Accor Says Athens Performance Back on Track

French hospitality giant Accor said destination Athens was back on track with room revenue achieving pre-pandemic 2019 levels driven in large part by leisure travelers, up by 4 percent.

The company attributed the positive news to its extended range of brands from Economy to Premium and said international business travel was also slowly recovering.

Overall, the company’s improved data saw travelers from Europe, mainly the French and Spaniards, boosting RevPAR by 8 percent over 2019 levels. The return of long-haul travel mainly from the US saw RevPAR increase by 10 percent over 2019.

According to Accor, its main client base in Athens is from the EU accounting for 50 percent of total visitors while long-haul arrivals represent 25 percent of total revenue per room.

“We are particularly proud of the 2022 performance for our hotels in Greece. After the turbulence we all experienced during the pandemic, now is the time to recognize the benefits of our strategic actions, which include strengthening international flows to our destinations in Greece – both from existing and emerging markets – and the activation of a renewed portfolio of offers and products to better serve new trends such as leisure travel and hybrid meetings,” said Martin Sapori, vice president Sales Southern Europe Accor.

Sapori went on to add that 2022 marked a new beginning for the travel industry, with the spotlight now on sustainability, diversity and inclusion but also a significant acceleration in the digitization of the industry and a “clear need for flexibility in terms of trade and simplification of procedures”.

Last year, Accor inaugurated the first MGallery Collection hotel in Greece, the Athens Capital Hotel-MGallery, right in the heart of Athens. Other hotels in Accor’s Athens portfolio include the strategically Sofitel Athens Airport, the Novotel Athenes and the ibis Styles Athens Routes.

Q3 results

Announcing its third quarter results, Accor said there had been a “sharp improvement” in activity seen since the start of the year with Q3 2022 revenue at 1,149 million euros, up by 83 percent compared to Q3 2021.

The group’s RevPAR exceeded for the second consecutive quarter 2019 levels.

The hospitality group went on to add that demand from domestic and international leisure travel was very strong over the summer, leading to a significant rise in prices, and September benefited from renewed demand from business travelers for major trade shows and fairs.

In Q3, Accor opened 93 hotels representing 15,300 rooms marking a 2.4 percent rise in net unit growth in the last 12 months. At the end of September, the group had a hotel portfolio of 789,152 rooms (5,357 hotels) and a pipeline of 212,000 rooms (1,218 hotels).

For 2022, Accor is confirming its forecast of net network growth of around 3.5 percent.

Accor Chairman and CEO Sébastien Bazin.

“Business momentum remained very strong in the quarter, with the group’s RevPAR and revenue well above their 2019 levels. Excluding Asia-Pacific, where activity is now recovering, all regions saw growth compared with 2019. These strong performances, coupled with strict operational and financial discipline, give us confidence in our ability to reach the upper end of our full-year EBITDA guidance range, which should be between 610 million euros and 640 million euros,” said Accor Chairman and CEO Sébastien Bazin.