Get bonus Accor points with the Accor hotel subscription cards – but are they worth it?

Accor, the company behind Novotel, Mercure, Ibis, Raffles, Pullman, Fairmont and many other hotel brands, recently shook up its two subscription cards.

Until 20th September, the company is currently offering bonus Accor Live Limitless points if you sign up for either of the cards – but are they worth it?

You can find full details of the two Accor ALL PLUS subscription cards here.

Let’s look at each of the cards in turn.

The ALL PLUS ibis card

This card sells for €99.

Until 20th September, you will receive 1,000 Accor Live Limitless points with your purchase. These can be redeemed for €20 off an Accor booking or 1,000 Avios in Iberia Plus, amongst other things.

The card benefits are:

• 15% discount on stays at ibis hotels (discount valid on all public rates, not just Best Flexible Rate)
• discount valid against up to two rooms per stay
• guaranteed room availability up to two days before arrival
• 10 free status nights in Accor Live Limitless

There are two points I want to flag here:

• whilst you get a 15% discount with this card, you would – without it – get an Accor Live Limitless member discount of up to 10% regardless. This means that the actual additional saving will average 5%-8%.

• your 10 free status nights gets you instant Silver status in Accor Live Limitless (key benefits are a welcome drink and the possibility of late check out) and means that you will hit Gold status if you do another 20 nights (usually requires 30 nights)

When I discussed the card with Accor, they described it as ‘transactional’. This is a fair assessment. If you think you will do enough ibis stays to justify the €99 fee then you will buy it and if not, you won’t.

The card that ALL PLUS ibis replaced (the ibis Business card) gave automatic Gold status in Accor Live Limitless. This meant that there was a carrot for signing up even if you weren’t sure that you’d justify the fee in room discounts. Getting free Silver status via this new card is not such an incentive.

The ALL PLUS Voyageur card

This card sells for €199.

Until 20th September, you will receive 2,000 Accor Live Limitless points with your purchase. These can be redeemed for €40 off an Accor booking or 2,000 Avios in Iberia Plus.

The card benefits are:

• 20% discount across 11 luxury and premium brands and 15% off at ten midscale and economy brands (discount valid on all public rates, not just Best Flexible Rate)
• discount valid against up to two rooms per stay
• guaranteed room availability up to two days before arrival
• 20 free status nights in Accor Live Limitless

Here are the participating brands:

• Luxury: Sofitel, SO/, Sofitel LEGEND
• Premium: Grand Mercure, MGallery, 21C Museum Hotels, Mondrian, Mövenpick, Pullman, The Sebel, Adagio Premium
• Midscale: Handwritten Collection, Adagio Original, Mercure, Novotel, Tribe
• Economy: ibis budget, ibis, ibis Styles, greet, Adagio Access

There are four points I want to flag here:

• not all Accor brands participate – Fairmont and Raffles, probably the two most expensive Accor brands, are missing for a start

• Adagio Premium and Handwritten Collection have been added since we last looked at the benefits of this card, increasing the value

• whilst you get a 15%-20% discount with this card, you would – without it – get an Accor Live Limitless member discount of up to 10% regardless. This means that the actual additional saving will be lower.

• your 20 free status nights gets you instant Silver status in Accor Live Limitless (key benefits are a welcome drink and the possibility of late check out) and means that you will hit Gold status if you do another 10 nights (usually requires 30 nights)

Buy both and the status nights stack

The status nights benefit from these cards stacks. If you buy both (and this makes little sense otherwise, because the €199 Voyageur card has all of the benefits, and more, of the €99 ibis card) you would get a combined total of 30 free status nights.

30 nights is enough for Gold status in Accor Live Limitless which would get you a one level upgrade, subject to availability, and a welcome amenity.

It would also mean that Platinum would only require you to do another 30 nights under your own steam.

Is this worth €298, less the value of the 3,000 Accor points you’d receive? It’s up to you. If it is, I suspect it is better doing it in January so that you’d get 23 months of status – the rest of the current year and all of the following year.

You can see the full list of Accor status benefits on their website here.

There is a snag with this though

There are two ways of earning Accor Live Limitless status – by nights, or by spending.

I assume that few people achieve it via nights because the spend thresholds are so low.

It doesn’t make a lot of difference if you get 10, 20 or 30 free status nights via the two ALL PLUS cards because, unless all of your nights are in ibis hotels or in low cost countries, you are still likely to qualify on spend before you hit the nights target.

Gold, for example, requires 30 nights or €2,800 of spend. Even with 10 free status nights from the ALL PLUS ibis card, you would still qualify on spend rather than nights if your average nightly room rate ex tax was (€2,800 / 20) over €140.

Platinum requires 60 nights or €5,600 of spend. Even with 20 free status nights from the ALL PLUS Voyageur card, you would still qualify on spend rather than nights if your average nightly room rate ex tax was (€5,600 / 40) over €140.

Of course, if you buy both cards, you get instant Gold status via your 30 free status nights and are just 30 nights short of Platinum.

If you travel with friends or family, you also need to factor in that whilst spend from booking two rooms per night counts for status, two rooms only get you one elite night credit. This makes it even more likely that you will earn status based on spend and not nights.

Conclusion

The two new Accor ALL PLUS subscription cards are easy to understand and can clearly save some people money.

You’ll know if you are the sort of person who does enough annual Accor stays at participating brands to get value from this.

If so, you might want to jump in by 20th September whilst the bonus points are available.

My only criticism is that there is nothing here for someone who might be on the margins of switching to Accor. Silver status isn’t worth much. You are being asked to put up quite a bit of cash with no return unless you do 15-20 nights in the following 12 months. I would prefer to see Accor shouldering a bit more of the downside in the first year by way of a bigger bonus or a first year discount.

You can find out more about the ALL PLUS subscription cards, and buy, here.

You can learn more about the status benefits and requirements of Accor Live Limitless on this page of their site. Our two-part HfP guide to Accor Live Limitless starts here.