I haven’t seen this discussed on FlyerTalk yet, but I’ve been aware of this for a while and recently ran into a very obvious example again.

Ctrip appears to have a direct partnership with Accor that allows you to bind your Accor account when booking Accor properties on Ctrip, and still earn Accor points and elite night credit. During the booking flow, there is an explicit Accor login / sign-up screen (in Chinese) shown for Accor hotels.

What really stands out is pricing.

While traveling in Bangkok, I noticed that Accor properties on Ctrip were often dramatically cheaper than booking direct, even when using Accor member rates (no Accor Plus).

Concrete example below, same hotel, same room type, same dates (Dec 1 to Dec 3, 2 nights):

Banyan Tree Bangkok

• Accor app (member rate, no Accor Plus): ~CNY 3,496 total for the stay (≈15,500 THB), plus ~CNY 619 in taxes (≈2,700 THB)
  
• Ctrip: ~CNY 1,193 total for the same 2-night stay (≈5,400 THB)
  

This is not a per-night vs per-stay confusion, both prices shown are total stay pricing. The difference is roughly 3× for an identical booking.

I’ve attached screenshots showing:

1. The Ctrip pricing
   
2. The Accor app member pricing
   
3. The Accor account binding page within the Ctrip booking flow
   

This raises a few obvious questions:

• Why are Accor’s own “member exclusive” rates so uncompetitive versus a third-party OTA?
  
• How widespread is this pricing behavior across regions and brands?
  
• And how does Accor reconcile this with rate parity and the value proposition of booking direct?
  

Curious whether others have seen this elsewhere and whether points / elite nights are consistently posting, but based on what I’ve observed, this is hard to ignore.


Ctrip price for Banyan Tree Bangkok

Accor Price for Banyan Tree

Ctrip booking page showing the Accor membership login/sign up for an Accor Property