Starwood Hotels & Resorts' artsy Le Meridien brand this year by a hair ended JW Marriott's three-year reign atop the upper upscale tier in
Business Travel News' 2010 U.S. Hotel Chain Survey, which tabulated ratings from 387 buyers.
The upper upscale tier had the most varied and heated results, and other tiers saw a mix of familiar winners and newly emergent top brands. Among multibrand hotel companies, InterContinental Hotels Group and Hilton Worldwide fared the best, with the former boasting at least a third-place finish in all eligible tiers and the latter garnering three of the top five upscale slots and nearly sweeping the midprice tier with its Hampton brand.
Business Travel News' U.S. Hotel Chain Survey annually measures corporate travel buyer opinions of the lodging brands they use.
BTN e-mailed corporate readers responsible for hotel buying decisions, asking them to rate hotels, arranged by tier, with which they did business in the past year. Equation Research tabulated ratings from 387 respondents.
The survey bases hotel tier division on price point data provided by Smith Travel Research and industry knowledge. Buyers rated hotels in each segment on as many as 13 attributes.
BTN reported results only for hotel tiers and chains with significant usage.
Download a PDF of the full 2010 U.S. Hotel Chain Survey here, including all results, rankings and analysis. Individual features are listed below; click on the headline for the full story.
Le Meridien Dethrones Upper Upscale Leader JW MarriottOne hundredth of a point separated the total scores of the top four brands in the upper upscale tier, which saw a reversal of fortune for many brands from the 2009 survey. JW Marriott, the top brand in the survey since 2007, fell to third, and last year's third-place brand, the Marriott flagship, fell to twelfth.
Ritz-Carlton Knocks Off Four Seasons In Punch-Drunk Luxury TierRitz-Carlton wrested top honors in the U.S. Hotel Chain Survey's deluxe tier after a year luxury hoteliers called the most challenging in the tier's history.
Buyers Rate Crowne Plaza As King Of Upscale As Competitors FallTravel buyers for the first time this year rated Crowne Plaza as the top upscale/select-service brand in the U.S. Hotel Chain survey, as the brand surged past its competition amid several years of expansion and multimillion-dollar renovations.
Hampton Nearly Runs Table, Captures Midprice CategoryHampton Inn this year strengthened its position at the top of the U.S. Hotel Chain Survey's midprice tier, improving its overall score with a near-sweep of every criterion.