Accor’s New Website Is a Cautionary Tale for Hotel Brands With Ambitious Web Plans
Photo Credit: Sample of London travel options at the My Trip Planner portal. Accor Group
Skift Take
Accor is indicative of where hotel brands are headed as they attempt to engage bookers to start and end on a hotel's brand.com site. But it's doing so with content and features users have shown little to no interest in using.
Can a global hotel group with over 3,600 properties spread across 14 brands in 92 countries position itself as a hospitality provider delivering fully personalized local travel experiences?
Accor Hotels is attempting to do just that. Last month, the company unveiled a new destination-themed homepage customizable for 32 geolocated source markets in 16 languages, fronting a booking engine that averages one reservation every two seconds.
The new brand.com homepage is similar to Accor's splashy Pullman Hotels website, which the company redeveloped a year ago that positions the Pullman business brand as a lifestyle hotel experience.
The homepage opens with a full-width photo slider showing vivid destination scenes to promote the relevant properties, followed by special offers bucketed by both destination and hotel. The goal is to make the homepage more sticky by providing more options during the initial travel research phase.
Much more innovative in terms of the actual
