Accor turns to acquisitions in India after its Treebo partnership collapses
The group still wants 300 Indian hotels by 2030, and an acquisition is now its fastest route to the small-city scale Treebo was meant to deliver.
Accor is considering acquisitions and new partnerships in India after its planned tie-up with Treebo Hospitality Ventures fell apart, according to Duncan O'Rourke, the group's chief executive for the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. The collapse forces Accor to find another route to the scale it had expected to gain in the country's smaller cities.
The Treebo partnership was announced in April 2025 and was meant to be a master licensee arrangement, giving Accor's Ibis and Mercure brands access to hundreds of hotels across Tier-2 and Tier-3 Indian cities. Those are markets where Accor, a global hospitality operator with more than 290,000 staff worldwide, has historically had weak penetration.
O'Rourke told Skift the group's target of 300 hotels in India by 2030 is unchanged, even with the deal gone. Accor currently operates around 73 hotels in the country, meaning it needs to more than quadruple its footprint inside roughly four years to hit that figure.
Why acquisitions are back on the table
An acquisition of an established Indian hospitality platform would offer a faster path to the midscale reach and small-city presence that the Treebo arrangement was designed to deliver. O'Rourke framed the shift as consistent with how Accor has always grown, rather than as a change of course forced by the setback.
"Our history has always been entrepreneurial. We like to do acquisitions, we like to grow," O'Rourke said. "We're not going to stop because this didn't work out." Asked whether Accor is seeking further Indian partners, he said the group remains open to opportunities generally, not just in that market.
"We are, we always do," O'Rourke said of new partnerships. "But not only in India, everywhere." That comment suggests the Treebo collapse has not narrowed Accor's appetite for deals so much as widened the search for who might replace what the arrangement would have delivered.
What Accor still has running in India
Beyond a possible acquisition, Accor is pursuing several other avenues to build what O'Rourke described as a broader hotel, loyalty and lifestyle ecosystem in the country. Chief among them is its unified joint venture with InterGlobe Enterprises, the Indian conglomerate behind budget carrier IndiGo, which remains a core vehicle for growth.
Accor is also launching new brands into the market, including Movenpick, MGallery and The Hoxton, extending its presence beyond the midscale Ibis and Mercure names that would have anchored the Treebo arrangement. Those brands target different traveller segments, from upscale leisure to lifestyle-focused urban stays.
The group has separately expanded loyalty tie-ups, including its partnership with IndiGo, aimed at linking hotel stays to India's fast-growing domestic aviation market. Together, these moves indicate Accor sees India as a market to be built through several parallel tracks rather than one master deal.
Why India matters to Accor's global count
India represents one of the clearer test cases for how large hotel groups convert population scale into room count, and Accor's own reference material tracks how brands from Aman to Ritz-Carlton split between independent ultra-luxury houses and group-owned networks. Accor is in the latter category, competing with Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt for share.
We have tracked India's consumer boom across several sectors this year, including strong results at Lenskart and Senco Gold and a premium pivot at Puma India away from discounting, all pointing to demand that global groups are racing to capture through acquisitions, joint ventures and new store or hotel formats.
That broader pattern includes travel infrastructure beyond hotels. We covered Singapore Airlines nursing a loss of roughly one billion Singapore dollars on its Air India stake, a reminder that foreign operators entering Indian travel markets do not always find the scale they expect on the timeline they plan for.
What a deal would need to deliver
Any acquisition target would need to replace two things Treebo offered: midscale positioning that matches Ibis and Mercure, and existing distribution in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities where Accor's own branded pipeline has been thin. Few Indian hospitality platforms combine both at meaningful scale.
That scarcity is part of why O'Rourke framed the search broadly, across acquisitions and partnerships alike, rather than naming a single preferred structure. The group appears to be testing multiple paths simultaneously rather than waiting to identify one perfect replacement for the Treebo arrangement.
No timeline has been given for when Accor might announce a new Indian acquisition or partner, and O'Rourke did not name any specific target under discussion.
What happens next depends on whether Accor moves quickly to secure a replacement platform or continues building through its InterGlobe joint venture, new brand launches and loyalty partnerships alone. Either path will determine how close the group comes to its stated 2030 figure.
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