IHG launches midscale hotel brand with no name

IHG launches midscale hotel brand with no name
By Hannah Edensor


The InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has revealed its latest hotel brand, but there’s one thing missing in the announcement: a name.

Yep, IHG has left out one critical part of its hotel launch, which was presented to 3000 hotel owners at IHG’s 2017 Americas Owners Conference in Las Vegas, according to Skift.

So far, the things we do know are that it’ll be a midscale hotel brand with rates that fall $10-15 below rack rates of a Holiday Inn Express property, while the new build projects will have between 90 and 100 rooms.

Per Skift, the new build projects will launch in America, with the code-name Project Horizon, until a name is determined.

According to IHG’s Senior Vice President of Brands and Marketing for the Americas, Heather Balsey, a name will be announced in coming months.

The brand will target what IHG called “principled everyday travelers” who want “exceptional quality at a great price”, per Skift. They’ll also be people who are “practical, self-reliant, and value a hard-earned dollar”.

You can watch a promo clip of it here.

projecthorizon

Rooms are “designed for sound sleep” and will be split with 65 per cent of room offering king size, while the remaining rooms will be made up of double queen rooms.

The brand will, according to Skift, be “franchise ready” by the latter part of this year, with first hotels expected to undergo construction by 2018 and open by 2019.

“The name and the logo, being critical components of the brand identity, are elements that require extensive testing and research,” hospitality marketing expert, Makarand Mody, suggested to Skift.

The assistant professor of hospitality marketing at the Boston University School of Hospitality Administration said he suspected IHG was in the middle of testing options with potential consumers “by showing them the concept and asking them about their preference for a variety of name and logo options before deciding on which one to go with”.

Mody added that a whole heap of hotel brands are after this kind of midscale brand.

“Those middle-class individuals and families who take low-cost carriers and are just beginning to vacation abroad require something similar in terms of their accommodation choice, which I don’t think any hotel brand owns right now,” he said.

“Airbnb has tapped into some of this market quite effectively. Though I don’t see this new IHG brand as being as exciting as an Airbnb from an experiential standpoint, it can definitely be a challenger to the sharing economy from a value standpoint, driven mainly by price, and tap into this trend for overtourism.

“I feel that the brand may find some resonance with the Millennial traveler provided it can offer something exciting,” Mody added.

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