The exit from the crisis is eventful for AccorInvest, the leading owner and operator of hotels in Europe. The Luxembourg-registered group, which notably manages 311 hotels in France under the Accor brand – a 30% shareholder of AccorInvest – is forced to play the balancing act between the revival of activity, a forced march of debt reduction and the expenditure control. Consequence: a climate of anxiety internally, where the feeling of working dominates “for a business in decline”, in the words of Gilles d’Arondel, Force Ouvrière (FO) union representative. The number of employees has grown from 30,000 in 2019 to 23,000 today.
AccorInvest benefited from the rebound in activity in 2021, with a 42% increase in revenue. But, at 1.7 billion euros, it remains far from the annual 4 billion recorded before the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite a positive second half, the group remained in the red for the whole year due to the confinements of the first half of 2021, specifies in the World Gilles Clavie, the group’s general manager. “We are in the process of rebuilding and resizing really faster than expected”he assures.
Arrived in July 2020, Mr. Clavie inherited a company in the midst of hemorrhaging cash and had to take out a state-guaranteed loan of 477 million euros, the largest in the sector. Like Accor, its foreign shareholders – the American Colony Capital and the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and Singapore – contributed to an equivalent capital increase.
“Not sufficient operational profitability”
The group’s level of debt is not alarming, underlines Mr. Clavie, with a net debt ratio of 50%. But deleveraging is a priority. In fifteen months, AccorInvest has sold buildings and businesses for 300 million euros, leaving Australia and Africa. A target of 750 million euros in disposals by the end of 2023 has been announced to the unions. It is in France that the bloodletting is now the sharpest. In recent weeks, around fifty provincial hotels, from the Ibis to the Pullman, have been sold, according to the count of the unions.
Assets that did not present “not sufficient operational profitability”explains Gilles Clavie, or for which “heavy investments were necessary”. Businesses for which AccorInvest does not own the premises are also considered for sale, the group seeking to unite premises and businesses in the majority of its hotels.
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