An Insider's Perspective on AccorHotels' Wide-Ranging M&A Strategy

If there's one thing AccorHotels has gained a reputation for in recent years, it's buying nearly anything and everything in sight. That might be a bit of an overstatement, but in the past four years alone, AccorHotels has bought or invested in nearly 20 different businesses, ranging from restaurant reservations platforms and concierge services to luxury hotel brands. In those four years, the global hospitality company has gone from being what CEO Sebastien Bazin described as "a big sleeping giant" to a "first mover" that isn't afraid to take risks when it comes to their investments and acquisitions. Bazin explained his own thinking behind AccorHotels' investments in various businesses, especially startups, when he spoke at the Skift Forum Europe in Berlin in April. "We've made 12 to 17 investments (in startups) and I really believe that 20 percent of them will not work," Bazin said. "It might be the wrong equilibrium on the team, or the wrong idea, or it may be too late. Twenty to 50 percent will be remarkable. A third will be average. This is the name of the game when you enter into unknown territories." In other words, he said, it's OK to fail and not everything you invest in will be the next big tech unicorn. But the bigger failure is not acting on these opportunities when you can, especially when you're trying to build an entire experience platform business as AccorHotels is. For more of an inside look into AccorHotels' specific strategy for what it decides to buy or invest in, Skift spoke to AccorHotels' Chief Development Officer Guarav Bhushan, who also leads mergers and acquisitions for the entire group. What follows is an edited version of our conversation with him at the NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference in early June. Skift: With all the acquisitions you've made recently, does it make it a challenge to focus on development and to balance that with all the organic growth you're also pursuing? Guarav Bhushan: We've got to do both. We're an ambitious, growth-focused company so we have teams that do both so we do both concurrently. We have a specific M&A team that is focusing on acquisitions and then we have an organic focus growth development team. And we run both side by side. One feeds into the other, because we typically focus on brands that we can grow, and that generates value for our shareholders obviously, and we grow the brand, the network, etc., but they are two different teams. S