Accor's loyalty and distribution chief has drawn a line in the sand: the next phase of hotel distribution will be decided by emotion, not features. Mehdi Hemici, who leads ALL — Accor Live Limitless, the group's loyalty program — told Hospitality ON in an interview: "The distribution battle will be won on emotion, not on functionality."

The claim is blunt. It is also a verdict on how hotels have competed for direct bookings for the past decade.

What does the statement signal?

Functionality, in Hemici's framing, means the plumbing: booking engines, rate parity tools, API connections, mobile check-in. Every major chain has them. The differentiation they once offered has eroded. Accor itself invested years in building that plumbing, and the group's leadership now argues the returns are flattening.

Emotion is the new battleground. That translates, at the operator level, into loyalty economics: how a program makes a member feel recognized, and how that feeling shifts share of bookings away from third-party channels and their commission costs.

For a chain of Accor's scale, the stakes are concrete. Every booking moved from an online travel agency to a direct or loyalty-driven channel reduces distribution cost as a percentage of revenue — the hotel industry's equivalent of squeezing cost of goods. Loyalty members also book more directly, stay longer and skip the metasearch auction.

Why does this matter now?

Distribution costs have become a structural line item operators can no longer ignore. OTAs (online travel agencies, third-party booking platforms such as Booking.com and Expedia) typically take commissions in the mid-to-high teens per booking. Loyalty programs exist, in large part, to redirect that spend.

ALL is Accor's answer. The program bundles stays with partnerships spanning sport, entertainment and lifestyle — a deliberate attempt to attach feeling to a booking flow.

Hemici's formulation suggests the next marginal dollar goes to brand affinity and experiential perks rather than faster checkout widgets. That is a menu-engineering decision applied to distribution: invest in the items that drive repeat purchase, not the ones that merely match competitors.

The competitive read

The statement doubles as a jab at functionality-led rivals. Booking tools, price-match guarantees and app features are now table stakes; claiming victory through them invites the response that everyone already has them. Emotion, by contrast, is harder to copy — it rests on partnerships, brand identity and accumulated member relationships.

For independent hotels and smaller groups, the bar is rising. If the largest players compete on emotional lock-in backed by partnership budgets, the independents' traditional levers — personal service, local identity — must work harder in the booking funnel, not just at the front desk.

Accor has not disclosed new targets alongside the interview. But the direction is clear: expect ALL's partnership and experiential investments to deepen as the group treats loyalty spend as a margin lever rather than a marketing expense.