Accor's Bazin weighs Ennismore IPO to fund a US push he calls overdue

Accor chief executive Sebastien Bazin says the group has not decided how to fund an expansion of its lifestyle arm Ennismore in the United States, with an initial public offering one option still on the table. He called the choice "a very complex decision to make" at the Skift Global Forum in New York.

Accor holds a 62% stake in Ennismore, the joint venture behind brands including Mama Shelter, 25hours and Hoxton. Analysts have valued the business at between $3.4 billion and $5.8 billion in a potential listing, a range wide enough to reflect how unsettled the question still is.

Bazin was blunt about the drawbacks of going public. "Yes, we can be listed, but it has a lot of drawbacks to being listed," he said, without specifying what those drawbacks are. The alternative he floated is that Accor itself puts more capital directly into the venture.

Accor had set itself a deadline of the end of this month to announce a decision on the stake, according to the reporting from the forum. That timeline puts pressure on a call Bazin himself has not yet made, and left open at the moment he was asked.

Bazin framed the ambition in stark terms onstage, saying "there's only one ambition: Ennismore is so successful" that it needs to double in scale, a line he did not finish before turning to how that growth gets paid for.

Why the US matters so much

Accor runs 5,800 hotels across more than 110 countries, a footprint that makes its thin American presence look like the one gap in an otherwise global network. Bazin conceded as much, saying the company has "been slow in understanding America."

He was equally direct about why Accor earns less per room at the corporate level than Marriott or Hilton. The gap, he said, comes down to co-branded credit card income, which funds the loyalty programmes that US rivals run and Accor does not have.

Ennismore is, in Bazin's own framing, Accor's best shot at building a US foothold, rather than a side project to be funded once other priorities are met. That is what makes the capital question urgent rather than routine, and why he raised it unprompted onstage.

Alongside the funding question, Accor used the same appearance to announce ALL Concierge, a conversational AI tool for booking and building itineraries, which the group says will roll out worldwide by the end of the year.

Accor also confirmed its first US MGallery hotel, at Ink48 in New York, giving the upscale lifestyle brand a beachhead in the market Bazin says the group has been slow to crack, and it named India in the same appearance as the single market it cannot afford to miss.

What Accor is and where it has moved before

Accor describes itself as a global leader in hospitality, powered by more than 290,000 staff placed at the centre of its operations across its portfolio of brands. Ennismore is the dedicated lifestyle and luxury-lifestyle arm within that wider portfolio.

We reported that Accor is closing in on a hotel deal at Dubai Pearl, a site that had sat dormant for two decades, one sign of the group pursuing growth through both new-build agreements and revived projects rather than organic expansion alone.

We also covered Accor turning to acquisitions in India after its partnership with Treebo collapsed, a move that predates Bazin's own remark in New York that India is a market the group cannot afford to miss.

Our reference guide to the world's most luxurious hotel brands profiles Accor as one of the large groups, alongside Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and LVMH, that owns stakes across a spread of positioning, from grand heritage properties to lifestyle-led brands like those under Ennismore.

That spread is precisely what makes the Ennismore decision consequential beyond one joint venture. A public listing would separate a fast-growing lifestyle unit from the parent's balance sheet, while a capital injection would keep it folded inside Accor's wider hotel network.

Bazin gave no timeline for a final answer beyond the end of month deadline Accor set for itself, and did not say what would tip the decision toward a listing or toward Accor funding the growth directly out of its own resources.

What happens next is the deadline itself. Accor has committed to announcing its decision on the Ennismore stake this month, a call that will determine how the group finances its long delayed push into the US hotel market.

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Image: Accor