hs Accor Hotels is one of the world’s largest hotel groups, and like many groups runs a loyalty program. In the case of Accor Hotels this is the Accor Live Limitless – ALL program.
For members in the program, the ability to earn and use points is a significant benefit. These points can be collected while staying in Accor Hotels, and through various other activities or patners.
Accor Points
Within the program there are actually two types of points – Rewards Points and Status Points.
- Rewards Points: These are basically the ‘currency’ of the program and can be redeemed for accommodation or other expenses
- Status Points: These points are one of the measures that determine your status level in the program.
In this article, I will focus on the way that you can use your Rewards Points.
Using Rewards Points
The Accor Live Limitless program offers a variety of options for utilising your points. For example, you can apply them towards lowering your accommodation expenses, you can transfer them to a frequent flyer program or redeem them towards events.
However, not all ways are created equal. Whichever way you go, you should be aware of the value that you are getting from your points. While the program generally publishes the conversion rate, there are some anomalies in the program to be aware of. For instance, it may be better to use your points at some hotel brands rather than others.
Using For Hotel Stays
For the most part, using your points for hotel stays is the most cost-effective way of using your points. After all, Accor is a hotel group. However, if you are used to using points in other hotel chains, it is worth noting that accor take a different approach.
In the Accor Live Limitless program, when you use your points the points themselves have a fixed value. Or to put it another way, the number of points is directly tied to the room cost.
In the Accor program, Reward Points function more like a currency. The maths of this is straightforward. For each 1,000 ALL Points you use, your room cost decrease by 20 Euro. For those of us in Australia, the only thing that moves around is the exchange rate, but at the moment, in Australia you will receive $AUD32 or so for those 1,000 points.
How to Use Points for Room Charges
The simplest method for using your points is to use them at the front desk when you check out. Basically, you inform them that you would like to use points to pay for your room charges. You will then get to specify how many points you would like to use. For example, say your bill comes to 100 euros, you could use 2,000 points to reduce this by 40 euros. Then you would just pay the remaining 60 Euro by cash or credit card.
The second alternative is to use the points while you are booking the room. This can be done for selected Advance Purchase rooms (for some reason, it is not always available on the when doing an advance purchase).
Which hotels to use your points at
This fixed value means that a rethink of using points is needed. For example, in other programs it was said that the best use of points was for aspirational properties. However, those programs had fairly fixed reward tables which helped make this work. In the days of dynamic pricing, these equations have changed somewhat.
Given that the points have this fixed value, you may not think it matters where you use the points. The fact is, depending on the brands of hotels you stay at, it might. That’s because there is a wrinkle in the system that might not be immediately obvious. This comes about due to the way using points affects your points earning for the stay. This is also affected by the standard earn rate that particular hotels have. All up, which hotel you use your points at can affect the number of rewards points and status points you earn.
If you stay at a range of properties then while it may seem counter-intuitive, you may be best off using your points for stays at the lower end properties. More specifically at properties that have a lower earn rate.
An example
The reason for this is that you don’t earn rewards points or status points on the portion of the bill you pay with your points. It is probably easiest to explain this with an example.
Let’s say that you use enough reward points to reduce the cost of your stay by $200 (using round numbers here to keep the calculation simple). As you don’t earn points on the part of the stay paid with points, this will reduce both the number or reward points and status points you will earn.
Ignoring the status bonus, if you stay at a Sofitel your earn will be reduced by almost 300 Rewards Points and 300 Status Points. However, do the same at an Ibis and you will see a reduction of around 150 Rewards Points and 150 Status Points.
As such, if you are using points to reduce your stay costs, there may be benefits in using these for the properties where you earn fewer points to begin with.
Of course, this only matters if you stay at a range of brands that have differing earn rates. If you only ever stay at the Sofitel, or only ever stay at an Ibis then it doesn’t really matter.
Converting to Airline Points
If you don’t want ti use your points for reducing your hotels costs, transferring them to an Airline loyalty program can be a good option. You can transfer ALL points to 31 different airline partners, but the transfer rates vary between the airlines.
For most partners, the conversion rate is 2:1. So, for example, for every 2,000 ALL points you transfer you receive 1,000 airline loyalty points. In some cases, you need to transfer a minimum of 4,000 ALL points which would get you 2,000 airline loyalty points.
Qantas and Velocity
Here in Australia, the two programs convert at a 1:1 rate. In the case of Qantas there is a minimum of 4,000 ALL points which transfer as 4,000 Qantas Frequent Flyer Points. If you are transferring to Velocity, the same deal, although you can transfer as few as 2,000 ALL Points (for 2,000 Velocity Points).
Avios
Things get even stranger if you are transferring to an Avios partner. While you can transfer to the BA, Finnair, Iberia or Qatar programs, the program you transfer affects your transfer rate.
The transfer rates are:
- BA: 4,000 ALL to 2,000 BA Avios
- Finnair 2,000 ALL to 1,300 Finnair Avios
- Iberia 3,000 ALL to 3,000 Iberia Avios
- Qatar 2,000 ALL to 1,000 Qatar Avios
At one end of the spectrum, you transfer as a 1:1 rate (Iberia). On the other hand, BA and Qatar are both effectively a 2:1 transfer. It would seem if you were Avios, you would be best of transferring to Iberia, then transferring to another program.
Other Uses
There are several other possible uses of your Accor ALL points. These include
- Exclusive events and experiences
- Car hire
Exclusive Events and Experiences
You can use your points for a range of events and experiences through limitless experiences. The value of using your points here can be a little variable. I would say the best use here would be for experiences that money can’t buy.
Car Hire
There are opportunities to use your points to hire cars from Hertz. When using your points for this purpose, you will receive the equivalent of 20 Euro for each 2,000 ALL Points. This is half the value you would receive when redeeming your points for a hotel stay.
Final Words
The Accor Live Limitless – ALL program provide a number of ways of using your points. However, some ways of using points provide better value than others. It is worth considering these options to work out the best way of using your points.
