Is the Accor Hotels 30% Off with 30 Day Advance Booking Sale a Good Deal?
If you are traveling this summer and haven’t yet booked your hotel, keep in mind that many hotels offer advance purchase sales. Accor Hotels has non-refundable rates right now at 30% off which is a great deal… or is it? The bookings must be made 30 days in advance, and include breakfast.
The countries on sale are:
Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the UK.
On Accor’s website sale, selecting the London Novotel Paddington for the night of July 25 comes out to $301.39 for the best available rate. With the 30% off sale (breakfast included), the rate went down to $289.67.
Accor’s website also offered a lower price on their website, for a different promotion at 40%. It did not include breakfast but was offered at a reduced rate of $27.
Not bad, but the same date on another website came out to just $216. It was also non-refundable and breakfast wasn’t included in the $216, but I’m sure it would be less than the difference!
Accor does offer a best rate guarantee, so if you book an Accor hotel on any of their websites and find the same offer on another website for a lower price they’ll not only honor the lower rate but also give an extra 10% off. They even offer a best rate guarantee form right on their site. However, best rate guarantees are often tricky, with very specific requirements ie. the exact same wording must be used to describe the room category, cancellation policy, etc.
I thought maybe that particular property pricing was a fluke though, so I tried more locations and more dates.
The only one that came close to being similar in price on the Accor website’s 30% off sale was using the same date of July 25 for the Novotel Athenes in Greece. The best available rate was $166 so the sale took it down to $126.99.
On the first try, I was able to find a lower rate on another website. $118, again without breakfast included but at least the spread was a little smaller this time, at barely $9 difference.
If you need a stay to maintain elite status at Accor, maybe these rates will work for you. Otherwise, I don’t think this is a good promotion especially with advance purchase non-refundable terms, unless you can find a low-priced property with your needed dates. There are even better rates available right on Accor’s website.