Summer Olympics Rely on This French Hotel Company to Maintain Olympic Village

Aside from Simone Biles’ gold rush and the opening ceremony, one of the most talked-about aspects of the Paris Summer Olympics is the athletes’ village, which is maintained by one of the world’s largest hotel companies.

Paris-based Accor is a premium partner for this year’s Olympics, managing both the athletes’ and media villages at the Summer Games. Together, the two villages have 16,000 accommodations, and Accor has nearly 800 people working to ensure everything from check-in and check-out to housekeeping runs smoothly. While Accor may be known for its wide array of brands, including Raffles, Fairmont, Ibis and Novotel, the French hotel company is using its hospitality prowess to make the world’s top athletes feel at home.

“I’ve been in this business for many years and I can tell you that this is probably one of the largest operations I’ve ever had to manage,” Patrick Mendes, Accor’s CEO for Europe and North Africa, said in an interview with TPG this week.

Mendes, who previously served as Accor’s Latin America CEO and oversaw the company’s involvement in the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, notes that the hotel giant’s current operations in his hometown are much larger. The athletes’ village comprises 71 buildings, while the media village comprises 20. The latter will eventually be redeveloped, but for now they are an extension of Accor’s hospitality services until September.

“This is an operation that will last six months, but it is equivalent to that of 150 hotels,” Mendes said.

In addition to the 16,000 bedrooms that need to be cleaned during the Games (delegations can decide whether to have them cleaned every two or four days), Accor oversees 12 concierge-style centers, offering everything from information about Paris to medical services and the much-lauded beauty services for athletes.

Athletes don’t seem to complain about the lack of daily cleaning like I would.

“Each delegation has its own specificities and they don’t behave the same way. They want to have some privacy about what they’re doing,” Mendes said. “They’re also stressed by the competition. So, it’s a very different thing. [kind of] guest.”

As for who works in the athletes’ village, about half of the staff are people from various professions who just want to contribute to the Summer Games. The other half are recruited as Accor staff who will then go to one of the company’s many hotels in the region. The employees have undergone three months of training ahead of the Summer Games to be prepared for the influx of athletes. Afterwards, numerous hospitality opportunities await nearby.

“We have 350 hotels in Paris, so it’s easy for us to find them jobs,” Mendes said with a laugh.

While Accor doesn’t handle food service for athletes, it oversees 100,000 breakfasts in the media village. Mendes said company leaders are looking to Accor’s mid-range brands like Ibis, Mercure and Novotel as the foundation for the level of service here.

While working at the Summer Olympics may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for some, it is still grueling. In addition to the daily shifts of athletes coming and going, there are entire operational shifts.

“It’s intense energy. They work for 15 days, very intensely every day, and then they can rest for 10 days before the Paralympics,” Mendes said, adding that workers still have days off during the Summer Games.

While the gymnastics events wrapped up at the Bercy Arena, better known as the Accor Arena when the Summer Olympics aren’t taking place, the space was converted to host the basketball portion of the Games. But that also meant tectonic changes to the athletes’ village, beyond the usual cleaning services and room changes.

For starters, a 6-foot-9 basketball player like LeBron James needs a little more legroom than Simone Biles, who is 4-foot-8. The Accor team is working to expand those famous cardboard beds you’ve seen on social media, which debuted at the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games. Yep, they extend in length to better accommodate taller athletes.

What about the comfort level of a cardboard bed?

“The thing is, honestly, I’ve tried them. They’re pretty comfortable,” Mendes said with a smile. “I will say 95 percent of the guests are satisfied and say it’s good. That’s a nice surprise.”

Let’s not lose sight of what else is important: a cardboard bed is much more sustainable than a pile of metal-framed beds that remain unused after the closing ceremony.

Olympic lessons

Athletes aren’t the only ones benefiting from Accor’s ties at the Summer Olympics. Mendes noted that there are a number of operational lessons being learned from running the athletes’ village. For starters, laundry services for thousands of athletes make running laundry at a convention hotel seem like amateur hour.

For safety reasons, the bags are not opened when handling the laundry. Instead, the entire bag is thrown in and returned to the owner via a QR code on the outside. This is setting the wheels in motion for how to operate large-scale laundry services at Accor hotels. Additionally, the Olympic Committee’s electric car partnership with Toyota could be a model for future transportation services in cities where Accor has a hotel.

“This is something we can learn, not just in hotels, but in how we can manage large events in the future,” Mendes said.

Accor Club France

Today, point redemptions aren’t just about a stellar suite upgrade or a reward night. Instead, there’s pressure to offer unique experiences to loyalty program members. That’s why you see companies like Marriott offering Taylor Swift concert tickets to members. For Accor and its Accor Live Limitless members, that’s Club France, a fan viewing center to celebrate the Summer Games and the victories of French athletes. Accor is expecting 700,000 visitors ahead of the Olympics, and while it’s too early to have a final count, Mendes said there were plenty of repeat visitors.

ALL members could redeem points and enjoy athlete meet-and-greets, cocktails, food and other offerings from a wide range of Accor brands.

“Since it happens once in a lifetime, people come two or three times in the same week,” Mendes said.

Although the flame has not yet been extinguished, many around the world are celebrating the Paris Summer Olympics as one of the best in modern memory. Accor leaders are equally elated with how things went and looking to the future.

“I have already been contacted to see if we can arrange accommodations [and] run resorts like we did with Club France,” Mendes said. “I think we’ve been seriously considered because everyone says it’s fantastic.”

And this is simply très chic.

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