From the archive
proposing a sharp break in how hotels in continental Europe had been managed and marketed up until that point. Simply put, the emergent French middle class had little choice between staying at luxury hotels or local offerings with wildly divergent definitions of what constituted comfort. With Novotel, however, they now had an affordable place to stay with guaranteed standards across multiple properties. It proved immensely popular. Accor followed up
this success with Novotel, and with new economy and mid-scale brand offerings over the next two decades, founding Ibis in 1974 – a ‘short name that meant the cost of signs could be reduced’, according to the company history – and Hotel Formule 1 in 1985. The acquisition of Sofitel in 1980 and an exchange offer with Compagnie International des Wagon-Lits in the early 1990s allowed the operator to extend its reach into the luxury end of the market. Whatever the value of these achievements, however, there was no disputing one essential fact: Accor was in the hotels business, and there was little chance of that changing. It took the emergence of online travel agents (OTAs)
and rental platforms to blow that model apart. The former served to erode hotel operators’ profit margins and push up distribution costs, while the latter not only helped to drive down costs for travellers, but also boosted accessibility to the destinations consumers wanted to visit. One only needs to visit Paris, where AccorHotels is headquartered, to see their impact. In a city where it has remained notoriously difficult to build new hotels, Ibis hotels are restricted to a middling orbit brushing the 18th, 4th and 7th arrondissements. Affordable Airbnb listings, meanwhile, are available within a stone’s throw of Notre Dame.
Digital focus In 2013, AccorHotels appointed Sebastien Bazin as its new CEO. The fourth man to hold the role in seven years, Bazin came from an equity background, and within a year had cut costs by halting its programme to operate more hotels and focusing on an ownership model. AccorHotels’ new CEO then announced a €225m digital transformation strategy, as part of an effort to retake ground yielded by the operator to OTAs and online rental platforms. In 2015, the group opened its booking platform to independent hotels in a bid to compete more effectively with the likes of
Booking.com and Expedia (the scheme has since been abandoned after it emerged customers were more interested in booking stays at Accor properties). Then, in April the following year, it sank €148m into the acquisition of Onefinestay and bought a 30% stake in Oasis Collections. That very same month, Viort was hired as AccorHotel’s – and the industry’s – first chief disruption officer. Bazin had announced, after the acquisition of
Hotel Management International /
www.hmi-online.com
Onefinestay, that AccorHotels would ‘dominate’ the luxury rental space and the operator was now keen to hire someone capable of identifying future growth opportunities for the group. It found a willing partner in Viort, a serial entrepreneur who forged his reputation creating games for Facebook before starting the online travel agent Wipolo, which had been snapped up by AccorHotels in 2014. It’s a role that he tends to approach as a science,
rather than an art. “It is an exciting challenge to understand how the different interfaces work and to comprehend the tools available to stakeholders, [including] owners, general managers, online travel agents [and] platforms for customers. In these situations, my engineering mindset quickly takes over, because the more complicated it is, the more I like it.”
Search and acquire The way Viort has approached this problem is twofold. His disruption and growth department scouts for useful start-ups in the wild, searching for firms of a certain maturity where partnership or a strategic investment might be of mutual benefit. “Looking back at our acquisitions these past few years, you’ll find this is a common trend,” explains Viort. “Needless to say, we focus on start-ups with strategic value for the group, which is why we pick them up based on their capacity to grow into leaders in the industry.” This certainly applies to the acquisitions of Travel Keys and Squarebreak, two luxury rental platforms that were merged into the Onefinestay late last year, boosting its property portfolio from 2,500 to 10,000. The move has also been complemented by AccorHotels’ acquisition of Availpro, a provider of digital services to independent hotels, and its purchase of an 80% stake in the concierge service John Paul. AccorHotels has also invested significant resources in accelerator competitions across Europe.
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Jo&Joe is a new hotel brand aimed at millennials and is based on the concept of an ‘open house’ where guests gather in commuånal spaces.
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