A LoyaltyLobby reader sent me a good note about reservation issue affecting the stays qualification towards Le Club Accorhotels promotion.
It is always good idea to carefully read the terms and conditions. There is a reason why I include them on all posts about promotions.
You can access Le Club Accorhotels website here.
Here’s the email:
Most Accor offers have it in the fine print that the offer is only valid if booked directly only.
“4. To benefit from this offer, your booking must be made on Accorhotels.com or our participating brands web sites, via the accorhotels.com application or via Accor call centers. All other reservation channels will not be eligible to this offer.”
The Le Club T&C have a good (and reasonable) definition of what is considered eligible channels:
“Stays booked at the eligible rates via Accor distribution channels (Accor Internet sites, Accor reservation center, hotels) and traditional travel agencies using a GDS (Global Distribution System) connected automatically to the Accor reservation center, entitle the Member to earn Points.”
So for LeClub purposes, hotels are valid (As they should be)
LeClub however just messaged me and said that all my stays booked through hotels are invalid for offers since only online, apps, brand sites and Accor call centers are considered valid.
My question is; since when is hotel’s own reservations team considered not a valid Accor Call center. The absurdity of their claim can be discerned from the fact that when a customer calls a hotel, he is transferred to inhouse reservations or central depending on whether property has a inhouse team, whether the inhouse team is currently in business hours (so after hours and on holidays, it goes to central). So they are penalising customers for calling at wrong time, if I had called later then it would have routed to central reservations and I would be eligible. This is borderline fraud to not be honouring reservations made directly with Accor hotels and not a third party.
Conclusion
I think that the problem here is that Le Club Accorhotels wants to push more reservations through its channels that are mentioned on the Terms and conditions of the promotions. Hotels usually pay an extra commission for the program when reservations come through the branded websites and/or call centers.
Accor probably also tries to get more of its members to use the website and apps for bookings.
It is certainly weird that booking directly with the hotel is not qualifying for promotions, but the issues are probably the ones that I outlined above.
Is the reader really able to negotiate better rates by contacting the property directly?
