Accor moving to electronic discounts for points redemption

Le Club Accorhotels – which covers Novotel, Sofitel, Mercure etc – is one of the stranger hotel loyalty schemes.  Instead of collecting points to redeem for free nights, you redeem points for bog-standard money-off vouchers.

2,000 points gets you a $60 or €40 voucher. 

Historically, the voucher would be emailed to you and you had to hand it in at the desk when you checked out.  Whilst being very 20th century, this also meant that you couldn’t use it on pre-paid rates unless you knew that you would have enough additional charges to cover the voucher.

Accor is now bursting into the modern age by allowing you to use your points for an immediate cash discount on your booking.  This presumably means that pre-paid rates can now be used with vouchers.  Here is a screenshot from Flyertalk showing it in action:

The scheme is currently being rolled out, but should be working for all hotels by mid-March.

Assuming that – as I wrote here – the very generous rate of 2000 points to 5000 Iberia Avios is going away, it is better using points for a room discount.  You are trading off €40 for 2,000 BA Avios, so effectively paying 1.6p per Avios by taking the miles – not a great deal.

Accor Live Limitless update – December 2021:

Earn bonus Accor points: Accor is not currently running a global promotion

New to Accor Live Limitless?  Read our overview of Accor Live Limitless here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our analysis of what Accor Live Limitless points are worth is here.

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from Accor and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.