PARIS—Accor is now officially called AccorHotels and is ramping up its digital drive by transforming its AccorHotels.com distribution platform into a marketplace open to a selection of independent hotels.
Sébastien Bazin, AccorHotels chairman and CEO, said, “Today, our group changes, and loudly and clearly proclaims its desire to go further, faster. Accor becomes AccorHotels and proudly re-assumes its role as a pioneer hotelier that never stops innovating and surprising, at the cutting edge of digital technology, but while remaining a hotelier, first and foremost. The Feel Welcome promise is a strong commitment to all our audiences, and enriches the bond between the group and its brands.”
With its new name, the group aims at increasing the clout and visibility of AccorHotels by connecting it to its digital platform AccorHotels.com. The new identity features a more statutory logo containing deep blue typography. This new logo continues to showcase the group’s symbol—the single, emblematic honey-colored bernache goose. This new identity is already visible on the group’s space in the Village at Roland Garros, of which AccorHotels is an official partner.
In time, the objective is to offer more than 10,000 hotels in 300 key cities worldwide, or a three-fold increase in the number of hotels on AccorHotels.com. This service will gradually become available to hoteliers in the first target markets starting at the end of this month, and guests will be able to access it beginning next month.
The independent hotels distributed on the AccorHotels.com platform alongside the group’s brand hotels will be selected on the basis of hotel criteria with guest reviews taken into account. It will provide independent hoteliers with an alternative and qualitative distribution channel that meets their specific needs, according to the company. This new offer guarantees transparent display rules, access to customer data and competitive commission rates.
Vivek Badrinath, deputy CEO for marketing, digital, distribution and information systems, said, “With our digital plan, which is in the midst of its roll-out, the takeover of Fastbooking, which allows us to deploy a range of cutting-edge services for hoteliers, and now the opening of a marketplace, AccorHotels is taking the initiative to ensure that the combination of digital experience and hotelier know-how is increasingly effective.”
This initiative will supplement the services developed by Fastbooking, a company taken over by the group in April, within a new B2B digital services activity.
Over the first two years of its rollout, this initiative will represent an additional investment worth about 10% of the cost of the digital plan unveiled in October 2014.
The group is also launching the new version of its mobile application, AccorHotels. All the brand applications are now united in this single app, which features all the group’s hotels and, as of this summer, will also include all the independent establishments offered on the booking platform.