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AccorHotels ending independent booking service

Give them credit for trying something different, but on Thursday AccorHotels confirmed that it would halt its service that allows independent hotels to sell their inventory on Accor’s website.

Citing failure to meet expectations, the initiative was launched in 2015 to give hotels a potentially cheaper alternative to using traditional OTAs. The service had aimed to triple to 10,000 the number of hotels offered on AccorHotels online by 2018. But only 2,000 independent hoteliers signed up.

“The group has decided to stop marketing independent hotels on its website by end-2017 as the results were mixed,” a spokeswoman for AccorHotels told Reuters, confirming a report from L‘Echo Touristique magazine.

According to the Reuters report, users referred to Accor’s site by the independent hotel were more likely to book an Accor-branded hotel and giving independent hotels greater visibility would have required a bigger marketing investment.

The cost of launching the online marketplace project was estimated at US$25.59 million.

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