"The best hotel booking website made by hoteliers for hoteliers". This is how Sébastien Bazin, Chairman of AccorHotels, described the development of accorhotels.com. Because that's what the French hotel chain should be called from now on, and not just Accor. By adding "Hotels" to its name, the group aims to match its online brand image. But, above all, this new identity reflects its desire to counter the expansion of booking sites such as Booking or Expedia, whose commissions eat into the hotels' margins.
While competitors such as Hilton, Marriott, Starwood and Carlson have all launched 'light' brands to attract independent hotels, AccorHotels is following a new path by transforming its site into a marketplace open to these same establishments. For the business traveller, this means a much wider choice than before across 320 key destinations worldwide, particularly in the mid-range segment. By 2018, the Group intends to convince 6,500 hotels to enhance their marketing by being present on accorhotels.com alongside the 3,500 hotels in the company. Accor Hotels has a number of arguments in its favour: lower commissions, no auctioning of preferred seats, no compulsory rate parity and the provision of customer data. "You've heard of GAFA - Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. You're going to love BATA"concludes Sébastien Bazin, identifying Booking, AccorHotels, TripAdvisor and Airbnb as the key quartet of tomorrow's hotel world.
