Get Accor Gold status, 1000 Accor points and 10% off ibis hotel stays with ibis Business

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• Niklas Smith says:

  24 Sep24 September 06:21

  For clarity, the 10% discount on a second room does not only apply to colleagues on business, it applies to the second room in your booking regardless of who is travelling with you. So a useful benefit for families with grown children who want a separate room from their parents, or if you are travelling with friends.

  And I have generally been very satisfied with the Ibis and Ibis Styles hotels that I have visited. They tend to get all the basics right: comfortable bed, good blackout curtains, good breakfast.

• Paul465 says:

  24 Sep24 September 07:02

  Be aware that in my experience recently some of the Accor properties are suspending some if not all benefits for status members. In the last few months I have stayed at Novotel and Mercure properties in different parts of the UK and have been told that some benefits are suspended the most recent being at a Mercure in London when I was told there was no welcome drink because of Covid, no room upgrade because they need to know in advance which room I am in due to covid and I wasn’t allowed a late checkout again due covid and the room being cleaned. I don’t know if the franchisees are using Covid as an excuse to cut costs but just something to be aware of as I haven’t had this many cuts at other chains.

  • Paul74 says:

    24 Sep24 September 10:33

    I’ve stayed at a Novotel (with ALL Gold derived from Ibis Business like in this article) twice since July and found them honouring the benefits. Over a few years, covid or not, I’ve found Novotel generally seem to look after ‘status’ members better than Mercure.

    • Rob says:

      24 Sep24 September 10:51

      There are not many top tier Accor members, due to the tough requirements and lack of hand-outs via US credit cards etc, so Golds seem to do better. I reckon most hotels don’t have any top tier members on the average night.

      • Paul74 says:

        24 Sep24 September 12:07

        Yes, that would figure, when Accor Platinum was offered as part of AMEX Platinum I got some good perks.

        • Lady London says:

          24 Sep24 September 14:10

          I had Accor Platinum for a year or two (I can;t remember how as I don’t do huge numbers of stays) and it gave me absolutely no benefit.

          Had I been staying in Asia, there would have been benefit. But in UK, Europe and US, I might as well have had no status at all. Even Gold was pretty useless till recently.

• Lady London says:

  24 Sep24 September 14:09

  Accor points earned strictly expire after 1 year of no stays.

  Earlier this week Accor Customer Service – whilst dealing with one of the many problems occurring with Accor – mentioned that actually if you buy food/drink/bar in any of their hotels and credit it to your Accor account , then that will mean your existing points won’t expire for another year. So it’s not just a stay. Accor is ruthless in expiring your points, they could give Iberia lessons, so beware.

  The agent additionally mentioned that Accor has a shopping site (who knew ?!) and a purchase via that would also stop your points expiring. Given the general problems there are with airline and hotel shopping sites not crediting correctly or taking months to credit, this one would be only if desperate.

  So good news that you can stop off for a drink in the lobby of any Accor hotel, make sure they credit it to your Accor account, and that stops your points expiring.

  Lastly once you earn Accor points, spend them because the cost to use them is always based on the exact cash price at the time you book and not on any banding, fixed rate etc. as with other chains. So they are equivalent to cash and there is zero upside in hanging on to them. Whereas with other chains, there’s generally some sort of upside.

  • Roy says:

    24 Sep24 September 21:08

    That said, for people with status they did extend everyone’s points expiry date when they credited the free status nights a few months ago.

    I don’t know if it was exactly intentional – I never saw any communication from ALL _saying_ they were extending points expiry – but when they credited the free status nights to those with status the expiry date on my points unexpectedly reset to 12 months again. (FWIW, only reason I have status is through the IBIS Business Card.)

    • Lady London says:

      25 Sep25 September 14:58

      what free status nights ? I received no credit.

      what Accor did do was expire my points on May 10th. Normally I would do 7-10 nights between late March and early May with them but we were locked down. Clearly this was the only reason I didnt.

      And yet Accor has recently said on the promotion Rob did an article about, anyone staying under the promotion (stay minimum 2 nights you get any credit) will get any expired points reinstated since *January 1st*

      Apparently Accor stoppef expiring points after May 18th *one week* after they expired mine. And they’re not going back on it. Even the UK had been locked down for 8 weeks when they expired my points. France, Accor’s home country, had been locked down for longer.

      Those who let their Accor points expire from 1st January through to sometime in March did not let them expire due to Covid. And yet Accor lets them recover the points they let expire, for payment, but also wants me to stay with them to reinstate the points they expired during lockdown the same as those other people who let their points expire at an earlier time when Covid was not a factor.

      Every other hotel group extended points and status automatically. Accor stole my points and is demanding I pay them more to get them back

      Something stinks here and it’s called Accor.

