AccorHotels is a world leader in the hotel industry. The chain is comprised of 4,100 properties and 570,000 rooms operating in 95 countries. The company includes an extensive brand portfolio, with a comprehensive range of options from luxury to economy reaching millions of guests.
With numbers like these, it’s no surprise that the brand has an incredible amount of digital content on their hands.
The Problem: A growing need for high-quality content
In the last few years, there has been a strong push in the travel industry for high-quality content as well as increased quantity of content. The sheer volume of digital assets a typical chain like AccorHotels possesses (images, 360 virtual tours, videos, PDFs, company logos, etc.) has hit a level that is actually unmanageable without a single system to organize, categorize, search, retrieve, share and archive these digital assets.
Jean-Luc Adalian, Deputy CIO, Digital Services at AccorHotels, explains why high-quality content is so important to his chain: “Content is a key element that enables all of our hotels to be faithfully represented on both direct and indirect websites. The [travel shopper] can efficiently imagine his future stay thanks to the design of these websites, which highlight how each hotel looks like. The photo quality is as much important in the ‘dreaming’ stage as in the ‘booking’ and ‘preparing’ stages. The customers’ consumption habits are highly directed by what they can see and high-resolution images are then essential.”
The Solution: Uploading high-resolution content to their Digital Asset Management System
AccorHotels uses Content Manager – which is designed specifically for the needs of the hotel industry –to manage their hotels’ digital assets in a single, efficient system. Using Content Manager, AccorHotels uploads, manages and distributes media for their hotels worldwide.
In order to improve the image quality of their hotels, AccorHotels has been proactive. “The group has strongly encouraged the hotels to update their photo albums following some precise guidelines and responding to a high-resolution requirement,” says Jean-Luc.
In order to do this, AccorHotels followed some steps:
- Creation of specific guidelines for each brand.
- Referencing professional and specialized photographers.
- New design for direct websites and their mobile application.
- Significant increase of the amount of photos, especially regarding each room type.
“We also offer video content, 360° virtual visits, and text content available in 18 languages,” says Jean-Luc.
The Results: 95% of AccorHotels’s images were updated to high-res within 6 months
As a result of Jean-Luc’s efforts, and with the help of Content Manager, 95% of AccorHotels’s images are now high-resolution, which is an impressive and important feat considering that travel channels and travel shoppers are demanding this high-quality content.
“The entire AccorHotels photo library has been updated to a high-resolution version within 6 months,” Jean-Luc says.
By increasing the image quality of their hotels, AccorHotels was able to improve the clients’ experience during the Online Information Search stage, to enable them to get inspired by the brand’s philosophy and hotel’s specific features.
Jean-Luc elaborates: “Our goal is also to inform the client better on the services offered by the hotel in a more efficient way to thus minimize uncertainty as much as possible. And then, of course, to enhance the conversion rate.”
Regarding image consistency across channels, Jean-Luc says that “Our policy consists of making no distinction between the different channels. Every photo must be published on each channel, taking into account the highest quality standard required by the given channel.”
The bonus: Increased ADR (average daily rate)
AccorHotels has also enjoyed a recent increase in the ADR at their hotels. Many factors contributed to this increase, but as Jean-Luc says, having higher-quality images definitely helped: “It is difficult to point out image quality as being the only responsible factor for this increase since many others are to be taken into account. Yet it necessarily contributed to this phenomenon.”
AccorHotels’s insistence on updating all of their images to high-resolution in 6 months speaks to the importance of high-quality media for all hotels. This is a major achievement for the brand, who is now putting their best foot forward on all travel channels that shoppers are using to research and book travel – great job, AccorHotels.