Skift Take

A new partnership launched by France's biggest hotel chain and biggest airline will allow loyalty members to benefit from spending money anywhere within the network. It's a lucrative and free perk for business travelers, which harks back to a more generous time in the loyalty game.

Series: Business of Loyalty

Travel Loyalty News

The Skift Business of Loyalty covers the world of hotel, airline, and other consumer loyalty programs in the travel industry. Read more coverage of loyalty here.

European business travelers have a new hotel and airline partnership to take advantage of. Paris-based Accor hotels and the Air France-KLM megacarrier announced a loyalty partnership that rewards travelers for using either product. Air France-KLM Flying Blue members can now earn miles for simply booking and paying for an Accor room, while hotel loyalty members can earn points for flying.

Unique to this relationship is the sheer acreage that it covers. Unlike the recent American-Hyatt partnership, which only targets elites, the deal between Accor and Air France-KLM targets all loyalty members and effectively gives away points to anyone willing to sign up and link accounts.

For travelers in Europe it’s an easy sell, as long as they’re willing to drive business to only one main air carrier and its partner, a massive hotel chain. And for the cost of a few points, both Air France and Accor get access to a whole new tranche of potential customers. Relationships like this are what make business travel great.

— Grant Martin, Business of Loyalty Editor

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Hyatt Grows Again With the Integration of Alila Hotels: Hyatt gets a bad rap for being too small as a hotel chain. They’ve been doing quite a bit to remedy that as of late. Now they’ve announced the integration of most of the Alila Hotels. In all, 16 hotels will be participating in World of Hyatt in the near future.

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Grant Martin [[email protected]] curates the Skift Business of Loyalty newsletter. He is also a director of product marketing at TripActions. Skift emails the newsletter every Monday.

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Tags: accor, air france-klm, loyalty

Photo credit: Accor and Air France-KLM are partnering to share loyalty accounts as a bonus for business travelers. Bloomberg

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