The hospitality industry varies in what it has to offer. From hotels and accommodations services to tourism and event planning and management, The Covid pandemic saw the hospitality industry take a dip in the market. However, it has started to make a comeback with people able to return to their normal lives.
The global saw a 7% growth from 2022 to 2023 to almost $4,700 billion and that will continue into 2024 according to ReportLinker.
The market is making a comeback and at the forefront of the hospitality market is the Accor Group. They are an augmented hospitality company with humble beginnings and has branched out into hospitality services over the years.
I will talk about Accor, its history, and how they have recently branched out into the premium luxury bulk order business with the Accor Brand Store on Shopify.
A Tale Of Two Friends: How Accor Started
Today, Accor might be the leader in the European hospitality market but it all started with two friends, Paul Dubrule and Gérard Pélisson. In 1967, the two friends started a hospitality groupd called Société d’investissement et d’exploitation hôteliers or SIEH. And their first venture into the hotel business started in the heart of Lesquin, Lille in France with Novotel.
Where everyone else doubted the hotel business in France, Dubrule and Pélisson persevered with Novotel and started this midscale hotel brand which eventually became the Accor of today. To this day, the Novotel hotels remain one of the pillars of Accor’s hotel business.
Eventually, SIEH became AccorHotel in 1983 when it merged with Jacques Borel International. In 2015 AccorHotel felt limited with its branding and changed it to simply Accor in their marketing strategy to encompass all parts of hospitality.
Accor And Its Success Story
Since 1967, Accor has branched into the different sectors of the hospitality industry with great success.
In the hotel business alone, they have over 5000 hotels across 110 countries. You might think Accor is a luxury hotel but they have diversified their business to accommodate people from all walks of life with its 800,000 rooms across the world. From 2024 and onwards, Accor will expand to 1200 more hotels with an addition of over 200,000 more rooms for accommodation.
With 40+ brands under its belt, Accor has solidified its status in the hotel business. But not just that, but according to Accor’s key figures, they have over 10,000 bars and restaurants around the world and over 1000 fitness facilities at their hotels. They also have over 600 spas with its first spa being the revolutionary Thalasso Sea & Spa. Accor also provides 18,000 meeting rooms around the world for event management.
All of this would have not been possible without the elite employees at Accor. Over 300,000 hospitality experts work for Accor in over 300 different types of jobs. Accor also provides its employees with 2.7 million hours of training to meet the highest standards for their customers.
Accor has also committed to equality and sustainability in recent years. 20,000 of their employees are part of the gender equality of Accor’s RiiSE program. The group also aims to be as sustainable as possible, starting with removing plastic cups from their hotels. They also have promised to reduce carbon emissions to a net zero by the year 2050.
Here is a look at all the hotel brands under the Accor Group:
These hotels are not just about accommodation either. The augmented hospitality that Accor extends to its clients at its hotels also provides event management services. They assist in carefully planning events at their hotels, making sure to get the equipment needed for hosting large-scale events successfully. But most of the equipment and items needed to run large events at Accor hotels have to be ordered in bulk by the customers.
That is what led Accor to open up their very own bulk order store on Shopify: Accor Live Limitless Brand Store.
Move To Luxury Bulk Order Store: The Accor Brand Store
Recently, Accor has shifted to an online store to sell its luxury products in bulk for large-scale events at its hotels. The concept was created and executed in the Accor Brand Store. Shopify powers the store and it hosts a wide catalog of products that range from accessories, apparel, technology, drinkware, and many more. All of these products back the Accor slogan “Live Limitless” due to its premium quality.
Buying in bulk is especially important for events and Accor understood that necessity for their customers. Accor sells these products in bulk so ordering becomes much easier for clients wanting to run these events.
For event-specific products, the Accor Brand Store sells products like banners, lanyards, bags, and table throws. These types of products are great for events like conferences, campus recruitment, seminars, and many more large-scale events.
All these products come with the iconic Accor branding. However, another service the online store offers is custom projects. Here, you can contact the store owner and discuss custom projects for your merchandising.
The benefits of buying in bulk orders are many. But since the online store is on Shopify, there are limitations Accor Brand Store had to face.
Struggles Accor Brand Store Was Facing On Shopify
Shopify is a great ecommerce platform for stores but it has its challenges. Here are some of the struggles that Accor Brand Store has faced on Shopify:
Multiple Clicks For Bulk Orders
Let’s face it, going through multiple product pages to order products in different sizes is a dreadful experience.
