The top brands in Business
Travel News' 2013 Hotel Chain Survey included a healthy mix of relative
newcomers, stalwart performers and long-standing brands finally getting their
due. Survey data also showed, however, a clear dichotomy in travel buyers'
attitudes toward the different hotel tiers.
[Please click here to
view the digital edition of the 2013 Hotel Chain Survey, featuring all rankings
and downloadable as a pdf.]
When compared to results in the 2012 survey, almost every
luxury and upper upscale brand, with a few exceptions, declined. In the upscale and midprice tiers, every brand, without exception, raised its score. Buyers rated each brand's attribute on an ascending scale of one to six, and only
brands that were used by a sufficient number of respondents were included.
This could be a side effect of the continually strengthening
hotel seller's market. The upper upscale tier remains the sweet spot for
corporate programs, but as occupancy levels in it and the luxury tier creep up,
hotels can make larger demands of their corporate clients.
"Buyers are getting frustrated," Advito vice
president Bob Brindley said. "Properties have been raising rates pretty
aggressively, and some brands have been trying to change the rules more to
their liking."
In the years following the 2008 economic downturn, upper
upscale and luxury hotels often were available at or near the same rates as
their lower-tier peers, said Bjorn Hanson, divisional dean for New York
University's Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management. Those
higher-tier brands can lose their appeal as the market picks back up,
particularly if a brand appears to be lagging in renovation work.
The midprice and upscale tiers, meanwhile, currently are a
Petri dish for renovation and reinvention. Virtually every top brand in those
tiers is introducing or has recently rolled out a modernized prototype for its
products. Also, increasing costs in the upper tiers can amplify the
rate-inclusive amenities in the lower tiers—breakfast, Internet and parking,
most notably—that generally cost extra in the upper tiers, Brindley said.
"The hotels are getting better, they're a little more
flexible, and they're a lower-price option," he said. "Buyers still
are not moving away from upper upscale properties, but they're trying to find
ways to build more limited-service into their programs."
Brands that recently have renovated, even in the upper
tiers, generally saw that reflected in their scores, but a few that had
benefited from such projects in recent years saw their rankings drop this year.
"No brand in the hotel industry can rest on its
laurels," said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry consultant and partner
at Hudson Crossing. "Hotels get a lot of wear and tear, and business
travelers will not put up with dirty rooms or out-of-date experiences."
Though the top brands might seem a disparate bunch—the
boutique Kimpton compared with such uniform brands as Hyatt Place or Wingate,
for example—Hanson said he detected a common thread among them all. "These
are all brands with clear and consistent positioning," he said. "Everyone
knows what they're going to be. The experience is clear."
In terms of the multibrand companies, only Wyndham Worldwide
had a top brand in more than one tier. Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide
and Hyatt Hotels Corp. also had multiple brands appear in the upper portions of
the various tiers.
BTN this year
changed the tier structure used for the Hotel Chain Survey, bringing it largely
in line with that used by hospitality data firm Smith Travel Research. The
upscale and select-service tier used last year was combined into a single
upscale category, while midprice was split into upper midprice and midprice
categories. BTN also moved a few
brands into different tiers, based on STR data. JW Marriott, for example, moved
from the upper upscale tier to the luxury tier, and Wyndham moved from upscale
to upper upscale.
One criterion also changed in the survey this year. BTN added "quality of data" in
lieu of "quality of food," with the former an increasingly crucial
piece for corporate travel buyers trying to monitor and qualify their programs.
In aggregate among the multibrand companies, brands in the Marriott and
Starwood Hotels & Resorts families garnered the highest scores in that
category.
Methodology
Business Travel News'
Hotel Chain Survey annually measures corporate buyer opinions of the lodging
brands they use. BTN emailed readers
responsible for corporate hotel-buying decisions, asking them to rate hotels,
arranged by tier, with which they conducted business in the past year.
The survey bases hotel-tier divisions on price-point data
provided by Smith Travel Research along with industry knowledge of how buyers
relate with specific brands. Buyers rated hotels in each segment on as many as
12 attributes, each on an ascending numerical scale from one to six. The
highest average score for each attribute is listed in boldface.
The data is based on 323 respondents. BTN reported results only for hotel tiers and chains with
significant respondent usage.
This report
originally appeared in the Oct. 14, 2013, edition of Business Travel News.