AccorHotelsstartsmarketingindependentUShotels

When is a hotel also an intermediary? When it’s French giant AccorHotels.

The company’s distribution experiment in Europe — which has been hotly discussed at conferences this year — is now coming to North America.

This winter AccorHotels, Europe’s largest hotel group, will allow a first set of 200 independent hotels in North America to sell their rooms on AccorHotels.com in key cities across the U.S. and Canada.

The marketplace was opened 15 months ago. It now has 1,702 unaffiliated properties live. That means one out of every three hotels on AccorHotels.com is unaffiliated with the company. The group has signed 351 more, which are being added to the site this winter.

Hotels are chosen by their location, quality, size, and their rating on TripAdvisor — among other factors.

AccorHotels charges a commission fee that is about a third to half that charged by traditional online travel agencies. It is using in North America the same model it has used in Europe — 14% per booking if you are not a customer of FastBooking, its hotel digital services company, and 12% if you are.