I’m based in Hong Kong and travel to mainland China every couple of weeks to different cities. I’m to new Accor and have recently earned platinum status. However, when I try to book properties on the Accor website, most are completely unavailable (all dates), despite being available to book on some third party sites (and Huazhu). Now, some of these are Ibis properties (which don’t participate in ALL in China), but others are not.

For example:

• Chengdu: 27 hotels, only 4 bookable
• Xiamen: 6 hotels, 2 bookable
• Shijiazhuang: 4 hotels, ZERO bookable
• Nanjing: 23 hotels, 7 bookable
• Kunming: 4 hotels, ONE bookable
• CHognqing: 5 hotels, ONE bookable
• Guangzhou 27 hotels, 15 bookable
• Beijing: 24 hotels, 11 bookable
• Shanghai: 72 hotels, 36 bookable

I’ll take Chengdu, as it’s a pretty egregious example. The following hotels offer free breakfast to platinum members, but are completely unbookable on Accor.

• Mercure Chengdu Downtown
• Mercure Chengdu Huapaifang
• Mercure Chengdu Jinniu Wanda Plaza
• Mercure Chengdu Jiuyanqiao

I’ve also checked for a few properties which are bookable on Huazhu (but not on Accor):

• Mercure Chengdu Jinniu Wanda Plaza - from 343 yuan per night
• Mercure Chengdu Kuanzhai Alley West - from 396 yuan per night
• Mercure Chengdu Shuangliu international airport - from 343 yuan per night
• Mercure Chengdu Shuangliu - from 326 per night
• Mercure Chengdu Xindu - from 343 per night

So, these properties are “real”, have reviews from the past few weeks, belong to ALL, some are advertised as offering free breakfast to plats, but are completely unbookable via Accor. Just two days ago, Accor Group mentioned that China is to become the world’s biggest tourism market (as a new user I can't link to the article). It’s not much point if the hotels are not taking reservations from ALL members.

What’s going on??