Accor is a world-leading augmented hospitality group that offers unique and meaningful experiences in 5,000 hotels, resorts, and residences across more than 110 countries. With an impressive portfolio of brands from luxury to economy, Accor has provided hospitality savoir-faire for more than 50 years. Beyond accommodations, Accor enables new ways to live, work, and play with food & beverage, nightlife, wellbeing, and co-working brands. To drive business performance, Accor’s portfolio of business accelerators amplifies hospitality distribution, operations, and experiences, which also provides guests access to one of the world’s most attractive hotel loyalty programs.
1. BUREAU VERITAS
Bureau Veritas is a world-leading provider in testing, inspection and certification. Created in 1828, the Group has more than 78,000 employees located in more than 1,500 offices and laboratories around the globe. Bureau Veritas helps its clients to improve their performance by offering services and innovative solutions in order to ensure that their assets, products, infrastructure and processes meet standards and regulations in terms of quality, health and safety, environmental protection and social responsibility.
The label will cover both accommodation and catering, and will set the sanitary standards applicable to all Accor hotels, as well as other chains and independent hotels. The project was carried out in partnership with doctors and epidemiologists, and has been developed in collaboration with Accor owners and trade associations, such as UMIH, GNC, and GNI.
“Welcoming, protecting and taking care of others is the very DNA of Accor and at the heart of what we do. Today, more than ever, our employees, customers and partners need to be reassured of our ability to offering them the best welcome possible. As the European leader in hospitality, it is our duty to anticipate needs and respond to health and safety requirements by adhering to the highest standards. We are pleased to be pioneering this drive with Bureau Veritas and to extend it to all stakeholders,” said Franck Gervais, CEO Europe Accor.
Concretely, the output of this effort will be an operational guide made available to all stakeholders in the hospitality industry. This enables them to rigorously apply the health and safety recommendation of authorities (WHO, Health Ministry etc.), both in guest services spaces and in back office and catering spaces. European customers will be able to check on a dedicated Bureau Veritas website before they book their next stay to determine whether a hotel or restaurant has been certified by Bureau Veritas.
“For almost 200 years, it has been Bureau Veritas’ mission to shape a world of trust. With this label, today we have the ability to meet the new expectations of our society in terms of health and safety. This label will contribute to the hospitality and restaurant industry reopening with confidence. We are proud to work with Accor, at first in France and subsequently in all European countries. This approach will benefit the entire industry as every company could request to be certified by Bureau Veritas,” added Jacques Pommeraud, CEO Bureau Veritas Africa & France.
2. THE AXA GROUP
The AXA Group is a worldwide leader in insurance and asset management, with 160,000 employees serving 108 million clients in 57 countries. In 2019, IFRS revenues amounted to Euro 103.5 billion and underlying earnings to Euro 6.5 billion. AXA had Euro 969 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2019. Accor (a global hospitality leader) and AXA (a global leader in insurance) have announced this innovative strategic partnership to provide medical support to guests across the 5,000 Accor hotels worldwide.
As soon as July 2020, this partnership will enable Accor guests to benefit from the highest level of care, thanks to the expert medical solutions of AXA Partners – AXA’s international entity specialized in assistance services, travel insurance and credit protection.
“Welcoming, safeguarding and taking care of others is at the very heart of what we do and who we are as hoteliers. This distinctive partnership with AXA, which we have been working on for several month,s makes even more sense in today’s context. In an increasingly complex environment, our 300,000 team members on the ground will be able to assist our guests and ensure their safety during their stays, turning our hotels into shelters. This initiative combined with our ALLSAFE enhanced hygiene protocols, will be key to rediscover the Love of Travel in the 5000 Accor properties around the world,” said Sébastien Bazin, Chairman and CEO of Accor.
First and foremost, Accor guests will benefit from AXA’s most recent advances in telemedicine through free access to medical tele-consultations. Guests will also get access to AXA’s extensive medical networks with tens of thousands of vetted medical professionals. This will allow hotels to make the most relevant referrals (language, specialties, etc.) to the guests in the 110 destinations where Accor is present.
As Accor prepares for the post COVID-19 rebound, this unique medical service complements its overall global recovery plan and is included in the enhanced health and prevention protocols that Accor has put in place notably through its ALLSAFE Cleanliness label in anticipation of the progressive reopening of its hotels across the different regions. For AXA, this partnership is a unique occasion to strengthen its payer to partner strategy, which aims to provide innovative services to its customers, notably in health, one of its areas of growth in its Ambition 2020 plan.
“AXA’s ambition is to move from a payer to a partner with its customers, notably by providing them with innovative solutions in health. This is why AXA has become over the last year a world leader in telemedicine solutions. Partnering with Accor, a worldwide leader in hospitality is a unique opportunity to enlarge people’s access to our healthcare expertise and solutions. This ambition has never been more relevant as we face this unprecedented health crisis,” said Thomas Buberl, CEO of AXA.
