Hi folks: Long time Marriott Titanium and Hilton Diamond elite here. Thanks for the great thread that is helping me onboard.

Just hopping into Accor world as Citi has a great promo (1000 TYP = 750 ALL) and I have a LOT of Citi points due to my 5X Prestige card. Enough that I'm thinking to transfer a few hundred thousand of them as 1.6 cents / Thank-You-Point is awesome hotel value. And good hotel transfer partners are hard to find (Hello Hyatt, thanks for having a 5000pt Regency in BKK that seems impossible to actually book at 5000pts!).

Having burned 800k HH points over COVID, I struggle now to get that sort of value, and of course in 10 years I've gotten not a single suite upgrade at Hilton whether paid stay or award (thanks!). Marriott I love, and if I could xfer any of my Citi/Chase/AMEX points to Marriott at "1.6 CPP" I would do so in a heartbeat as they always give me great upgrades (Really, thanks!).

Looking into Accor with this Citi xfer bonus, I see some amazing value. The biggest plus for Accor is that I can get hotels in the sub-$50 range while w the others, it's become difficult to get a hotel in that range, especially using points. The Hilton Garden Inn Bali was 5000HH ("~$25") points for a long time but its now almost 3X that level which is not a very good redemption, for instance. Good luck finding any Hilton or Marriott at less than "15k" points these days.

Of course I have zero Accor ALL status, and there's no Status Matching (seems silly not to match high level hotel elites, but hey, whatever. Also seems silly to show FRANCE every time I click on the Map in the search function, but hey, France, Europe, whatever.)

Few questions for the seasoned if you don't mind:

The 199Euro Voyager card seems like it could pay itself back pretty quick as any discount off the rate really is a discount in your pocket. I see 0-class members like me get 5% off, so this would really represent a 15% discount on high value properties (less others). Any watchouts here?

Do "award" nights count towards status? This post seems to say Yes, as well as whatever cash you pay gets you points. This post also implies I can use cashback site to get cashback on the cash part of the payment. For my current stay I used TopCashBack, so if it goes through I could expect 6% on the $12 I paid for the two nights on top of the points. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35657446-post4.html

Another post says there needs to be more than 10E for the night to count. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35660134-post9.html

Whats the story there? Guess I will find out after I checkout from the BKK hotel I checked into today.

So 199Euro Voyager CArd (20 nights) plus 10 award nights would get me Gold. It seems Plat is the place to get, especially as I am in Asia. Do all hotels in Asia have the free breakfast? Or is that a hunt-and-peck operation? How often does Accor have double-night promos? I assume a night is a night, ie a Budget Ibis would still get me a night even though it earns less points?

Lounges: I don't see a way to search for them on the website and I don't see a dedicated thread here. Are these extremely rare? I probably would never stay in a hotel over $100 so if they're only at $$$ places, that would be no use to me.

Price Matching:
I saw here in Bangkok the budget Ibis was going for $41 on Agoda, vs $51 on the site. Their price matching seems to imply I would get that $41 rate with another 15% discount on top. Is this worth chasing, as I know they can find some needle in a haystack term that is different, and reject it? Or are they a solid with price-match? If booking this way, would you want to book with just cash on the way in and pay points later, or book with points and then see what happens when they credit the difference back? Once you make a cash booking, can you later switch payment to points or only at checkout?

Net, for someone with a bunch of points, and looking to ratchet up status, is this possible, impossible, or who knows? If I have to pay 10Euro per night for the night to qualify, and need another 40 nights on top to get to free breakfast level, that would be a lot of breakfast I could just pay for on my own!