Can Accor Travel Agent Rates really save you money on your hotel booking?

Posted on November 11, 2016 by Selina H. in Travel Agent Rate

What are Accor Travel Agent Rates?

Like other major hotel brands and travel providers, AccorHotels is known for offering preferred lower rates to travel agents, either for the agents themselves or for them to book on behalf of their clients.

The AccorHotels group hotels online hotel booking website for travel agents, TravelAgencies.Accorhotels.com, does more than just offer a discount, however. In addition to a discount of up to 30% off the lowest public rate, Accor offers users special deals, provides e-learning and online tools and pays commission to approved travel agencies. Travel agents also benefit from the Special Travel Agent Rate (otherwise known as STAR), which can only be used for personal stays.

Special deals can be found here on the site and range from business packages to city breaks. There may be rooms offered at a discounted rate or could include complimentary extras for the agent or the agent’s customer, like free breakfast, late check-out or room upgrade.

How do I use Accor Travel Agent Rates?

You can directly access the site here. Alternatively, from the Accor website homepage, click on ‘Professional Solutions’ and then ‘Travel Professionals’:

To access the special rates and exclusive benefits, you need to have one of these industry codes:

• IATA
• TIDS
• CLIA
• TRUE

However, if you don’t have one, you can request an RT code from Accor. This internal code is generated specifically for your travel agency for you to be able to make online bookings anyway.

You can book either a personal, customer or group stay online, but you need to add your industry or RT code to the start of the booking.

Plus if you want to access STAR rates, you also need to first obtain a code from Accor here.

What else do I need to know about Accor Travel Agent Rates?

There doesn’t seem to be a public way to check the travel agent savings before booking, so we can’t compare to show you exact examples. Nevertheless, Travel Industry Discounts states that Accor Travel Agent rates do tend to max out at 30% off.

With the current ibis Milan Centre offer on the site, travel agents’ customers can stay from just €46 ($50). While we can’t check the availability of this rate on the travel agent site, we checked the Accor site to see how much it would cost across different dates and the cheapest we found over the next few months was €74 ($80) for the sample date December 12th, 2016, which is actually 38% off:

If you’re a travel professional, it seems that you can benefit in several ways by booking on the AccorHotels website for travel agents, including getting a discount of more than 30% as in our example, but always compare rates on the main Accor site before booking, just in case.