Accor profits jump 52%

PARIS  France’s Accor Hotels announced a 52% increase in profits, late last week, for the first half of 2015 and outlined ambitious targets for the full year.
The world’s sixth-largest hotel group said second quarter sales rose 3% to 1.5 billion euros from 1.46 billion the same period last year, surpassing average forecasts by analysts queried by financial research company Factset.
That contributed to a half year increase of net profit of 91 million euros (USD100 million) and an increase of 5.25% to 2.7 billion euros in sales during the same period.
“Our teams have united around our strategic priorities – restructuring of the property portfolio at HotelInvest, swift rollout of the digital plan, selective hotel development, revamping of the food and beverage offering and cultural transformation. The benefits from these initiatives have contributed to our good results in the first half,” said Accor Hotels chairman Sebastien Bazin in a statement.

inside no 7As a result, AccorHotels lifted its 2015 operating profit target to between 650 and 680 million euros, compared to 604 million last year.
“These conditions enable us to set an objective for the full year of significantly improving our performance while at the same time ramping up our digital investment, despite persistently mixed environments in Brazil and France,” Bazin added.
Accor Hotels includes the Sofitel, Pullman, Novotel, Mercure and Ibis chains, and operates 3,700 hotels with a total of 470,000 rooms worldwide.
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