Skift Take
BWH Hotel Group? That's Best Western's new corporate identity, the first change in decades and one that is designed to build its new image as a chain that can offer everything from mid-market to luxury.
These days, David Kong carries two cards. One is his usual Best Western Hotels & Resorts card, which he has been using since 2004 as president and CEO of the chain. The other carries a new corporate brand and logo, BWH Hotel Group, that will be used more and more as the months go by.
BWH combines the initials of Best Western and WorldHotels, which Best Western acquired fully a month ago. It is significant not only because it will replace the Best Western corporate identity that has been around since 1966 (although the chain was founded in 1946) but because it marks its evolution from a mid-market player to one that offers, for the first time, upper upscale and luxury segments. That’s thanks to the roughly 300 WorldHotels members and Kong is confident this will double to 600 hotels in just a few years. BWH is a private company and does not disclose its financials.
Until WorldHotels, Kong, who has been leading the transformation for Best Western to offer the full multi-tier brands, has reached to only upscale and upper upscale with the soft brand, BW Premier Collection, launched in 2015. WorldHotels is the next rung, making 14 the number of brands in the BWH Hotel Group portfolio.
The new corporate identity should also assuage owners who joined WorldHotels because they want to be associated as an upper upscale or luxury property, then find themselves part of a company that is widely recognized as a mid-market chain.
Asked how he deals with that, Kong said in an interview with Skift in Singapore, “When Accor bought Fairmont, Raffles, Swissotel, it was a mid-scale player too, with brands such as Ibis and Mercure.
“IHG [InterContinental Hotels Group] has the InterContinental brand but is much more known for its Holiday Inn bran
