-sheeted beds. It connected Paris to Istanbul( then Constantinople) and defined the Golden Age of rail travel.( As a point of differentiation that often gets confused, the Venice Simplon-Orient- Express, established in 1982, is separate from Orient Express and owned and operated by Belmond.)
In 2017, Accor purchased a 50 % stake in the Orient Express brand from SNCF— France’ s state-owned railway operator— for the right to use the name.( By 2022, it had full ownership.) Subsequently, Accor said it would use the Orient Express name to brand hotels and, in April 2025, opened Orient Express La Minerva in Rome, a 129-room restoration of a 17th-century palazzo. A year after the initial investment, Accor began renovation work on 1920s- and 1930s-era CIWL carriages from the defunct Nostalgie Istanbul Orient Express that will carry passengers between Paris and Istanbul beginning in late 2026. Last April, Accor launched La Dolce Vita Orient Express, in partnership with Arsenale Group, which traverses 14 Italian regions. And there’ s more to come— on land and sea: This year sees the opening of Orient Express Palazzo Donà Giovannelli, Venice, a 47-room restored palace, while the first yacht bearing the Orient Express name will set sail this October on a Caribbean itinerary. It will be joined by a sister yacht set to launch in 2027.
28 hotelsmag. com Mar / Apr 2026