Costing $1 billion and involving nearly 3,400 hotels and 430,000 rooms, the recently completed relaunch of the Holiday Inn brand family was the most ambitious, wide-ranging hotel industry initiative ever undertaken.
Nearly six years since its inception, the program is substantially complete, with 91% of the portfolio refreshed and the remaining hotels in the process of renovating to meet the new standards.
At IHG’s Americas conference last fall, CEO Andy Cosslett said the relaunch “will not only be known as one of the great business turnaround stories, it will be known as one of the best business stories ever.”
The initiative wasn’t without casualties, however, as more than 1,100 properties left the system rather than go through the expensive (about $250,000 or more per property) regimen that probably wasn’t right for all the hotels in the system.
Some properties were old, but many were in markets in which consistent demand generators closed, moved or became less relevant.