Take for example a customer trying to buy a long-sleeve shirt from the Accor store. The customer wants 100 small shirts, 100 medium shirts, and 100 large shirts. However, Shopify does not allow you to add them to cart all at once. First, you have to add the 100 small shirts, then do the same for medium shirts, and so on.
It makes bulk ordering a tedious process for customers who want to do it as soon as possible. These multiple clicks can discourage customers from shopping on the Accor online store.
No Minimum Order Quantity Feature
A large multinational company like Accor will need to manage its inventory as closely as possible. However, Shopify does not have a minimum order quantity or MOQ feature on its store which poses a big problem for the store. That means a customer could order more than what Accor has in stock, leaving the customer unsatisfied with their experience shopping at the store.
Implementing a MOQ is important for inventory management for bulk order sellers. It allows managing the stock levels so that you don’t run into a stockout situation. MOQ also allows customers to be flexible with how much they want to order. It helps both Accor and its customers.
Limited Product Variants
Since Shopify only allows 3 variants per product, that limits Accor Brand Store on Shopify from providing more variants on one page.
Take for example the long-sleeve shirt that Accor sells on its online store. The shirt can come in many different sizes, more than just the usual small, medium, and large. This excludes other variants such as XL, 2XL, 3XL, XS, and more. This means that Accor has to create a different product page just to be able to sell the other sizes of the product.
Having these duplicate products in the store will confuse customers and that is the last thing that Accor wants. It complicates the bulk ordering process for customers who might look elsewhere for business.
Accor Brand Store Issues Solved With MultiVariants – Bulk Order App
To solve the Shopify problems, Accor Brand Store searched the Shopify App Store and found the solution to streamline the bulk order process on their store: MultiVariants – Bulk Order App.
MulitVariants – Bulk Order is a third-party application on the Shopify app store that allows store owners to make bulk ordering for multiple variants with one click.
Here is how MultiVariants Bulk Order app has helped Accor Brand Store Shopify issues:
Offering More Variants On A Single Product Page
In this picture, you can see that the North End Ladies’ Recycled Polyester Performance Piqué Polo product has multiple variants, both in color and in size. The quantities can be increased or decreased with the quantity selector buttons and the different colors can be selected with a drop-down menu.
The app allows multiple variants of the same product to appear on the same page. Here, Accor store customers can select how many they wish to purchase, making the bulk purchase very easy.
MOQ Restrictions On Products
Let’s take the example of the Cotton Tote on Accor Brand Store. You can see that the selected variant has 0 quantity selected and the total quantity is also 0. As a result, you can see the highlighted message on the bottom saying that the total quantity has to be 150. Without selecting 150 units, you would not be able to add-to-cart or go to the checkout page.
With no MOQ restriction on Shopify, Accor Brand Store solved that issue with the help of MultiVariants’s product page MOQ restriction. This helps the store restrict customers to a certain amount of products or variants. This helps keep Accor’s inventory levels managed and customers buying the amount they desire within the restriction.
One-Click Add-To-Cart Feature For Bulk Variant Orders
When it comes to bulk ordering products, individually adding products to cart can be frustrating. This is more so for multiple variants of a product. Accor solved this issue with MultiVariants one-click add-to-cart button.
Take this Created Co. Cold Cup – 16 oz product page as an example:
You can see a total of 48 products, 24 from blue and 24 from white. You can see the add-to-cart button which when clicked will add all 48 products together. There is no need to add the variants separately.
There is no hassle of changing to a different product page to add-to-cart and all of it can be done through one store page. This makes bulk ordering much easier for Accor Brand Store customers.
Another feature is saving what you have selected, even if a customer changes variant tabs. if a customer switches to the other color option to possibly change the quantity, the quantity on the previous variant will not change. This streamlines the bulk order process and customers can easily bulk order multiple variants and add both to the cart in one click as well.
With these features, Accor Brand Store has solved its Shopify issues for bulk ordering products with multiple variants. If you are also a Shopify store owner selling products in large bulk orders with multiple variants, MultiVariants – Bulk Order app might just be the solution you are looking for.
Bottom Line
The Accor Brand Store on Shopify enhances Accor Group’s hospitality services, including event management, through a bulk order Shopify store. Despite the store’s size within Acccor’s multinational operations, this store simplifies the bulk ordering for large events at their selected hotels.
Thanks to the Accor Brand Store, the bulk purchasing of merchandise and event-related goods is simplified, leaving Accor customers happy and satisfied.
