Accor’s Lifestyle Ambition Shows Ancillary Revenue Isn't Just for Airlines
Skift Take
Accor’s new hotel strategy isn’t just about being a good neighbor. There’s plenty of money to be made from visitors who don’t require a plane or train ride to get to one of these swanky properties.
The Paris-based hotel company is arguably the global leader in the so-called lifestyle hotel sector, a class of properties the company estimates earn more than half their revenue from local traffic instead of out-of-town guests. Accor’s lifestyle hotels only accounted for less than 2 percent of the company’s room count earlier this year and 5 percent of fee volume. But Accor CEO Sebastien Bazin estimated at Skift Global Forum earlier this year that fee figure could quickly rise to 40 percent.
These hotels will make money from more ways than a guest room.
“You get [three times the amount] of the fees you’d get from a [non-lifestyle] Accor hotel because you've got all those ancillary products that you're able to sell,” Jean-Jacques Morin, Accor’s deputy CEO, said in an interview with Skift this week at the NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference. “That's the key element.”
Accor spun off its line-up of lifestyle brands lik
