Last year. AccorHotels announced that it was going to allow a number of independent hotels to use its booking system. The ‘marketplace’, as AccorHotels calls it, was setup to allow independent hotels to leverage the AccorHotels distribution network. The rollout has now extended to over 500 hotels, including hotels in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
While the partner hotels do not participate in the Le Club Accorhotels program, you may be able to earn points while staying at a partner hotel booked through AccorHotels channels. However, while there are 500 hotels in the AccorHotels distribution network there are far fewer that particpate in Le Club AccorHotels.
When staying at a Le Club AccorHotels partner hotel, the earnings rate is set at 12.5 points for each 10 Euro spent on the booking. This compares with the standard earn rate of 25 points for most Accor branded hotels, and is the same as the reduced rate found at the Ibis and Ibis Styles brands.
Do note, however, that this is the entire scope of the partnership – you cannot use points, and no status benefits are available at the hotel – you simply earn points.
To identify the hotels that earn points in the Le Club AccorHotels program, you need to look for a logo on the search results showing the hotels particpation. For example, the following shows the way Hotel Vagabond in Singapore shows up in the search results:
Le Club AccorHotels partner
The AccorHotels marketplace webpage describes the marketplace in some detail. There is also a clickable map that shows the hotels that are available to be booked through AccorHotels. If points earning is your aim, then you need to look for specific Partner hotels. For example, at the time of writing, there were 20 partner hotels showing as available for booking in Singapore. Of those, only the one hotel, Hotel Vagabond, was listed as a Le Club AccorHotels partner, thus making it the only hotel of the 20 where you would actually earn points.
This is a developing strategy for AccorHotels, and it will be interesting to see over the next few years how it develops.
