Hotel Brand Bloat: 'A Shakeout Is Coming'

15.12.2023 - 13:11 / skift.com / Sean Oneill

Major hotel groups in 2023 introduced a wave of brands, including Marriott’s StudioRes, IHG’s Garner, Spark by Hilton, and Hyatt Studios. These brands shouldn’t be confused with other new ones, such as Aman’s Janu, Kerzner’s Siro, Langham’s Ying’nFlo, TAG’s Paradox, and Paliosociety’s Le Petit Pali.

There are now about 1,000 hotel brands worldwide.

Is that too many? We turned to one of the leading authorities for answers: Chekitan Dev, a professor at Cornell University’s hotel school. Dev literally wrote the book on hospitality branding.

Dev gave an hour-long talk on the topic this week. Here are a dozen Skift Takes based on what we heard.

Hotel groups like Marriott have large footprints, and any given location may have several of their brands. But then developers need a fresh one to stand out — hence, more brands.

Hotel groups may also promise franchisees they won’t allow the same brand to open within a certain distance. But that limits the hotel group’s growth in that area — again, that leads to more brands.

Brands from the major hotel groups are often generic for a reason. Owners want a cookie-cutter hotel that can transition from one brand to another without significant changes.

“If I’m an owner, I want a property that is easily transferable if I need to change my brand so I don’t get locked in or held hostage by a specific brand,” Dev said. “But if I’m a brand manager, I want my look and feel to be unique. It’s a tension.”

Skift Take: Brands also help owners predict what their operational costs will be. For example, SpringHill Suites by Marriott will only require owners to install a microwave and some bare-bones food prep space for guests. But Residence Inn by Marriott will require a kitchen with a full refrigerator, stovetop, and kitchen utensils.

The latter has a higher costs but may fetch rates. Consumers may struggle to remember the differences.

The more brands you have, the more likely you’ll get a property appearing prominently in the search engine results of online travel sites and apps.

It’s like cereal. Conglomerates know one cereal brand may get lost among all the other boxes on store shelves. With a dozen cereal brands, a consumer is more likely to see and buy at least one of theirs.

Same logic with hotels, or so the thinking goes.

Skift Take: The reality may be more complicated. There’s only so much screen space on Expedia, Booking.com, MakeMyTrip, Kayak, Skyscanner, and so on. Other factors, such as paying for visibility, might matter more.

But hotel marketers still think “shelf space” is a driver, and that contributes to brand bloat.

Many consumers complain there are too many brands and that they don’t know what most of them mean.

But nearly all of those brands aren’t aimed