PY Gerbeau

PY Gerbeau's career to date has included Captain of the French Olympic Ice Hockey team, Vice President of Park Operations at Disneyland Paris, Chief Executive of the Dome and currently Chief Executive X-Leisure.

After successfully turning Euro Disney into Europe’s biggest visitor attraction, Disney CEO Michael Eisner recommended PY to Tony Blair and he was appointed Chief Executive of the Dome in 2000.

Today, moving on from his “corporate rescuer” career and successes, PY is Chief Executive of X-Leisure, the UK’s fastest growing premier leisure brand, with a portfolio of 16 exciting and innovative entertainment and leisure destinations. X-Leisure is strategically located around the UK, making it the largest Leisure property group in the UK.

The flagship brand X-scape is the ultimate entertainment destination with the largest real snow slope in the UK, climbing walls, air parks and ice walls. They also include bowling, water parks, bars, restaurants, clubs, health and fitness, bingo, casinos, lifestyle retails, extreme sport retailers and coffee shops. This concept is regarded as the most successful innovation for the leisure attraction industry in the last 20 years.

PY has now sold a majority stake in X-Leisure to the property giant Land Securities. When he took over at X-Leisure, it owned a snow park and leisure centre at Milton Keynes. The snow site became one of the UK\'s most popular tourist attractions. He bought up more leisure parks and snow sites, casinos and shopping centres. Now Land Secs is paying £111.9m for the management company, which runs its 16 assets as well as a 54 per cent holding in the X-Leisure unit trust.

PY is regarded as one of the gurus of the leisure industry, acknowledged by his election as Leisure Personality of the Year 2003. He has an MBA from one of France’s leading business schools, and lectures on the MBA programme of the London Business School where he runs a module on the Experienced Economy.