Red Lion Hotels Corp. plans to launch later this year a new higher-tier brand as part of a plan to aggressively grow its portfolio, particularly outside of the West Coast.
The company expects to announce in the fall a brand of "slightly above three- or three-and-a-half-star, upscale hotels" to complement its midprice Red Lion Hotels and Red Lion Inn & Suites brand, Red Lion executive vice president and chief marketing officer Bill Linehan told BTN. The company is working on deals so that a few such hotels will be open or in the process of repositioning to the new brand when it is officially announced, he said, adding that those deals are "not exclusive to the West Coast."
At the same time, Red Lion through its own investment intends to expand its existing brands outside of the West Coast, including through acquisitions and more aggressive franchising efforts. The company last month brought in a new senior vice president and chief franchise officer, Brian Quinn, to lead the latter.
Red Lion recently completed the final components of a new revenue-generating platform that pulls together "about a dozen best-in-class technologies," including a reservations system, a new Internet-booking engine, a new revenue management system and a new customer relationship management system, Linehan said. Having the platform in place will allow the company to be "more nimble" as it expands, he said.
"As we get into markets in the East and have larger hotels, all this will support our franchise efforts," Quinn said. "Once we get ramped up, we can have more program fees and royalties, and that will allow us to do more exciting things with the platform."
Linehan said the growth also would allow Red Lion to expand its corporate negotiated business, which—like the company—currently is concentrated largely within businesses in the western United States.
"We have an in-market national sales organization that works with some of the corporations that feed into our existing portfolio," he said. "As the brand expands, so does that."