Kerry Healy, Chief Commercial Officer, Accor Premium, Midscale and Economy – MEAAPACThe most successful brands in hospitality today are not just building transactions; they are building trust. In a world where consumer expectations shift by the hour and where attention spans are short but the competition list is long, the brands that win on customer loyalty are those that combine strategy, culture and customer experience into one seamless whole.
At Accor, this has been the foundation of our journey across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific (MEAAPAC); it’s why we’ve made this region the leading hub for loyalty, growth, and innovation.
Over the past year alone, we’ve delivered more than 500 customer relationship management (CRM) activations, 200 e-merchandising rollouts, 70 media campaigns, and thousands of localised assets across MEAAPAC. That level of scale is important because it shows that personalisation and storytelling are not just creative ambitions; they are business-critical drivers. Every campaign, every asset, and every partnership has to ladder back to a bigger truth: How do we create deeper connections with our guests?
In today’s world of hyper-personalisation, guests expect their experience to start long before arrival. A booking begins with the why? Why the trip? Why the destination? Why our brand? That journey is increasingly powered by loyalty.
In March this year, Accor’s ALL loyalty programme hit 100 million members, supported by more than 110 partners in our ecosystem. The ALL app’s business volume is also up 45 per cent versus 2023, which gives us leverage to personalise at levels this industry hasn’t seen before.
Our AI-powered CRM system now tailors communications down to the individual activity, which has already driven $251mn in incremental revenue, much of it from members who had never stayed with Accor before.
But personalisation is not only about data. It’s about connection. As my colleague Amro Khoudeir, Accor’s SVP of Digital and E-Commerce for MEAAPAC, often reminds me, personalisation without heart falls flat. He once told me a story from his early career, when a team member shared a Nelson Mandela quote: “If you speak to a person in a language they understand, it goes to their head, but if you speak in their language, it goes to their heart.” Amro carried that lesson forward in Accor.
In MEAAPAC, ‘language’ is culture, respect, upbringing, and even love language. That’s why we’ve industrialised and automated the cookie-cutter work, freeing our teams to focus on audience-first strategies.
Over the past two years, this has meant curating religious pilgrimage content through the Makkah–Madinah portal, scaling locally driven F&B storytelling, and forging loyalty partnerships with Wego, Traveloka, and Emirates Skywards.
Each initiative is designed to reach the right people, at the right moments, with the right stories. As Amro puts it, “These aren’t one-off campaigns; they’re proof that personalisation, storytelling, and loyalty connect with hearts as much as heads.”
This ethos extends to how we think about storytelling at scale. Storytelling in our industry is not an abstract concept; it is a commercial engine. Partnerships with Emirates Skywards, Singapore Airlines, and Gulf Air have given ALL members more value across air travel, while collaborations with WeGo and Traveloka have allowed us to meet leisure travellers where they are: mobile-first, app-driven, and ready to book. These partnerships are not only about share of voice; they are about share of preference.
Our ability to deliver on these strategies also depends on efficiency. Two years ago, we transitioned much of our production to Publicis SSC in India and Poland, enabling us to manage more than 100 briefs every month! This shift has unlocked the freedom for our in-market teams to focus less on repetitive tasks and more on the guest-first creativity that drives impact. It’s a perfect example of how operational decisions directly empower storytelling, loyalty, and culture.
As for loyalty? It is a powerhouse. In 2025, the ALL loyalty revenue share in MEA APAC grew by 3.2 points year-on-year, making this region the number-one global hub for growth. That success is not accidental. It is the result of seamless collaboration between in-country teams, functional experts, and hotel operations. The recognition we’ve earned globally matters, but what matters more is how those insights translate into tangible business impact for our hotels, deeper engagement, stronger preference and repeat stays.
Feedback also plays a critical role in shaping the guest journey. We see every guest interaction not just as a transaction but as a signal: Data that tells us what worked, what didn’t and where we can elevate.
The cultural nuance of this region means feedback cannot be interpreted in a one-size-fits-all way. A comment in Jakarta may carry a very different weight from the same comment in Dubai or Sydney. Understanding that difference, and adapting accordingly is part of the craft of customer experience.
Hospitality is human. Data, technology, and partnerships give us scale, but culture gives us meaning. And in MEAAPAC, culture is not a backdrop; it is the stage on which every guest experience plays out. The collective heartbeat of Accor is powered by our Heartists (the teams on the ground in our hotels whose ability to connect with guests in a way that feels authentic, personal, and true to place is what ultimately builds loyalty).
The future of strategy, customer experience, and culture will not be about doing more; it will be about doing better. Better personalisation, deeper storytelling, sharper feedback loops and loyalty that is not just measured in points but felt in relationships. That’s where we are heading as a region, and that’s how we believe Accor will continue to pioneer the art of responsible hospitality, by connecting with both the heads and the hearts of travellers everywhere.
By Kerry Healy, Chief Commercial Officer, Accor Premium, Midscale and Economy – MEAAPAC
