Strategy: Centralizing its booking and payments back-end while using AI and data science to streamline operations and customer engagement
One of the world’s largest hospitality firms, operating more than 40 hotel brands in 5,600 locations across more than 110 countries, has a strong ambition.
Accor envisions establishing a comprehensive e-commerce platform offering a variety of services beyond rooms — including spa services, restaurants, and even unique experiences. The group wants to consolidate payments to simplify the booking process, and from an internal perspective, it wants to redistribute funds depending on the products and services selected by its worldwide customers.
Along the way to achieve its objectives, Accor has used multiple payment gateways with different providers. According to the group’s Senior Vice President of Product Management, Jean Noël Lau Keng Lun, there was a need to transform “the payment experience for hotels and guests alike, enabling the deployment of new payment methods at scale. This improves conversion rates and also unlocks new business opportunities.”
This recently (11 June) led to Accor deciding to implement a single centralized system across all its hospitality properties for online bookings.
With this approach, the firm has already benefited from a significant net conversion rate gain at the checkout step for prepaid bookings on its e-commerce channels, compared to the results of previous systems. This has resulted in noticeable topline gains at the hotel level.
Earlier in Nov 2023, the group also debuted an AI-powered “travel assistant” to learn guest preferences to help improve personalization of its products and services, as well as to enhance engagement with multi-model travelers (those who mix business travel with personal vacations).
According to Eileen O’Mara, Chief Revenue Officer, Stripe, the payments provider chosen as the primary partner by Accor: “Anyone who’s booked a hotel room knows the frustration when the payment doesn’t work as it should. Accor is putting guests at the heart of its payments experience. And we’re thrilled to play a part in its strategy which benefits both the hotels and their customers.”
