Accor, Marriott Bonvoy, MMGY, R&R Partners, Barcelona, GRF Madrid, PredictX and the 10% hotel cashback

Accor shifts the axis of its loyalty programme, Marriott takes the upgrade decision to mobile and Barcelona tries tourist money as city policy. All with WTM London round the corner: 18 days to go until the big B2B meet in Excel.

Today's brief

The takeaway is clear: chains are rewriting the customer relationship before the guest reaches the front desk, a destination is trying to tame tourism's impact and AI is starting to move discovery, travel policy and direct booking.

Accor redesigns ALL with emotion as the hook. The French group has launched a global platform, "Stay for more", for its ALL loyalty programme, with a narrative that drops the transaction and leans on memorable experiences. It is a messaging shift, not a mechanics redesign, and that is the catch: emotion is not programmed, it is operated. Hospitality Net

What actually matters here:

• The claim is "Stay for more" and comes with a global report on how people travel. Brand material, yes, but also positioning for trade shows.
• ALL is one of the largest loyalty bases in the sector, and taking on Bonvoy or Hilton Honors needs more than points.
• If distribution partners and agencies do not turn that narrative into conversion, it stays a campaign. Watch that closely.

Marriott moves the upgrade to the guest's phone. The Bonvoy app is testing a screen showing elite guests their position in the upgrade queue two days before arrival. It takes to mobile what used to be a front-desk call. Hospitality.today

Barcelona uses its tourist tax to buy retail units. The city council of Jaume Collboni is preparing an initiative to acquire ground-floor commercial units downtown and hand them to resident-facing businesses, aiming to curb the spread of souvenir shops and nail bars. Preferente

It ties into a fight the industry has had for months, as we flagged in yesterday's digest Generator, BCD Travel, Jumbo, Yourttoo, soft brands, Skift AI and Canada-US: the battle for direct booking opens a new front every month.

Hotels

Modernising loyalty means putting operational decisions on the phone before the guest walks into the lobby. Marriott is ahead in that race, Accor is betting on narrative and the rest are watching.

The Bonvoy pre-arrival upgrade screen matters more than it looks: it puts elite guests in charge of their own experience and offloads front-desk work. The question is whether other groups copy the format or settle for generic notifications. Track the acceptance rate of those upgrades when they show up two days out. Hospitality.today

Consultancy MMGY Global has closed its largest deal in four decades by merging with R&R Partners, the agency behind Las Vegas's "What Happens Here, Stays Here" campaign, which also runs a lobbying arm in Nevada. The combined group tops 800 employees and adds offices in Nevada and Washington D.C. A sign that destination marketing and corporate work will share structure. Skift

On the meetings side, the sector is gearing up for an optimistic 2027, with adjustments. Amex GBT is already seeing some planners move events to alternative venues to contain costs instead of traditional hotels. There is a clear opening there for venues and hybrid spaces. Hotel Dive

AI in travel

Put simply: AI will not replace hoteliers, but it will reorder how a hotel gets discovered and booked. Anyone ignoring that shift competes at a disadvantage.

Gilad Berenstein (founder of Utrip, now at Brook Bay Capital) put it bluntly in a podcast with Mews CEO Matt Welle: more and more guests skip Google and ask ChatGPT outright where to stay. A habit change, not a passing fad. For hoteliers it is a door to new guests, if they know where to show up. Hospitality Net

Berenstein suggests starting with small daily habits rather than big projects, and using AI for agentic concierge work and guest discovery. The operational catch: choose what gets automated and what stays human. That is where positioning gets decided.

At the same time, the European regulatory front is moving. Google and the DMA are reshaping the direct booking terrain, and that touches any hotel competing for brand traffic. eHotelier

In corporate travel, PredictX has launched an AI tool that models travel policy savings before they are applied. Useful for travel managers negotiating with tight budgets. Travolution

Revenue and distribution

The fight for the repeat customer is on: whoever pays loyalty back better wins.

Skift has flagged a pattern spreading across the sector: handing back around 10% to the guest as a reward has become standard. What each company can afford depends on the value of the customer after checkout, not on the margin of the first booking. Skift

10% back has become the reference point for hotel rewards, per Skift

The problem for independent hotels is that this figure only works with high LTV or a proprietary booking engine. With an OTA in the middle, the equation breaks. There is a clear opening here for RMS and channel managers that help segment customers by real value, not by ticket size.

On the trade show side, GRF Madrid 2027 moves to the Novotel Madrid Center and will run on June 3 simultaneously in Madrid and Amsterdam. The revenue and profit management meet is growing in format, which confirms the professional muscle of that area in Spain. Smart Travel News

Destinations

Barcelona wants to hand the city centre back to residents, using tourist money. The move has runway, and open questions.

The council's plan is a first in Spain: instead of banning, it buys units and steers them to residential use. Two readings. It attacks the root of commercial touristification. It also sets a precedent for other destinations already wary of souvenir shop sprawl. The tourist tax stops being general revenue and becomes an urban planning lever. Preferente