Skift Take
All the major hotel companies see upside in pushing into the high-end sector. IHG zeroing in on independent luxury hotels is a smart strategy to rack up rooms growth against the competition beyond the tough-to-crack luxury markets in the U.S. and China.
Unbranded, high-end hotels abound outside the U.S. and China — and IHG leaders want to bring those into a more flexible branding arrangement in the latest move to boost the company’s luxury and lifestyle footprint.
IHG Hotels & Resorts divulged Tuesday its newest brand, the company’s 17th that was first hinted at earlier this month, will be the Vignette Collection. The organic growth move follows the company’s acquisition of luxury brands like Regent in recent years and affirms its position as the world’s second-largest luxury and lifestyle hotel operator behind Marriott.
The Vignette Collection — a soft brand where owners can access IHG’s distribution, sales, and loyalty networks without the rigid design standards that go with something like an InterContinental — also enables the company to comprehensively compete in the sector against the likes of Hilton and Accor, which have both pointed to luxury and lifestyle hotels as leading sources of growth.
“It's something that's probably not well understood. We're the second-largest player in the industry in luxury and lifestyle,” IHG CEO Keith Barr said in an exclusive interview with Skift ahead of the brand launch. “We have been building that brand portfolio t
