Accor has rebranded itself into AccorHotels while also opening up its booking platform to independent hoteliers.
This bold move is taking the fight to online travel agencies by giving independents another place to load their inventory.
This means that non-affiliated independent hotels have a new channel which can be found at AccorHotels.com, the new name and home for Europe’s largest hotel group. By increasing inventory, the idea is that traffic will follow.
Even if the user is not booking with an AccorHotel, at least they are not offering loyalty to an OTA. The bet is that this then translates to better margins by reducing the volume of bookings leaking over to OTAs, and thus making a dent in the 10-20% commissions paid by most hotels to the middlemen OTAs.
It also offers some additional revenue from bookings to AccorHotels that would have gone to OTAs in the form of commissions.
Regarding the new positioning, AccorHotels Chairman and CEO Sébastien Bazin said:
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. While there’s no certainty of success — especially given the smaller pool of hotels when compared to the likes of Priceline and Expedia — the hotel group is spending heavily on its vision, purchasing Fastbooking last year to further deliver on its ambitions in being a B2B software for independents.
Click to read full article: Tnooz
