Accor has one of the biggest brand stables in travel. It might be large enough, for now
The Accor the hospitality industry has gotten to know is a rapacious group, habitually on the hunt, stalking its next brand prey.
The Paris-based hotel company has more than 52 brands today across a wide range of core and adjacent businesses, in segments from budget up to ultra-luxury. Back in 2022, owing to the volume of brands, Accor decided to reorganize its structure along two divisions: Luxury & Lifestyle and Premium, Midscale & Economy. Within each division, Accor appointed CEOs to lead each of the brands, reporting up to Sébastien Bazin, Accor group chairman and CEO, and Jean-Jacques Morin, group deputy CEO and also CEO of the Premium, Midscale & Economy division.
For a company with such a voracious appetite as Accor, it has been quiet of late on the M&A front: it has not made a large-scale acquisition in the last 12 months; not out of complication, but rather strategy, standing pat on what it has, Morin recently explained from his company’s New York office. “We have everything we need right now,” Morin said. “The next step is to get the juice out of what we’ve been consuming for the past 10 years and we believe that the organization, as it is, with two divisions, is the right way. We’re exactly where we want to be, executing on those two poles, and getting the juice that we have not gotten over the last years.”
It’s a lot of pulp to squeeze, but wring it Accor has done, pressing out record results in 2023, with EBITDA exceeding €1 billion. And with major sporting events across Europe this year, including the Paris Olympics and UEFA Euro 2024, there’s ample reason why Bazin said: “We are blessed for the next 12 months.”