How Accor Group Launched Its Procurement Marketplace
The Company
AccorHotels is a multinational hospitality company that owns and manages over 5500 hotels in 95 countries under 20 brands. In 2019, AccorHotels reported over €4 billion in revenue
Introducing the Astore shop
5,500
clients
3,500
suppliers
$200M
sales in 2019
The Challenge
The directive was clear: AccorHotels needed to improve the procurement experience for their buyers and sellers as well as ameliorate their offer by diversifying the goods their hotels had access to. While AirBnB was quickly making headway in the hospitality industry, AccorHotels wanted to find a way to strike back with an initiative of their own. They revamped their digital strategy with a focus on localizing hotels by setting stringent initiatives to localize one third of their offerings from room service to items found in their hotels.
Why Mirakl
Accor Group chose Mirakl for their marketplace journey not only because of the easy-to use technology but because Mirakl offered AccorHotels the most agile and scalable way to increase their suppliers.
By adopting a hybrid procurement model and pairing that with an open-market competitive marketplace-model for their other offerings used in their hotels and restaurants, AccorHotels was able to create a holistic experience for their buyers. By offering a digital platform used by buyers in Accor Group’s hotels and franchised hotels, Accor has been able to bolster their partnerships by offering a convenient and user-friendly platform for their suppliers.
We needed to have more visibility on real time stats, while being able to offer our sellers and buyers the B2C buying experience. We knew it would mean a better assortment of local and artisanal goods, and a one-stop-shop for our hotels around the world.
The old model
Before launching their marketplace, AccorHotels was operating a traditional procurement platform for their suppliers and buyers, which wasn’t equipped with digital tools and took an army of people to run.
Many of Accor’s suppliers, like France Boissons, came from a traditional retail model with dynamic eCommerce sites and had increasingly digital purchasing expectations.
Additionally, it wanted to have a better grasp of what their hotels needed in real time. The process in place was manual and cumbersome. Additionally, platforms like AirBnB . AccorHotels knew it had to adapt.
The new model
In 2017, AccorHotels’ CEO Sébastien Bazin, decided to digitize their procurement platform by launching AstoreShop by AccorHotels, a marketplace designed to give their hotel ecosystems more choices to procure food, decorations and bedding, to name a few categories. To reach their new localization goals, Accor Hotels also needed to work with local vendors who would be able to offer regional goods including wine from Bordeaux or lavender honey from Provence.
What it means for buyers | What it means for suppliers |
|---|---|
Purchasing teams from any of Accor Groups’ 5500 hotels in 9 countries – such as Sofitel, Pullman, throughout Europe, UAE, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom – can leverage Astore Shop to purchase everything from sheets to beds to local veggies. Used by general managers as well as procurement teams, it’s a tool designed to be leveraged by anyone at the establishment. | Major industry players like Otis, Nespresso, Rexel, Lyreco, and Mars Drinks are suppliers on the platform. Local players from more than 100 regions have also been onboarded using stringent vetting processes set up by AccorHotels to ensure quality of goods and services with an emphasis on supporting local merchants offering artisanal products. |
Conclusion
Today, in less than two years, Astore Shop has launched in over 5500 hotels, implemented internal change management, and vetted and on-boarded over 3500 who are in line with their brand DNA. Additionally, by centralizing all purchases, Astore Shop has allowed Accor Group to increase agility in product offering and category extension, while giving them a single place to document data on purchasing orders and behavior.
Marketplace Go-Live Date: February 15th, 2018
1,100+ active shops
1,000,000+ active offers in 2019
2.5B€ Managed spend per year
500x GMV growth in 2019
What's next
Astore Shop has allowed the company to digitize all of their offerings. By centralizing all purchasing in one place and providing an assortment that is personalized to local brands and hotel personalities, AccorHotels can now extend the use of their Marketplace to hotels in Singapore, Brazil, and Dubai. By better servicing their customers at any -- or every -- point in the value chain, AccorHotels is looking to add services like cleaning or gardening to their marketplace, which will continue to completely reinvent procurement.
