Accor Hotels says it wants to discover new ways to make the most of its existing assets and the digital economy.

The chain is not content with a series of major moves over the course of the last 12 months outside of its core function of running hotels, and will instead forge ahead with figuring out additional revenue streams, become more efficient and find opportunities to “enhance the guest experience”.

Accor spent €148 million on buying upmarket home rental brand OneFineStay in April this year, its first move into the alternative accommodation sector.

This followed the creation of its marketplace for independent hotels to play in the distribution game in 2015 and the acquisition of FastBooking in April of the same year.

But speaking at the WebInTravel conference in Singapore this week, chairman and CEO of Accor Hotels in Asia-Pacific, Michael Issenberg, says the chain wants to use its “real estate” in a better way.

This is not necessarily the fixed, physical assets – such as properties – but its people.

Issenberg says there is a “thin digital layer” that can be applied to under-used assets, in a similar way to how Airbnb was formed to become the service between hosts and guests, or Uber with car owners and passengers.

For example, utilising the staff who have local knowledge to connect guests to a destination through digital services such as apps.

Accor will try and find a way of “bringing the neighbourhood into the hotel”, Issenberg says.

A taste of this idea is being played out through the launch of its new Jo&Joe brand, a Millennial-focused offshoot that “blends the best of private rental, hostel and hotel formats”.

But there is a lot more that can be done, Issenberg argues, despite the chain being on a massive opening programme at the same time (roughly two new hotels a week in Asia-Pacific alone).

This outward-looking strategy is not just, in Issenberg’s words, part of the “experience-sharing” philosophy (he doesn’t like the term “sharing economy”).

Another option it is considering works around the idea of “co-working as a service”, essentially a way of, again, utilising the dead space in a hotel by using technology to distribute availability to local businesses.