Accor Group CEO Sébastien Bazin has a message for investors. Frequently reinventing hotel companies is currently underway.
After four reorganizations over a decade, the Paris-based hotel operator has settled on what Basin says is focusing on the execution.
After Bazin took over ACCOR in 2013, he transformed the company from a European-centric mid-scale operator to a global player with 47 brands spanning everything from budget roadside accommodation to super luxurious properties.
Badzin says Accor has a clear and predictable model. The CEO repeated the financial goals he laid out in 2023 in 2027 until 2027. It repeated revenue growth of 6-10% and EBITDA growth of 9-12% per year.
Bazin spoke to New York City media on Thursday. There, he and other top executives launched roadshows for investors. The CEO spoke about the company’s failures, recent profits, and what follows after its expansion of luxury and lifestyle and its geographic ambitions.
Play catch-up games
The company has been “very trained to refocus Accor by responding to double-digit growth in 47 brands, geography, revenue and operating profits, and even adding,” he said.
In a rare moment of corporate candidity, Bazin admitted that Accor often falls behind American competitors on some metrics.
“I think we’re always late, with a pretty humble attitude,” he confessed. “We are late for our lifestyle and late for our loyalty program.”
This approval comes as Accor recently strengthened its position in the luxury and lifestyle segment and improved its hotel loyalty program.
According to CFO Martine Gerow, roughly 15% of its network now belongs to the luxury and lifestyle category for 10 years. Approximately 25% of the hotel development pipeline are luxurious and lifestyle. (The lifestyle hotel is a bustling lobby where Tiktok influencers pretend to work on MacBooks, highlighting design, local culture and social spaces.)
Accor’s loyalty program has grown in membership by 54% since the program’s rebranding and rebooting in 2019. The rewards program is expected to have 100 million members by March.
“Last year, we added 11 million members,” Bazin said. “We share that we will be 150 million members within five years.”
Luxurious and super aggressive push
Accor focuses on luxury hotel brands where Accor was once thought of in hindsight, but now heavily competed with powerhouse brands from Four Seasons to Aman.
Shortly after Bazin joined the group 10 years ago, only 6% of Accor rooms around the world were luxurious, with only two luxurious brands, Sofitel and Mgallery. Bazin went shopping and added brands like Raffles and Fairmont.
“Perhaps 50% of the outside world were absolutely negative, as were “what are they doing? They’ll never be trusted on the luxurious side,” Bazin said. “We didn’t have a brand. We didn’t have talent.”
Today, at least 10% of the 800,000+ rooms are in the luxury segment, and the group offers a wider range of brands.
“Five years ago, if hotel investors wanted to go and buy that luxury and lifestyle segment, we were invited to offer one out of 10 brands,” says Bazin. “This year, I’m invited 10 out of 10. I think I’ll get half of these.”
In the fourth quarter, Accor opened three times more than pre-pandemic hotels, three times more than the opening of luxury and lifestyle hotels. At luxury hotels, revenue per available room increased 9% year-on-year, due to both higher occupancy and nightly rates. Euro value signatures rose 39% in luxury and lifestyle hotels last year.
Accor is now pushing beyond luxury to super luxury. This is thanks to our partnership with the luxurious Titan LVMH. In 2026, Accor will join LVMH to debut their first two Orient Express Overnight Trains. LVMH became an investor in the project last year.
Hotel Purge: Lose dead weight
The approval of this past failure was lower than its US-based competitors Marriott and Hilton, as the company reported net unit growth of 3.5% in 2024. But Bazin explained that the numbers obscured the more subtle stories. Accor intentionally removes properties that do not meet brand standards at twice the pace of their American rivals.
“In some of the 3.5% net unit growth there was 2% of what should be called a ‘deliberate exit’,” Bazin explained. “Network cleaning.
Accor intentionally removes properties that do not meet brand standards. Approximately 400 properties of all kinds have been recently evaluated and removed.
Purge continues until 2025, and then the company expects netroom growth to accelerate to “at the top of 5% per year” by 2027, the CEO said.
The group also needs to make more money on the remaining properties.
“All new hotel openings have a room count of 26% more than existing hotels, so you’ll earn more money from the last hotel from the next hotel,” Bazin said.
The company has invested heavily in property upgrades between segments, from economy brands to luxury flagships. For example, about 20% of the Sofitel brand have been renovated.
Future integration
Bazin estimates that the hospitality sector represents “10% of the world’s GDP and 10% of the global workforce,” and says there is a need for a lot of business for the key groups.
In the future, the CEO hopes to protect the European Accor base, which operates approximately 357,000 rooms.
“Akor is very good in Europe,” Bazin said. “That doesn’t mean that Americans aren’t in there. We need to be careful. But we still have the largest market share of the openings of European hotels.”
Badzin said the Middle East and Asia-Pacific region account for 60% of Accor’s hotel development pipeline. Because it will be the fastest growth for decades to come.
Bazin predicts that US-based companies will find it difficult to expand outside the US, which has a unified regulatory scheme, currency and marketing culture.
“As they expand in China, the fees they earn will be less,” Bazin said — he said that if Akor finally expands in the US, it will earn more fees.
The CEO said Accor is on track to meet its lay-out targets in 2013 thanks to supportive tailwinds in most of the major markets.
“Demand has exceeded supply three times,” Bazin said. “If the question is ‘I need to play in the hospitality market’, the answer is clearly yes. ”
Accor’s two-track strategy: Luxury for growth, economy for profit
Skift spoke with group associate CEO Jean-Jacques Morin about Accor’s strategic pivots in key areas, including why half of the new hotels are in Asia this year.
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