Dive Brief:
- Accor posted record-high results for full-year 2023, exceeding previous guidance for the year and earning EBITDA of over 1 billion euros ($1.04 billion) for the first time in the company’s history, according to an earnings report.
- In 2023, the company’s RevPAR, revenue and EBITDA were up 23%, 20% and 49%, respectively, year over year. The group achieved growth across all segments and geographies, according to Sébastien Bazin, Accor’s chairman and CEO.
- While the France-based company’s premium, midscale and economy (PM&E) division drove RevPAR growth globally in the fourth quarter, luxury and lifestyle will continue to be a focus for Accor in the U.S., in particular, this year.
Dive Insight:
While 2022 was still marked by post-pandemic recovery, 2023 demand was “resolutely solid,” according to Accor.
Throughout the year, Accor opened 291 hotels, or 41,000 rooms, globally. As of December, the company’s pipeline had 1,315 hotels, or 225,000 rooms.
In the fourth quarter, Accor’s PM&E segment posted 12% RevPAR growth year on year, while its luxury and lifestyle segment posted 8%. In the U.S., however, growth will continue to focus on the latter.
“The opportunity to significantly increase our footprint in the U.S. is in the luxury lifestyle [segment],” said Martine Gerow, group CFO, on a conference call with journalists. “The lifestyle brands portfolio is really great [for] really going bigger in the U.S.”
Of Accor’s properties in the U.S., the vast majority fall under the luxury and lifestyle segment, according to Gerow.
U.S. luxury properties include the recently opened Raffles Boston, the country’s first Raffles hotel. “It’s definitely a brand where we see potential,” Gerow added.
Gerow shared that the U.S. luxury and lifestyle pipeline is roughly evenly split between luxury hotels and lifestyle hotels. “We definitely see opportunities to expand in the U.S., in both lifestyle and luxury,” she added.
Part of the reason the group is focusing on its higher-end brands in the region, Gerow said, is the PM&E market’s competitiveness, given other hotel groups’ dominance in the space. “It’s a much tougher play,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that there are not opportunities, but you have to be very surgical.”
Accor is also underway on a Fairmont hotel in New Orleans. In a previous release about the company’s luxury expansion plans, the company’s chief development officer for luxury and lifestyle, Agnès Roquefort, called the segment “the engine that will help propel the Group forward.”
Looking ahead, Bazin said in a statement that “major international events [...] should continue to fuel growth” in 2024. Those events include the Olympics, scheduled to take place in Paris this summer.
