Accor's Julien Houdebine talks:
- Aligning sales and revenue management
- Building flexibility into corporate discounts
- Using AI to streamline hotel RFPs
Julien Houdebine is more than a year and into his tenure as Accor's chief sales and revenue officer, overseeing two functions that don't always play well together.
At the recent Global Business Travel Association convention in Chicago, Houdebine spoke with BTN executive editor for hospitality Julie Sickel about themes from Accor's third annual Global Leadership Council, making corporate hotel programmes more effective on the supply side and the French hospitality giant's plans regarding AI and loyalty. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
BTN: Your remit has you looking after both sales and revenue management, two disciplines that are typically at odds. How are you reconciling the two within Accor?
Julien Houdebine: Yes, it can be seen this way, a kind of opposition between the two. I think what is really important is to align the ultimate objective of the two functions.
Revenue management provides the business monitoring pace – the routine to review the trends week after week and take action. But it's important to make revenue management and sales work together. Each side needs to understand what is needed in the market and what is needed for the clients. They need to work together to provide the right pricing tools, the appropriate rates and ensure the corporate rates are delivered and available.
BTN: What's your read on the strength of corporate demand in 2026?
Houdebine: Corporate demand remains strong. It was the case last year. It is still the case in 2026. What is remarkable is the resilience of this segment. Despite the adverse environment, the volatile context with the Middle East crisis, the corporate segment remains dynamic for Accor. We are in line with the latest GBTA forecast for 2026, but also looking ahead at 2027. We continue to see steady growth but with different dynamics per region, as naturally demand is not moving in exactly the same way everywhere.
BTN: You recently held your Global Leadership Council of senior travel buyers and corporate leaders. What surprised you the most coming out of that event?
Houdebine: It was not really a surprise, more of a confirmation about the need for flexibility. It was a clear ask from the clients as they continue to face a volatile environment. A one-size-fits-all model is not relevant anymore because you need flexibility in some geographies and markets to adapt your programme. That was a clear need reinforced by the different clients during our last forum in June.
BTN: What does flexibility look like in practice?
Houdebine: Clients are asking us to adapt the corporate offers we can provide, especially for chainwide discounts – to be able to adjust in a given market or a given region, and to go deeper if needed.
BTN: Would that include offering brand-wide discounts for some clients instead of chainwide?
Houdebine: It could be, and that's something we are working on currently: revisiting the way we handle the chainwide discount to provide flexibility. I cannot reveal more details at this stage, but we are actively reviewing this at the moment.
BTN: Something else that's come up as a theme with buyers is the effectiveness of delivery. How are you addressing that?
Houdebine: More proactive support on our side to help clients understand what is going on and why rates may not be visible. When we say a rate is not available, it could be a mix of reasons. It could be that it is not loaded properly. It could be because it's a hotel property's decision to close it – for a good or a bad reason, but knowing that can help drive the right discussion. Maybe it's not visible because it's not surfaced properly in the booking journey, especially if it's handled by a third party.
Our aim is to provide assistance. We also use AI appropriately to identify and proactively solve these issues. If we detect a rate-loading issue, we can identify the root cause and correct it automatically. That's something we currently do in terms of own internal rate monitoring and auditing.
BTN: And are you using AI in the request-for-proposals process
Houdebine: We are on our way to using it. We have made a list of all the use cases we want to cover with AI, and number one is the corporate transient RFP process. We want to cover it end-to-end. We want to make the hotel information collection more efficient to enrich the RFP for buyers. We want to be able to support the hotels to respond to the RFPs. We want to apply AI and automation to free up time to concentrate on what really matters, which is the discussion and the relationship. And after the RFP is over, there's also the rate auditing supported by AI.
Part of this will be delivered this year – we already have the information collection and the rate auditing in place – the rest will be developed this year and delivered with the next RFP season.
BTN: Some of your competitors are exploring direct connects to certain travel management companies. Is that something you're doing as well, and what is the benefit of doing so?
Houdebine: It's something we are considering, yes. It's a better way to manage the content. The idea is to provide an additional channel to enrich the current distribution. It's also a way to answer some issues we might be facing, especially in terms of leakage. I cannot say much more than that because we are still working on it. But is it of interest for us? Yes, it is.
BTN: How are you deploying the ALL Accor loyalty programme so it doesn't work at cross purposes with corporate travel programmes?
Houdebine: We want to build the loyalty relationship with our corporate clients. What we're driving with loyalty is experiences – improving the experience in the hotel and outside the hotel.
The way we deploy it for B-to-B clients is done hand-in-hand with our corporate clients. We're providing them with the right tools to deploy and communicate the programme. We tailor campaigns with them. That could look like an instant status offer, or it could be a points booster. Whatever it is, it's always co-built with the corporate client.
A loyalty programme isn't a way to bypass a corporate client's policy. We're here to enable them to engage their traveller community, always according to their policy. To push loyalty further, we also have to work hand-in-hand with our TMC partners, because we need to distribute our rates and programmes, and make sure loyalty is well displayed in the booking journey by those TMC partners.