New York City – 15 February 2017 –
Accor is expanding its luxury vacation-rental offering with listings in the Hamptons, Wall Street’s summer playground, Bloomberg reported.
The Long Island rentals cost as much as US$2 million for the season and are the first launches in the Collections portfolio of Accor’s onefinestay unit. More sites will be added over the next year as onefinestay expands beyond a handful of global cities into locations including Southern California and the French Riviera.
Luxury rentals are a key growth area for the vacation market, which has seen online home-sharing companies muscle in on traditional lodging providers. Airbnb is said to be expanding in the high-end market, too, with talks underway for it to buy Montreal-based Luxury Retreats International, according to Bloomberg.
Accor itself said this month it is in negotiations to buy Travel Keys, a broker of private luxury villas in locations including the US, the Caribbean and Mexico. The French company acquired onefinestay last April in a deal worth US$240 million – US$170 million plus a further commitment of US$70 million for the unit to expand internationally.
For its Hamptons Collection, onefinestay is teaming up with Bespoke Real Estate, a broker of properties valued at US$10 million and up, to find more than 20 homes. In the statement, the Accor unit described the project as its “first truly vacation-centric market.”