Before the pandemic, we used to be members of the Accor Plus programme. The various benefits provided good value, which more than covered the annual fee that we had to pay.
But when Covid-19 effectively shut down the world in 2020, it didn’t make sense for us to continue. We let our membership lapse and have not re-enrolled since.
That is, until I came across a post on milelion.com featuring a special limited-time 25% membership discount. Accor Plus offers promotional rates from time to time, but this was the best so far. Explorer status was available for S$314, instead of the usual S$418.
Given our anticipated travel and dining plans for the next 12 months, we finally signed up again. Here’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, of how I expect the benefits to outweigh the cost.
Stay Plus (Free Night)
The most valuable perk that comes with Accor Plus Explorer is one free standard room night in an Accor hotel. Of course there are exceptions, like Raffles Singapore, where even entry-level rooms easily exceed S$1,000 per night.
Even for hotels that are eligible, demand is high for the popular ones and finding available slots can be challenging. When you do succeed though, you can get pretty decent value.
One example is the Sofitel Singapore on Sentosa Island, where we used our Stay Plus night for a nice staycation in early 2020.
Unfortunately, Sofitel Sentosa has been placed on the exclusion list.
I tried searching for room availability on the Accor Plus website, but was told “… your Stay Plus free night is not available in this destination.” This was confirmed with a quick online chat with customer support.
The good news is that the benefit remains intact for most hotels in South Korea, where we’re planning to visit later this year. I was even able to choose higher room categories and receive a credit of around S$200, making it quite flexible to redeem.
Hotel Room Discounts
Another attractive feature is the ability to book what Accor Plus calls “Red Hot Rooms”, with discounts of up to 50%.
The last I checked, the offers were mainly for hotels in South East Asia and Australia, but not South Korea. Since there’s still quite a bit of time before our trip, I’ll continue checking regularly to see if any pop up.
Even if they don’t, Accor runs occasional sales with generous discounts. Such as the current 25% + 10% off for travel up to early Sep 2024.
Sadly, that doesn’t hit our travel window but I’m confident that they’ll follow up with another one covering the year end. In the worst case, Accor Plus members get at least 10% off the Best Available Rate.
Our preferred hotel in Seoul was showing even higher discounts of 15%. But since normal Accor members (free to sign up) get 5% off anyway, the incremental Accor Plus discount is just 10%.
Assuming that our total hotel bill comes up to around S$2,000 for our entire South Korea trip, the additional 10% off provides a value of about S$200.
It’s also been many years since we’ve gone to Bangkok for some food and retail therapy. If we’re able to visit before my membership year ends, that would conservatively yield an additional S$100. Potentially much more if we manage to snag some Red Hot Rooms.
Silver Elite Status
A new feature that was recently introduced was the award of 20 free Accor ALL status nights. Since Silver Elite status only requires 10 nights, signing up to Accor Plus results in an instant upgrade from my lowly Classic status.
Silver Elite is nothing to shout about, but it does get us a pair of welcome drinks, and the non-guaranteed possibility of late check-outs. I didn’t assign these any monetary value since they’re mainly cosmetic.
If we book exclusively Accor hotels for our upcoming South Korea trip, it would bump me up Gold Elite status. Again, it’s more of a nice-to-have, with the potential of room upgrades. Non-guaranteed, of course.
The real benefit kicks in at Platinum Elite status, which offers access to the Executive Lounge.
It requires an additional 40 room nights, on top of the 20 from Accor Plus, but we’re not travelling enough to even get near to that.
Restaurant Discounts
Accor Plus offers tiered discounts at participating hotel restaurants, not just in Singapore but also across the Asia Pacific.
The concept is that one person gets to dine free, with the exception of solo diners and large parties. Specifically, this translates to:
- Dine alone: 25% off
- Two diners: 50% off
- Three diners: 33% off
- Four to Nine diners: (100% / Number of diners) off, e.g. Eight diners 12.5% off
- Ten or more diners: 10% off
Several 50% off vouchers for large groups are also provided, further enhancing the dining benefit.
Before you get too excited, and think that it applies to fancy restaurants like La Dame de Pic in Raffles Singapore. Well, think again. As always, exclusions apply.
The Stamford Brasserie
Even with the various restrictions, there were still many interesting restaurants to choose from. Most of them reside within Swissôtel Stamford and Fairmont Singapore, such as The Stamford Brasserie.
The small but interesting bistro menu included several items that caught our eye. Including starters like Seared Scallop (S$28) and Bone Marrow (S$18), as well as mains like Braised Angus Short Ribs (S$38), Seared Halibut (S$32) and wild mushroom Gnocchi (S$26).
Prego
A stalwart in the Italian dining scene in Singapore, Prego needs no introduction. Their pastas and pizzas are always top notch, as are the antipasti, secondi, contorni and dolci on their extensive menu.
Prices are on the high side, with Cannoli di Melanzane e Mozzarella at S$28, Spaghetti Pescatora at S$40, and Magherita pizza at S$32. But there’s pretty compelling value when the 50% discount kicks in.
Feast Asia
All-you-can-eat buffets are wasted on us, given our relatively small stomach capacities. However, if the spread is decent and the price is right, we don’t mind subjecting our bellies to the occasional abuse.
Adult prices at Feast Asia in Grand Mercure Roxy range from S$42 for weekday lunch to S$72 for weekend dinner, even before applying the 50% haircut.
The menu is not fancy, but it does include items like poached live prawn, half-shell scallops, salt-crusted salmon, red wine oxtail, chicken/pork/beef/mutton satay, laksa, oyster omelette and even durian pengat.
With Stage 4 of the Thomson East Coast Line (TEL) scheduled to open on 23 Jun later this year, our Journey to the East will just be a direct train ride from Bright Hill to Marine Parade.
Other Restaurants
After scanning through the full list of 40+ participating restaurants in Singapore, the ones below made it to our shortlist.
- Swissôtel Stamford: Clove, Asian Market Cafe, Skai, Anti:dote
- Novotel Stevens: Winestone
- Mercure City Centre: Chara Brasserie
- Pullman High Street: Moga
It’s unlikely that we’ll get to all of them, but assuming that we manage to visit five with an average spend of S$100 each, we should be able to save at least S$250.
One casualty is, unfortunately, Singapore Restaurant Week. We typically participate every season and dine at 2-3 restaurants each round. To manage lifestyle inflation, that budget will be channeled to Accor Plus instead.
Summary
Adding it all up, paying S$314 for an annual Accor Plus Explorer membership should result in benefits of at least S$750, comprising:
- Stay Plus Free Night: S$200 (South Korea)
- Hotel Discount: S$300 (South Korea S$200, Bangkok S$100)
- Restaurant Discount: S$250 (Five Singapore restaurants)
The 2.4x “return” is good, especially since our travel and dining expenses was already budgeted. There’s always the danger of lifestyle inflation with these kinds of programmes, but I think we’re good here.
Even if the undiscounted S$418 fee was used, the payoff ratio would still be a respectable 1.8x. So, the 25% sign up discount was icing on the cake, rather than something that swung our decision.
All that’s left to do is to enjoy the perks that come with our Accor Plus Explorer for the next 12 months. I’ll run the numbers again when it ends, and decide then if we should continue.
