Hotel companies have been launching new brands again. Hilton Worldwide said on Wednesday it had created its first hotel brand in the economy segment, Spark by Hilton. Accor, the owner of the world’s most hotel brands, said last week it had reorganized itself around its brands. Marriott International, Wyndham Worldwide, Hyatt, Kerzner, and Best Western have created or bought hotel brands in the past several months.
The flurry of activity raises some big-picture questions, such as what drives the creation of hotel brands — and whether there are too many.
To find answers, I spoke with Chekitan Dev, who literally wrote the book on Hospitality Branding. Dev, a distinguished professor at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration in the SC Johnson College of Business, is an internationally renowned expert who has testified in numerous hospitality-related lawsuits including multiple cases involving hotel owner–brand relationships. What follows are…
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