Moderator, Aer Lingus Gold Circle Club,bmi diamond club, Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles & Le Club Accorhotels
Join Date: Apr 2009
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Then new branding of Accor itself rolled out yesterday, the accorhotels.com website and assorted twitter streams now sport the new logo (goose and tagline).
As with all re-branding exercises, if they are not backed up with consistency on the ground in terms of service and customer experience they are pretty worthless.
Moderator, Aer Lingus Gold Circle Club,bmi diamond club, Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles & Le Club Accorhotels
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Dublin
Programs: TK*G, A3*G, EI Gold Circle Elite, BA Gold, Le Club Accorhotels Platinum, Hilton Silver
Posts: 3,215
So A-Club will be rebranded in the new year and Accor are running an advertising campaign in December with, get this...., the old name. Bizarre.
Quote:
A|Club advertises with Sofitel, Pullman, Mercure and Novotel!
Starting on November 28, A|Club will run a photo advertising campaign in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and Saudi Arabia. The aim is to continue to boost A|Club’s notoriety by associating it with the hotel brands and establish it as the Accor hotels’ loyalty program.
And the use of "notoriety" is most unfortunate. Maybe a dictionary would come in handy.... Notoriety is not a good thing.
After taking Accor’s Denis Hennequin (CEO) to task for the group’s convoluted restructuring of its economy brand ibis (which now comprises ibis, ibis styles and ibis budget), moderator Simon Johnson asked point blank, “Do you actually think customers will understand that?”
Let me hazard a guess: No, they don't. Already now the participation of the "new" ibis in A-Club is confusing.
Accor is pushing on with a programme of transforming the design and comfort of every hotel under its new economy hotel ‘megabrand,’ which will convert Etap to Ibis Budget and All Seasons to Ibis Styles (see online news September 13, 2011).
Accor’s CEO Denis Hennequin plans to renovate 30-40 Ibis family hotels a week, in what he says is “probably the most ambitious project ever in the economy sector”.
A major shakeup of the company was decided only four months ago, with what Accor says was the simple decision to bring these three brands under the Ibis name and to bring a sense of “modernity, simplicity and well-being” to all the hotels under the Ibis umbrella......
I just received this in an email. Does anyone know why, or the backstory for this move? I do see a thread with a question about the London Whitechapel property, but this question is more general. Just through this keyhole (photos), it looks like Accor is testing the idea of rebranding the ETAP concept with the Ibis name. (OK ... obvious.) Or maybe this is the plan from here on? Thank you.
I just received this in an email. Does anyone know why, or the backstory for this move? I do see a thread with a question about the London Whitechapel property, but this question is more general. Just through this keyhole (photos), it looks like Accor is testing the idea of rebranding the ETAP concept with the Ibis name. (OK ... obvious.) Or maybe this is the plan from here on? Thank you.
I just received this in an email. Does anyone know why, or the backstory for this move? I do see a thread with a question about the London Whitechapel property, but this question is more general. Just through this keyhole (photos), it looks like Accor is testing the idea of rebranding the ETAP concept with the Ibis name. (OK ... obvious.) Or maybe this is the plan from here on? Thank you.
They announced last year that some F1 and all Etap hotels would be rebranded Ibis Budget and All seasons would be rebranded as Ibis Styles.
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Thank you, all. I goofed. And welcome, julianin!
Looking at some of the Accor material and this thread over the last hour, I see the idea of merging the brands under Ibis, and the debate of the wisdom here.
I'm reminded of the Choice Hotels family (Quality, Comfort, Sleep) images being so close for many years, and it didn't work for them. So they've worked in recent years to diverge. When they started, they were different price ranges, comfort levels and market segments. But reality mitigated against all these, both from the perspective of the customer, who just had a difficult time distinguishing without being clued in at a high aperceptive level, and the proprietors, who railed against the price segments they were supposed to operate in. The original idea came undone before the advent of the new strategy.
And I see the new CEO's statement that this is the most ambitious revamp undertaking in the industry. I suggest that persuading the operators (kicking and screaming) of Motel 6 to remodel to the new room concept may have been Accor's most ambitious undertaking, in its own way.
Notoriety is not a good thing.
