Don’t Expect Hotel Companies to Stop Launching New Soft Brands Anytime Soon

In 2017, we've already seen the debut of two new "soft brand" collections from major hotel companies: Tapestry Collection by Hilton was announced in January, and most recently, Wyndham announced the debut of Trademark Hotel Collection in June. Unlike a "hard" hotel brand like a Wyndham Grand or a Hilton Hotel, a soft-brand collection like Trademark or Tapestry is meant to appeal to independent hotel owners who don't want to be beholden to the same strict standards as a hard brand, but want to benefit from a big hotel company's distribution network. Soft brand collections aren't a new invention. Other hotel soft brands include Choice Hotels' Ascend Hotel Collection, Starwood's The Luxury Collection, Marriott's Autograph Collection, Hyatt's Unbound Collection, and Hilton's Curio Collection, to name a few. But whereas the first crop of these collections tended to focus more on luxury to upscale hotel properties, the newest ones from Hilton and Wyndham are more geared toward the