Well, I know this doesn't really answer the question, but I would've voted for the Accor board mainly because I think it better to allow a "marginal" forum and reevaluate it after six months than to disappoint a subset of membership asking for it in the first place -- talk about turning away a group of posters. It would take quite the oddball forum request before I would vote no for it -- however, I would strongly push to look at forums regularly and establish a criteria for the removal of forums that didn't see enough traffic after a reasonable amount of time.
Regarding the American bias, I'm not sure that this is something TalkBoard can rectify or even the degree to which it exists -- I know that there is a lot of UK traffic on the BA board (duh!) and quite a few of those people do not venture into other forums. I know that I subscribe to about a dozen forums, but I hit 3-5 on a regular basis. I also know that at least one vote (mentioned above) against the forum came from a British member of TB.
I think the best way to lessen any bias (and I believe it's more English speaking than anything necessarily American) is for people from other countries to run for TalkBoard, to organize DOs, and perhaps for TB to consider forums or places on the board where other languages besides English can be spoken. It's something that should be discussed at some point, certainly, and something that could be brought up at any time by the person who asked the question in the public TB Topics forum, as well.