Things never stay still for very long in the hotel world. Today we saw AccorHotels offer to buy Mantra Hotels for $1.2 billion. Of course, at the moment it is just a bid, and their would be a few hurdles to get over before anything became of it. Nevertheless, AccorHotels and Mantra are currently in discussions, so this could well happen.
The Hotel Groups
Mantra Group is the operator of the Mantra, Peppers and Breakfree hotel brands. It has more than 20,000 rooms across 125 properties in Australia,
These are generally mid-range types of hotels. However they recently announced they were taking over the the Art Series hotels, currently with Event Hotels. These hotels are typically more upmarket than their existing hotels.
For its part, Accor is one of the largest hotel operators in the world. It operates 4,200 hotels across the world, with brands including Sofitel, Pullman, Novotel, Mercure, and IBIS.
Accor has form in Australia, previously taking out the Mirvac group. In that case, they kept some brand names (The Sebel), retired others (Citigate, Quay West). Similarly, they kept some properties, and divested others. It would be interesting to see what approach Accor would take with the hotels in the Mantra portfolio.
While there is along way to go before any deal happens, it will be of interest to Le Club AccorHotels members. While Mantra operates a loyalty program, mainly focussed on discounts, extra choices in the AccorHotels fold are always welcome.
