SINGAPORE, 31 May 2018; It sounds too good to be true; rates starting at USD22 at more than 2,700 hotels, worldwide, across the vast array of hotel brands that make up the AccorHotels stable.
It’s that time of the year when AccorHotels blows the dust off its annual super sale inventory and rolls out discounts on rooms, 40% off meals and offers a free breakfast.
The catch is you have to be a member of the AccorHotels’ Plus loyalty programme to be eligible for the food discounts.
Members of the lower rung, Le Club programme, have to settle for 30% off food and a free breakfast.
There other conditions, but this campaign is about building membership and driving bookings to the group’s website, so the deals are off-limits to travel agents.
Of the 2,700 hotels that signed up for this year’s goodies, 500 hotels are in the Asia-Pacific region. The trick is finding then and then nailing down a deal.
With rates starting from just US$22 per night, the AccorHotels Super Sale should give you the perfect opportunity to book a long-awaited vacation.
Personally, I think a night in a Sofitel, Raffles, or Pullman, at USD22 night is a bargain, while I might think twice about being squeezed into an Ibis box for that price.
The burning question, of course, is how easy is it to track down the USD bargain and book it before the yield improvement team locks in the ‘sold out’ override?
What Accor doesn’t tell us is how many room nights across the system are available at USD 22? It’s a bit like the AirAsia and Vietjet promotions that hit us with a million seats on sale for next to nothing. Wow, a million seats and they can booked out in seconds after the stopwatch starts clicking. It’s amazing.
But at face value the AccorHotels deal is available at “selected hotels across AccorHotels’ Raffles, Fairmont, Sofitel Legend, So Sofitel, Sofitel, MGallery by Sofitel, Swissôtel, Pullman, Grand Mercure, The Sebel, Novotel, Novotel Suites, Mercure, Adagio, Mama Shelter, ibis, ibis styles, and ibis budget.”
That’s a lot of brand variety for a single hot rate.
The sale opened to the general public 29 May. It will close 1 June for stays booked from 15 June this year to 14 June 2019 for the Asia-Pacific region. Elsewhere the stay validity is 6 July 2018 to 2 September 2018.
We will have to put our running shoes on and I suspect that by the 31 May evening we will be scurrying around trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Do we have time to enrol in the loyalty programme, come to a decision on the resort we want to visit, narrow the choice down between a mesmerizing selection of brands and secure the room at the magic USD 22 marker? Personally, it sounds like a task too tall.
I conducted a quick tour of the accorhotel website and for the life of me I couldn’rt track down a USD 22 special. There were a few offers at around USD 50 at resorts in Thailand, but nothing that would hit you between the eyes and say “this is hot.”
I browsed the group’s Bangkok hotels and the nearest to the magical USD 22 was a USD 33 stay in Ibis Styles Sukhumvit.
By this time, the enthusiasm to grab a deal before the siren blows has dissipated. Thank God for Agoda, Booking.com and Expedia. The deals are a plenty year round without wasting time on the Accor merry-go-round. Give us a genuine deal with plenty of lead time and don’t use gimmicks to harvest our personal data.
