Accor to Close Two-Thirds of Its Hotels Worldwide Soon

news-single-imgcaption" style="width:240px">Accor asked two thirds of its 300,000 employees not to be there on April 2, working in the 5,000 or so Accor brand hotels worldwide (Keystone)

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The Accor hotel group has decided not to distribute 280 million euros as planned in the form of a dividend, and will close “two-thirds” of its hotels worldwide in the coming weeks.

“Our activity is very, very strongly impacted” by the Covid-19, said CEO Sébastien Bazin during a telephone press conference.

Accor is the sixth largest hotel in the world, with brands such as Ibis, Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure and Pullman.

Bazin said the group, half of which is already closed, will “allocate 25% of the planned dividend, or 70 million euros” to a fund for its employees, and “preserve” the remaining 210 million .

Currently, “Accor asked not to be there on April 2” to two-thirds of its 300,000 employees, working in the 5,000 or so Accor brand hotels around the world: these are partially unemployed or unemployed, said the manager. “Because unfortunately we have no customers, and the hotels are closing.”

The fund that the group will soon create will be able to help “on a case-by-case basis” those of its employees who are “in great financial difficulty following technical unemployment measures” and cover their hospital expenses when they “do not benefit no social security coverage, “he said.

It could also possibly benefit “individual partners in great financial difficulty” or “solidarity initiatives in support of nursing staff and charitable organizations” fighting against Covid-19.

“We are facing an unprecedented crisis, we are taking extraordinarily restrictive and brutal measures for a group of employees around the world (… we must show solidarity and available” towards them, said Mr. Bazin. And “we must save as much cash as possible because we are going to need it.”

In China, where the group has 25,000 employees, until now confined to their homes, activity has resumed since “80% of them have returned to hotels that are in operation to welcome customers”.

“The recovery is slow” in the country, “it is mainly in the economic segment” with “50% occupancy rate” in hotels today and a clientele “very local, Chinese”, still has clarified the CEO of the hotel giant.

The group is confident because it “started the year with 2.5 billion euros in cash”, he said, thanks to the sale of 65% of its real estate division AccorInvest. (Awp)

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