• Lady London says:

  24 Sep24 September 14:13

  Sorry to monopolise this thread but there is one great benefit of Accor Business Gold :-

  Basically they give you the same pricing as non-refundable, for fully flex bookings if you are an Accor Business member. So you can cancel generally up to 6pm on the day of arrival, can be 2pm depending on the hotel, without charge, and you will receive pricing as though you booked non-refundable.

  If you need flexibility it’s great and this is the one and only perceivable benefit of Accor IBIS Business for me.

  Accor does have another Business program that does not just cover IBIS but that is much more expensive and harder to justify cost-wise, I have never seen a promotion on it.

  • Roy says:

    24 Sep24 September 21:28

    Yes, there seem to be three somewhat similar programmes (and somewhat similarly named programmes) – although I’m not sure all are available in all markets.

    * IBIS Business Card – which this article is about. I have this. And I think Lady London has had this in the past.
    * Accor Business PLUS – which is the other one Lady London is talking about here, I think. I have a suspicion this only gets you Silver in ALL, but there are additional discounts that apply to all brands. This seems to have benefits targeted at businesses that want to order multiple Business PLUS subscriptions for their employees, although it does seem to be available in quantities of one, also.
    * Accor PLUS – this one offers benefits targeted at hotels in the Asia Pacific region. Not paid much attention to the details since I travel to that region so rarely.

    From reading FT I think you can only have one of the above active on your account at any one time. Certainly, at least some combinations of the above are disallowed, requiring some people to maintain separate ALL accounts for different subscriptions.

• JohnT says:

  24 Sep24 September 15:26

  What is their “business” qualification criteria (remember original days of Curve..)?

  • JohnT says:

    24 Sep24 September 15:28

    Seems to be “Liable for VAT” from T&Cs.

    • Roy says:

      24 Sep24 September 22:01

      Not what the T&Cs I’m reading say.

      3. PROGRAM SUBSRIPTION

      Any natural person, as a private individual or acting in a professional capacity, can become a Suscriber of the ibis BUSINESS Program, if the natural person has the legal capacity to enter into a contract, within the meaning of the law of the country of the Subscriber, and has an email address. Children under the age of 18 are not allowed to participate in the Program.

  • Lady London says:

    24 Sep24 September 20:24

    for the Ibis Business I dont recall any requirements at all. I’ve bern a subscriber in 2 earlier years and this one. I may or may not have mentioned my employer’s name, or my own ltd name (I am a contractor so use one), or my “Lady London & Associates” small ebay trading business on the signup form, that was all, no more needed.

    Business is their target market but if your needs are so similar to business that you’re prepared to pay for it then I’m sure they will sign anyone up.

    No stupid restrictions like having to be registered for VAT, which a lot of genuine businesses and other entities like charities are not, like with British Airways.

    I have broken even on membership costs this year for the program as soon as I do something like 6-10 nights. in a previous year when I was mostly staying in Germany it was about 15-17 as lower discounts were operating.

    The advantage of the program is that you can be fully flexible and pay the rate the hotel is worth, ie the advance prepaid rate, cancel at the last minute when you need to and only pay at the hotel not when you book. so no arguments over refunds as you got the best rate and didnt have to pay ahead.

  • Roy says:

    24 Sep24 September 21:32

    For the IBIS Business card, the terms and conditions are very explicit: There is *no* requirement at all for you to be a business in order to be eligible to apply for the card. And also, it is very explicit that the stays *don’t* have to be business stays.

    Anyone can apply, and can use it on stays for any purpose.

    (Well, that’s what they said when I got mine around a year ago.)

• Roy says:

  24 Sep24 September 21:37

  If you use this to book discounted stays in IBIS hotels, one potential “gotcha” you should be aware of: you are required to have a valid IBIS Business card subscription at the time of your stay.

  Could catch some people out if booking a discounted rate for a stay in the future and then not renewing your card. According to the rules, this isn’t allowed.

  No idea if it’s enforced but IIRC the rules say they will claw back the discount if you don’t have a valid subscription at the time of stay..

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    24 Sep24 September 21:55

    To say I doubt Accors IT would be capable of doing that is, well….

    • Roy says:

      24 Sep24 September 22:13

      Oh, one other thing: you get a discount on your bar tab at IBIS hotels if you show your card when settling your bar tab.

      Probably the most important benefit of the card 🙂

      (Presumably applies to restaurant spend, too – to the extend that IBIS hotels have restaurants – but I’ve only personally tested this on bar spend)

• Andy says:

  29 Sep29 September 10:51

  Quick questions: how would be the required nights to Platinum after automatically upgrade to Gold from ibis business? Would it still need 60 nights or just 30 nights would do?

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