1.

What are the resources and capabilities that have underpinned Accor’s success

traditionally?

Accor is a French hotel chain that is highly successful in the last 50 years and has over 4000

hotels around the world. It has seen a great expansion in its market share since its formation in

1967. The major reason for their success is their excellent branding strategy that “range from

luxury to economy, combine excellent service with a warm welcome and a multicultural,

responsible approach” (Accor Hotels 2019).

If we look at the success of the Accor hotels over the years, the company has emphasized the

quality in its operations and outbound logistics that deliver excellent service to the customers.

The company built the brand on the basis of standardization. Another success factor for the

Accor is its reservation system. “One of the strengths of the Accor brand is its reservation

system, known as TARS which supports its sale from online reservations and payment to sales

optimization management. 38 A million reservations were booked through TARS reservation

system and 79 million room nights were produced.” Then the company also raised the customer

awareness using its marketing and sales, a process that is focused on perusing the customers to

use the Accor hotels by informing them about the benefits that the hotel offers to the customers.

Another important aspect of Accor’s outbound logistics is its distribution. “Accor hotel company

benefited from its brand by making agreements with the strongest online partners like

booking.com, Expedia and HRS in optimum conditions (Demirciftci & Kızılırmak 2016).”

2) What new resources and capabilities must they build as they undergo digital

transformation?
The hotel industry is now deeply impacted and shaped by the digital trend. The modern

technological changes have altered the competitive landscape for the hotels altogether.

Moreover, consumer behavior and the actors involved in the hotel service purchasing process are

also changed.

In the current technological environment, the prior institutional trust has now been changed into

the peer trust and the customers have gained much more power than what they had historically.

So the company now needs to have a customer-focused approach. This is because the customers

now have more than ever information as the users can share their experience and thus can

influence other users. Accor needs to plan a digital marketing strategy that can tackle the needs

of the modern technological environment.

Monitoring the reputation of the brand and receive the feedback to be used to improve the

service to choose and create the value that the customer required. Then, producing the content to

communicate the value for each channel. And finally, encouraging its customers to share positive

feedback about the hotel so that other customers can be influenced to create more positive noise

about the hotel.

3) Where do you think they will face the biggest challenges as they move forward with the

implementation of this change?

The biggest issue for Accor is how to become a content-driven organization. One of the major

challenges in implementing a new strategy to become a content-driven organization for Accor is

that it does not have the experience of such a strategy as the competitors have already

implemented this strategy successfully. Then, the Accor team is not used to of these modern
technologies and the fear of change may result in resistance from the team. Then the company’s

incentive plan may not motivate employees enough to accept the change.

Then, the company also need to know what type of content would be useful in the hotel industry.

How the company can motivate its customers to share their experience with the Accor in a way

that can motivate peers. Then, the company would also need to find out the way with which it

can use the content to attract the customers at its website for booking purpose. This is because

the digital strategy will be of no use if it cannot attract customers for generating sales.

In short, there is two major kinds of issues Accor faces in leveraging its new digital marketing

strategy. The first is how it can motivate its employees to adapt to this new digital marketing

change and secondly how it can curate and use the information to motivate customers to share

their experiences in a positive way. then it also needs to find out its digital marketing channel

strategy that where and how should it publish this information.

References

Accor Hotels (2019). Retrieved from: https://www.cvent.com/en/success-story/hospitality-

cloud/accor-hotels

Demirciftci, T & Kızılırmak, İ. (2016). Strategic Branding in Hospitality: Case of Accor Hotels.

Journal of Tourismology. 2. 1-15. 10.26650/jot.2016.2.1.0004.