French hospitality giant
Accor has signed a memorandum of understanding to sell its 30.6 percent stake
in its Essendi property business to Blackstone and Colony Investment Management
for up to €975 million ($1.1 billion), the company announced last week.
Under the terms of the
deal, Essendi's properties will remain under Accor brands and gradually convert
to new franchise agreements with an extended duration of 20 years.
Essendi is a 2025 rebrand
of the original AccorInvest business, which Accor spun off in 2017 to pursue an
asset-light strategy.
As part of that move, Accor
separated the vast majority of its owned and leased hotel properties into
AccorInvest and in 2018 sold a majority stake in the business to external
investors. That year, Accor acquired Movenpick Hotels and Resorts, retaining long-term management contracts and selling the
leased properties. It also sold its 86 percent stake in Orbis to AccorInvest.
When the new Essendi brand
was announced a year ago, CoStar
called the company the largest hotel-owner operator in Europe with €7.8 billion
($8.87 billion) of properties in its portfolio at the end of 2024. Today, Essendi's
website puts its portfolio at 535 hotels across 20 countries.
The Blackstone-Colony IM
deal has been in the works since mid-December 2025 when Accor announced the
suspension of its share buyback program. Accor said in a statement it expects
the transaction to close in the third quarter of 2026. After that, the hotelier
will no longer have any ownership left in Essendi. Accor, as of mid-December,
still owned 104 properties outside of its Essendi stake that remain a part of
the hotelier’s 5,800-plus property portfolio.
Accor is also exploring an
initial public offering for its lifestyle hotel and restaurant brands entity
Ennismore. The company said in its most recent earnings statement the IPO would
"enhance liquidity and flexibility to support Ennismore's growth platform"
and that if the transaction went ahead, Accor would remain the controlling
shareholder.