We met with Accor''s Chief Commercial, Digital and Tech Officer, Alix Boulnois. Our key takeaways are that the RMS rollout is well on track, with solid RevPAR uplifts at implemented hotels and new avenues for fee generation. This supports our RevPAR forecasts of 4.5% in FY25e and 4.0% in FY26e-27e. But ''Accor doing more digital'' could raise spending concerns, so we have also checked recent IP activity. We come away reassured that there should be no opex creep, while FX headwinds should be easy to isolate when management provides guidance for FY25e EBITDA. Maintain O/P.
CDO meeting feedback: RMS RevPAR upside
We discussed all the blocks of the hotel digital value chain and found the most interesting momentum in Revenue Management Systems (RMS). The IDeaS partnership is now live at 70% of global hotels, and we expect Accor to increasingly be able to deliver RevPAR outperformance against their reference markets (+2.8pt delivered in pilot phase). Having exited branded credit cards, Accor will also explore new avenues for fee generation including paid loyalty memberships.
Operating leverage: expect no opex creep
Our updated dataset of global trademark registrations shows Accor filing for only 7 new IPs in 2025 to date, confirming a regime of low innovation and payback on past brand and concept launches. We are nowhere near the elevated levels of IP activity that preceded the opex-driven Loyalty relaunch of 2019 (c. 40 new brands). Recent IP registrations are backing the rollout of paid loyalty memberships (e.g. Dis-loyalty) and pushing Accor''s advantage in FandB and wellness (e.g. The Purist).
Setting expectations for FX impact: expect FY25e EBITDA guidance of EUR1,200-1,240m
We expect Accor to issue guidance for c. 4% RevPAR growth and EUR1,200-1,240m FY25e EBITDA at H125e results on 31 July. Our FX tracker leaves us comfortable that underlying trends will be fully consistent with the MT guidance of 9% to 12% EBITDA growth. We lower FY25e-26e-27e EBITDA c....
