One of the newest entrants to the select-service tier earned
top marks from buyers this year, while a well-established, 30-year-old brand rebounded
to the top of midprice tier in BTN's
2012 Hotel Chain Survey.
[Please click here to view the digital edition of the 2012 Hotel Chain Survey, featuring all charted
data, downloadable as a pdf.]
Buyers for the first time ranked Hyatt Place as the top
select-service brand, giving it top marks in all but three of the survey's
categories. The brand began when Hyatt acquired AmeriSuites in 2004 and now has
a portfolio of 160 properties.
Hilton Garden Inn was second and last year's highest-ranked
select-service brand, Four Points by Sheraton, slipped to fourth.
In the midprice tier, Hilton's Hampton Inn bounced back from
a sixth-place ranking last year to claim top marks in all but two criteria and
the overall number-one spot. The only criteria for which it did not outperform
its category competitors were corporate rate programs and meetings
facilities—both won by Holiday Inn, which was last year's highest-ranked
midprice brand.
Although Hyatt Place garnered sufficient recognition among
buyers to be included in the past several annual BTN surveys, brand vice president Kristine Rose acknowledged that
brand awareness had been a weakness. "We've focused a lot on growth and
have been extending our reach to a lot more business travelers," she said.
"We launched our first national ad campaign and are finally getting our
name out there."
Like many of its select-service competitors, Hyatt Place is
designed with the business traveler in mind, Rose said. The hotels offer hot,
fresh food around the clock, which likely contributed to its top score for food
quality. It also secured top marks for amenities, which Rose credited to such
room features as corner couches designed for a comfortable work setting and
large flat-screen televisions with ports for laptop plug-ins.
Of course, having the flagship Hyatt brand as its older
sibling has been a key to Hyatt Place's quick rise, according to brand vice
president of sales Kate Burda. "We see our sales effort as two-pronged,
and we're able to leverage the worldwide sales organization," she said. "That
has made a real dent for us as a brand as we're coming into our own."
Hilton Garden Inn, meanwhile, earned top marks in three
categories: consistency of offering, quality of business center and overall
price/value relationship. Alan Roberts, the brand's vice president of
performance and sales support, attributed the performance to a decision to
quickly prepare for the occupancy rebound following the economic downturn by
reviving staff levels. He added that Hilton Garden Inn business centers have
benefitted from a remote printing service rolled out a few years ago, enabling
guests to print documents from their mobile devices.
The brand now is focusing on a lobby renovation
program—particularly at older hotels—that will open up the areas and add food
and beverage options. "Some of the older prototypes were built to a much
more limited-service model, so this will be a bridge for them," Roberts
explained. "We're seeing our lobbies become hubs of activity in the
evening."
Hampton Inn also has been focusing on its public areas. By
the end of this year, the brand's 1,800-plus properties globally will have
implemented a "perfect mix" lobby, with soft seating areas and extra
electrical outlets, said Phil Cordell, Hilton Worldwide's global head for
focused service and Hampton brand management. "We're re-energizing what
could have felt like a cafeteria to feel like a social space. It will have
spots where guests can have group meetings or one-on-one meetings."
All properties by the end of the year also will upgrade
their exercise rooms, Cordell added.
Meanwhile, Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express continue to
benefit from the recently completed global relaunch, a six-year investment that
gave a new look to about 3,400 hotels around the world. "We spent $1
billion during the worst recession hopefully any of us will see, so this
validates everything that the owners are doing," said InterContinental
Hotels Group vice president of brand delivery Gina LaBarre.
The bulk of U.S. hotel development currently is in the
midprice tier. Through July 2012, supply in the upper midscale tier as defined
by STR, which includes Hampton and Holiday Inn, increased by 1.8 percent year
over year, and supply in the upscale tier, which includes the select-service
brands, increased by 1.6 percent. Though such growth was lower than the
long-term averages, those tiers this year have been the only ones to see supply
increase by more than 1 percent, but they also had the highest demand growth.
Much of the growth in the United States comes from brands
opening new urban locations. Hampton, for example, now has about a dozen
properties in New York, Cordell said.
"Hampton's fundamental start was in suburban and
roadside locations, where the brand continues to be strong, but we're seeing
significant movement into urban environments," he said. "Midprice
hotels in urban environments are a relatively new phenomenon, so there is a lot
of activity with owners tackling those needs."
The top brands in these tiers also are expanding their
presence outside of the United States. Hampton already has several hotels in
Mexico and Canada and is planning an aggressive expansion into Europe, Cordell
noted. Hyatt Place is eying Latin America, India and China, according to Rose.
Hilton Garden Inn also is looking at opportunities in China,
Colombia and Chile, Roberts said. He added that select-service hotels still are
a foreign concept in many of those markets,
so brands are planning their expansion carefully.
"The prototypes are different, and it's about getting
those prototypes right," he said. "We also don't want to close the
door on one of our sister brands, so we want to make sure we have the
appropriate fit in the market."
This report
originally appeared in the Sept. 10, 2012, issue of Business Travel News.