Recently, Accor Hotel Group hosted a Carnival themed info session for meeting and event agencies at Sofitel Brussels Europe. Eventonline was present and CEO Erik Wood and Sales Manager Daisy Lens had a chat with Dana Lewis, Accor Director of Global Sales, MICE & Leisure about the changes within the Accor Group as at the end of 2019, Accor rebranded and is now called ‘ALL’ which stands for ‘Accor Live Limitless’.
“The whole idea behind this rebranding is to show that Accor is no longer just a hotel group but that we encompass living, staying in hotels and experiences and wellness,” Dana Lewis explains. “We now have 39 brands in our Group and as part of that we recently have relaunched our loyalty program for both the individual but also for the groups business. The program itself is designed for the bookers of meetings and it rewards them with points for all of their business that they give to us. These points will go to stays in our hotels or it can go to discounts for their next meetings. It can be used with our airline partners and it can also be used for experiences. In a nutshell, it’s a reward program, not just for the person who is using the hotel, but for the person who is actually booking the hotel.”
The further development of the number of brands also continues in 2020. “We are now incorporating brands such as Fairmont and Mövenpick into the Group. So, we really developed the program quite a lot over the years and now obviously we’re getting the brands to become more part of the program,” the Sales Director adds.
Accor reshuffled its number of regions across the whole of Europe. “From ten regions we went to five main regions plus a luxury division as well. The Northern Europe currently encompasses Scandinavia, Benelux and also the UK. This means we can now work together on a lot more synergies and share best practices, work together as a team in a more cohesive way.”
The brand keeps expanding. Dana Lewis confirms. “Across Northern Europe we have between 20 and 40 hotels that will come into the Accor family during the period 2020-2021. The newest one that is coming in March will be in Luxemburg. At the end of last year, we just opened in Antwerp a Mercure Hotel. In Luxemburg we are bringing one of our new brands. So, it’s not only opening new hotels, we are actually introducing new brands into the region as well. Mama Shelter will come. Jo & Joe, which is one of our economy brands is being brought into the UK soon. One of the lifestyle brands, Tribe, is opening in Glasgow. So, we’re introducing at least 3 to 4 new brands into the region in the next year, so a very exciting time.”
At the event in Sofitel Brussels Europe some 24 hotels from across Europe were present, primarily from the Northern European region, but also from Barcelona and France. “The whole idea is to introduce our meeting and events agencies to these hotels. You can easily send out the information to clients, but when they are actually face-to-face, they can start building relationships. It’s all about networking really and educating them about our hotels,” Dana Lewis says.
“We also wanted it to be an event with a fun atmosphere. That’s why we opted for the Carnival theme. Also, last year, we opened a brand new luxury hotel in Rio and we wanted to showcase one of our overseas long call openings just to show that we are global hotel group and Carnival is always a fun theme to have anyway, especially with a small vacation to Rio with a flight and stay as nice prize,” the Director of Sales ends.
Conference Hotel European Quarter Brussels – Sofitel Brussels Europe