AccorHotels continued on its path to transform
its business, announcing that it has bought into two home-rental platforms,
Oasis Collections and Squarebreak.
Miami-headquartered Oasis Collections
sells itself as a "home meets hotel" accommodations provider,
offering approximately 1,500 design-forward properties in 18 cities in Latin
America, Europe and the United States. Accor acquired a 30 percent stake in the
company. CEO Sebastien Bazin said Oasis Collections does a significant portion
of business-to-business service and the average length of stay for an Oasis
guest is 22 days, meaning Accor can "offer something we haven't had
available up to now."
The Paris-based Squarebreak platform, in
which Accor acquired a 49 percent stake, features approximately 220 private
upscale homes mostly in France, Spain and Morocco.
"I have no intention of
confronting Airbnb," Bazin said during the company's fourth-quarter
earnings presentation. "We are just extremely determined, and our
investment in the two platforms is evidence of this. We are intent on the fact
that the market is evolving in such a way that growth will come through these
secondary residences." Bazin further postulated that a number of operators
would get into these "small niches." That certainly holds true for United
States-based Choice Hotels International, which launched a vacation rentals
platform this month and kept the door open to the possibility of transitioning
to consumer-to-consumer rentals. "We may have
missed the first wave, the second or even the third wave," Bazin said, "but
we're not going to miss the fourth wave. Enough is enough."
The investments into Squarebreak and
Oasis come just months after Accor announced the acquisition
of FRHI Hotels & Resorts, the parent company
to the Fairmont, Raffles and Swissotel brands, a move Bazin said would give
Accor tremendous strength in North America and the luxury segment. Last month,
Accor finalized its strategic
alliance with Huazhu Hotels Group to develop
Accor's midprice and economy brands in China and to tie together the loyalty
programs of the two companies. "We need to be in the Chinese market, and
we couldn’t go it alone," Bazin said of the deal.
Accor, too, transformed its digital
platform in 2015; it acquired Paris-based marketing platform FastBooking in
April, then leveraged that relationship to open AccorHotels.com as a
marketplace for select independent hoteliers.
"This is just a starting
point," Bazin told investors and analysts. "I think you'll be
increasingly comfortable with these initiatives we're taking because they're
well thought out … well quantified. We know where we're heading, even in a
complex environment with a lot of volatility and turbulence."
Fourth-Quarter
& Full-Year Performance
During the fourth quarter, Accor
reported a 0.5 percent year-over-year increase in average daily rate to €81.
Occupancy dipped 0.8 percentage points to 65.9 percent. For the full-year 2015,
ADR increased 1.1 percent to €81 and occupancy grew
0.9 percentage points to 68 percent.
"Throughout the year, the environment was very, very
turbulent and very different from one country to another," Bazin said.
Indeed, the company felt the effects of November's terrorist
attacks in France during the fourth quarter, as countrywide occupancy decreased
2.5 percentage points to 60.2 percent and ADR dipped 2.1 percent to €78.
Northern, Central and Eastern Europe’s performances remained positive, however,
as occupancy rose 0.5 percentage points to 71.6 percent and ADR increased 3
percent to €82.
Accor experienced its weakest regional performance in the
Americas during the fourth quarter, as occupancy decreased 3.6 percentage
points to 62.3 percent and ADR dropped 0.5 percent to €73. Bazin said Brazil,
with a 7.5 percent decline in year-over-year revenue, was the biggest
contributor to the region's downturn, as poor economic conditions slowed the
volume of seminar and meeting activity at hotels.
Accor's fourth-quarter systemwide revenue dipped
2.3 percent year over year to €1.3 billion. Its full-year revenue increased 2.9
percent to €5.4 billion. The company added 36,172 rooms across 229 hotels
during 2015. As of Dec. 31, Accor's total portfolio featured 3,873 hotels, or 511,517
rooms.