BWH Hotels has launched a new upscale and luxury worldwide sales division to drive corporate business across the upper tiers of its WorldHotels and Best Western Hotels & Resorts portfolio, the company announced Wednesday.
BWH SVP of worldwide sales Chad Fletcher, who joined the company last year, told BTN that BWH has an opportunity for to educate the business travel market about its premium offerings, which now number 475 hotels globally after the acquisition of WorldHotels.
"One of the big realizations when I got here was the overall size and scope of our upscale and above portfolio—sometimes, perception in the marketplace is that we don't represent that, that we are kind of more midscale, upper midscale," Fletcher said. "My job is to drive as much midweek business as we can to all of our brands."
The division went live June 1, following an internal rollout in May. Nine regional sales leaders now cover the United States—in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, South and West Coast regions—plus Canada and Europe. BWH intends to grow corporate agreements in high-yield verticals including consulting, finance, entertainment, fashion, pharmaceutical, healthcare and architectural engineering.
The announcement from BWH cuts against a broader trend of major hotel organizations favoring luxury leisure over corporate travel business as the former booms and the latter makes a more modest recovery.
"If you look at our demand curve, especially in North America, we need more presence and more fair share in that midweek space," Fletcher told BTN. "We don't need additional or outsized help in the leisure segment. … If we look at future growth, it's really hyperfocused on midweek and where we have occupancy and availability to the marketplace."
Fletcher added that BWH can deliver corporate travel a premium guest experience and the value or cost control that "a lot of the big brands may not be focused on today."
Other changes are in the works at BWH as it overhauls its website and refreshes its loyalty program, which will relaunch in the first quarter of 2027, according to Fletcher. That transformation is expected to also improve the customer experience for Best Western Rewards Business Advantage, which targets the unmanaged small and midsized enterprise market.
[Clarification, June 22] BWH plans to unveil its loyalty program in the fourth quarter of 2026 and activate it in the first quarter of 2027. A previous version of this report indicated BWH planned to launch it in Q4.