What happened to Fairmont President's Club? The 2018 merger explained
Fairmont Le Château Frontenac lit up at night above Quebec City. Photo: Wilfredor, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
On July 2, 2018 Fairmont President's Club stopped being a programme of its own and its members moved into Le Club AccorHotels. Here is what changed, what stayed and why it still matters to former members.
For years Fairmont President's Club was a quiet favourite among frequent travellers. It was a small, stay-based programme: you earned recognition by the number of nights and stays, not by the number of euros or dollars you spent, and the rewards came as perks and e-certificates rather than as a points balance. Members liked it precisely because it felt personal.
Why the programme changed
In July 2016 AccorHotels completed its purchase of FRHI, the company behind Fairmont, Raffles and Swissôtel. Once the hotels belonged to the same group, keeping several separate loyalty schemes made little sense. In December 2017 members were told that Fairmont President's Club, Raffles Ambassadors and Swissôtel Circle would merge into Le Club AccorHotels, and the switch happened on July 2, 2018.
This site was born as the members' information site for that transition. Today it is an independent guide, written for the same audience: people who loved their Fairmont stays and now collect points across a much bigger family of hotels.
How status was matched
Members were given a new tier based on the highest Fairmont status they held by July 1, 2018. Platinum members became Platinum, Premier members became Silver, and Club members started as Classic. Anyone who already held a Le Club AccorHotels card had both records combined, and the higher result counted. We keep the full matching table on our Your Status page.
What members gained and lost
- Gained: a points currency that can be spent on stays, dining and partner rewards; a far larger network of hotels; faster ways to reach elite tiers through spending.
- Lost: the annual e-certificates and the guaranteed upgrade vouchers, which simply did not exist in the new structure.
- Kept: the Fairmont experience itself. The hotels, the staff and many on-property touches, such as Fairmont Fit workout gear, carried on.
Why it still matters
Eight years on, many former members still ask the same questions: how does the points maths work, which tier is worth chasing and where do the points go furthest? The answers have shifted as the programme was renamed ALL – Accor Live Limitless in 2019 and adjusted its rules, but the logic is the same. Spend wisely, read the terms, and treat points as a currency rather than a prize.
That last point is worth repeating. Plenty of members told us the merger felt like a roll of the dice. In practice it was closer to a change of currency: the value was still there, it was simply counted differently. Some members who used to stay at Fairmont Monte Carlo, a short walk from the famous casino, found they now earned more points there than before, because the new scheme rewards spending rather than the number of nights.
