Gem Bassett reflects on Accor Global Sales Rendez-Vous, a tightly curated 24 hours of conversation, brand storytelling, personalisation and proper hospitality at one of the UK’s newest five-star openings.
There is something rather appealing about an event that knows exactly how long it needs to be.
Accor Global Sales Rendez-Vous managed to pack a great deal into barely 24 hours, with great content, immersive brand experiences, time to connect, fabulous food, an overnight stay and, for those who wanted it, a final morning of golf, yoga, spa, padel or croquet before heading home.
Somehow, it never felt rushed. Perhaps that was partly the setting.
Fairmont Cheshire The Mere, Accor’s newest five-star UK property, was still at the beginning of its own story when we arrived, and it proved a fitting home for an event designed to bring together a carefully curated mix of hotels and brands from across the Accor portfolio, allowing some very different hospitality personalities to tell us who they are. Not simply by talking about themselves, but by letting us experience them.
Guests arrived for lunch in The Clubhouse, a beautiful indoor and outdoor space overlooking the grounds, which immediately gave the event a relaxed feel. There was time to arrive properly, find familiar faces, meet new ones and settle in before moving into the content.
I had been asked to curate and facilitate the opening panel, and I was very conscious that its role was not simply to provide another hour of people talking about hotels. It needed to set up the afternoon ahead and open a wider conversation around Accor’s different brand worlds, from luxury and lifestyle through premium and midscale.
The interesting bit for me was not the labels themselves, but the importance of distinctiveness within such a large house of brands.
Breadth is clearly a strength, but only if clients can understand where one proposition ends and another begins. Too much overlap, or too little clarity, and choice can quickly become confusion.
What struck me was the diligence with which Accor navigates that challenge, helping clients understand the personality, promise and experience behind each brand and, importantly, what makes one genuinely different from another. Those differences absolutely matter, but they need to be clear, meaningful and useful when a client is deciding what is right for their audience, rather than simply creating more choice to navigate.
There was also a refreshing willingness to acknowledge where distinctions are still evolving or where there is more work to do. In a portfolio of this scale, that honesty matters. It makes the conversation more credible and, ultimately, more useful to the buyer.
That was important to the way we approached the panel too. We wanted the conversation to sit firmly in the mind of the buyer, rather than the salesperson, asking the questions a client genuinely asks when faced with such breadth of choice. Where is the real point of difference? Who is this brand genuinely right for? What experience can I expect my delegates or guests to have? And, just as importantly, where might the answer still need greater clarity?
Ultimately, a brand is more than a logo, a collection of standards or a positioning statement. It is a promise about how an experience is going to feel.
Having talked about that promise, Accor Rendez-Vous then asked the brands to show us.
The sessions that followed were where the storytelling really came to life, with each brand family approaching things differently, which was exactly as it should be.
Luxury chose to tell its story through experience, taking guests on a journey through the setting of a Fairmont Suite while transporting us from one luxury brand to another through product, scent, taste, ritual and storytelling.
Fairmont Monte Carlo used scent, including orange blossom, to transport us momentarily to their small but perfectly formed corner of the Côte d’Azur. Fairmont St Andrews used honey from its rooftop bees in chocolates, turning something authentic to the hotel into a simple and memorable part of its story.
Raffles took one of its best-known rituals, the Sling, and gave us three interpretations from Singapore, London and the Bosphorus. Each was different, but each still felt unmistakably Raffles. The London Sling from Raffles London at The OWO was a particular revelation. Who knew? Perhaps the Butler did it?
Ennismore created a rather different mood altogether, taking over a dark, atmospheric corner of the Gordon Ramsay restaurant’s Tasting Room. Elements of traditional presentation inevitably crept in, but there was also the surprise and delight you would hope for from the Ennismore portfolio, with enough personality to make the experience feel distinctly their own.
Premium and Midscale took a more product-led approach, using verbal storytelling to give us a clear sense of the breadth of hotels, destinations and experiences available across their portfolios. Less theatrical, perhaps, but still useful from a buyer perspective, particularly in understanding where each brand fits and what it can offer.
What stayed with me was not which activation had the biggest production budget or the most theatre, but which stories I could still remember afterwards. That feels like quite a useful test for any of us designing events.
And if I had one wish for the next Accor Rendez-Vous, it would be to see every brand given permission to push that creativity even further. The format is there, and I suspect that having seen what is possible, next time they could have enormous fun with it.
We spend enormous amounts of time thinking about what we want our audiences to know, but perhaps not always enough time thinking about what we want them to remember, or indeed how we want them to feel.
A smell, a taste, a ritual or one well-told story can create a stronger connection than a long list of brand attributes ever could.
The same was true of the personalisation throughout the event. After the sessions, there was proper downtime built into the programme. People could reconnect with the office, continue a conversation, explore the hotel or simply retreat to their room and recharge.
And waiting there was a favourite drink, chosen with the individual in mind. For one person that might be a good old-fashioned Northern cuppa, for another, an Old Fashioned. It was a small touch, but a clever one, because it recognised that we do not all relax or recharge in the same way.
That is the kind of personalisation I like. Thoughtful, useful and quietly done, without needing to make a song and dance about it.
The gala dinner continued that sense of considered hospitality. There are certain things that are deceptively difficult to execute well at scale, and Beef Wellington at a gala dinner is definitely one of them. Fairmont Cheshire The Mere delivered it beautifully, alongside great entertainment and thoughtful gifting.
Breakfast the following morning was served in the Gordon Ramsay restaurant, before guests could choose how they wanted to spend their final few hours, with golf, spa, yoga, padel or croquet all on offer. Again, choice rather than obligation. Not everybody wants to connect, relax or experience a destination in the same way.
Fairmont Cheshire The Mere itself impressed me. It has the scale to host serious meetings and events, but enough resort experience and character to make gathering there feel like something more than simply occupying meeting space.
As with any new opening, it still feels as though it is settling into itself in places. The foundations are strong and many of the human touches are already there, while some spaces will naturally gain even more personality and texture as the hotel beds in, develops its own rituals and accumulates the stories that give great hotels their character.
And perhaps that is why it felt like such an appropriate setting for Accor Rendez-Vous 2026.
Across just 24 hours, the brands were telling us who they were, while Fairmont Cheshire The Mere was quietly beginning to tell us who it might become.
For those of us constantly being asked by clients, “What’s new?”, the North West now has a significant new answer.
What a difference a day makes. The brands came to tell their stories, while Fairmont Cheshire The Mere quietly began one of its own. A Northern star is born.