Accor’s new ‘Secret Deals’ is a lot worse than ‘Happy Mondays’

Accor’s ‘Happy Mondays’ was the most generous UK hotel promotion available for cash stays.  Every Monday and Tuesday, it would unload unsold Novotel, Mercure, Pullman, Ibis etc rooms for the following two weekends for as little as £25.  You would occasionally even see a London-based Ibis, such as the one at Excel, for £25.

These rooms would even count as qualifying stays in Le Club AccorHotels and trigger any generous bonus promotions running at the time.

Oh well.

‘Happy Mondays’ ended two weeks ago and will not be returning.  It has been replaced by ‘Secret Deals’.

You can take a look at the first ‘Secret Deals’ selection here.

It looks rubbish.

It seems as if the batch of deals will be refreshed every two weeks or so – the current batch are available until today, 13th May.

You can book for any point over the next three months, which at the moment takes you up until the end of July.

The problem is that there isn’t much out there.  Take Saturday 8th July, which is a day when I need a couple of rooms in London for my brother.  All they can offer me is the Sofitel at Heathrow ($147, not sure why $) or Gatwick ($116).  No sign of any of the many, many other London hotels run by Accor.

There are only 11 towns on the dropdown list, and that includes such delightful weekend break destinations as Chesterfield, Bradford and my own home town of Rotherham.

The politest thing to say is that this is hopefully early days and that Accor will work to improve the selection of hotels.  I assume it is trying to copy Starwood’s Hot Escapes model although I have never felt that was very successful either.

You can find out more about Accor Secret Deals on their website here.

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.