Accor still developing its digital strategy: acquisition of Fastbooking

On April 18th Accor announced its take-over of Fastbooking, a digital services provider for the hotel industry.

Fastbooking has been helping around 4000 hotels worldwide since 2000 in their daily work concerning digital marketing campaign, distribution channels management and revenue management in Europe and in Asia.

This will be a great opportunity for Accor, which will be able to implement its digital strategy much faster thanks to it. It will also be a great help for Fastbooking, which will be able to develop and reach new clients thanks to the support it will benefit from the first French hotelier group.

This acquisition will benefit Accor in two main strategic areas: the group will first reinforce its know-how in terms of digital services as it has already started doing it for a few months. Then, Accor will also be able to improve its services as an actor of the hotel franchising market.

One could be critical, saying this acquisition is a bit too intrusive, not to say unfair, knowing that Accor already made the acquisition of Wipolo a few month ago, a company offering travel management digital services. The French hotelier leader is investing in its own leadership, that’s the least one can say. But we have to remind two facts:

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-       -First, Fastbooking isn’t in big difficulty. In fact, the firm signed a partnership with Ctrip, one of the main Chinese online travel agency not so long ago. It was consequently not an emergency acquisition of Fastbooking. The company had the time to evaluate the offer though it was not in a hurry, needing to save the business.

-        -Then, Accor guarantees that Fastbooking will keep a big part of its autonomy. Fastbooking clients’ data will be fully protected and the firm will continue developing itself in many different areas.

This acquisition consequently sounds like a good deal for both companies. What do you think?

Tiphaine Leblanc & Clémence Fernet.

Tessier, F. (2015). Accor is on the digital fastrack!, Linkedin. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/accor-digital-fastrack-fabrice-tessier?trk=hb_ntf_MEGAPHONE_ARTICLE_POST

Schaal, D. (2015). Accor Acquires Fastbooking to Enhance Hotels’ Digital Performance, Skift. Retrived from http://skift.com/2015/04/20/accor-acquires-fastbooking-to-enhance-hotels-digital-performance/