Overnight, AccorHotels completed the last step of its aquisition of the Raffles, Swissotel and Fairmont hotel group. While this only adds one hotel to the AccorHotels portfolio in Australia, it adds some iconic properties in various cities around the world.
Notable properties joining the AccorHotels’ network include hotels such as:
- The Savoy in London,
- Raffles Singapore,
- Fairmont San Francisco,
- New York’s The Plaza,
- Fairmont Le Château Frontenac in Quebec City, and
- Le Royal Monceau Raffles Paris.
At this point, AccorHotels will begin integrating the new hotels into the AccorHotels network. While AccorHotels is planning to bring the new hotels into the Le Club AccorHotels loyalty program, at this point the properties are not participating in the program.
In an email sent to members, AccorHotels stated that members would be offered “opportunities to discover our extensive portfolio of luxury hotels and resorts worldwide, on property benefits, exciting points redemption opportunities, partnership offers and member only experiences.”
As of last night, they did begin to appear in the AccorHotels booking engine. For example, searching on hotels in Sydney, will see the Swissotel Sydney appear in the results page:
Branding
It is not clear at the moment what will be happening with the brands. Some clues may come from the previous Accor aquisisition of Mirvac Hotels in Australia. The Sebel brand lives on, while other brands, such as Citigate have pretty much disappeared.
I would expect that the Raffles brand will remain, although there may be some adjustments to the properties. For example, it is difficult to see AccorHotels keeping a single Swissotel branded property in Australia – expect to see this hotel rebadged in due course.
