WORLDWIDE—When Kemmons Wilson was franchising Holiday Inns back in the 1960s, he sold franchisees and guests alike on amenities including free ice, dog kennels, all-tile baths and telephones in every room with 24-hour service. Today, InterContinental Hotels Group CEO Andy Cosslett is betting on a new logo, a redesigned welcome experience, a refreshed guestroom and a new service promise to continue selling the brand to franchisees and hotel guests. “Ensuring the continued strength of this global icon is a top priority for IHG,” Cosslett says. “This relaunch will ensure the brand moves into the future with a strong new image so our guests get as much enjoyment from Holiday Inn hotels over the next 50 years as they have over the last 50.”

The worldwide brand relaunch, announced at IHG’s Americas Investors and Leadership Conference in Dallas in October, is based on extensive customer research, and is expected to increase quality and drive consistency throughout the portfolio, allowing Holiday Inn brand family hotels (including Holiday Inn Express) to generate 3% to 7% higher revPAR and enhanced return on investment for owners, according to company leaders. But it won’t be as simple as slapping a new sign on a building’s exterior and changing the sheets in the guestrooms.

The toughest part for operators likely will be passing a quality evaluation that includes achieving specific overall guest satisfaction scores and training personnel to carry out a new service culture based on the mandate to “Stay Real”—to treat guests as real people by consistently delivering real, genuine service and hospitality. These are must-meet requirements in order for each property to earn the new signage and upgrades.

Holiday Inn owners and franchisees worldwide, together with IHG, will invest up to US$1 billion over the next three years to meet the required service and quality levels and to carry out this brand relaunch (the upgrades will cost franchisees between US$50,000 and US$150,000, depending on the property).

Properties currently open are expected to implement the new program by the end of 2010 (with recently opened, modern properties more quickly installing the new hallmark items and signage), while those in the design and planning or early development stages will open with new components already in place (the first of which should occur in the spring in the United States). That said, there will be no major consumer marketing of the new look until late 2009, by which time the worldwide rollout should be well under way.

Brand executives consider the new look of Holiday Inn contemporary, inviting and fun, and are counting on a similar reaction from guests. To help achieve that, the brand will implement modern, softened landscaping and signature outdoor lighting, plus all new signage and redesigned, clutter-free reception areas. The brand also will deploy signature scents and play customized music in the lobby.

Holiday Inn will try to remove clutter from guestrooms as well, focusing on the work desk area. Expect the bed’s pillows, meanwhile, to plead their cases with “firm” or “soft” wraps, and look for more light in the bathroom, including a lighter shower curtain, and new bath amenities.

Hotel design and FF&E will aim to relay the brand message of “accessible comfort,” and convey the idea that just because guests are away from home doesn’t mean that they can’t have the same comforts as home. Look for natural, earthy tones and textured fabrics, playing off current trends.

As for the new logo, it is no coincidence that green is a prominent color. Aiming for a simple and clean, open and airy style, the green gives a nod to the brand’s roots while emphasizing the freshness of the new look. And the relaxed, forward-leaning script is supposed to be inviting to the eye, again without departing from the brand’s heritage.

In recent years, Holiday Inn has been quietly weeding out properties that were underperforming or not meeting brand standards, and brand executives plan to continue doing so even more aggressively going forward. Hotels that do not achieve certain overall guest satisfaction scores by 2010 will lose their brand affiliation, executives say.

Meanwhile, the Holiday Inn Select and Holiday Inn SunSpree resort brands also will be phased out going forward. “Based on extensive research we decided to cease the growth of the Select and SunSpree brand extensions,” says John Merkin, senior vice president of brand management for Holiday Inn in the Americas.

“Holiday Inn Select hotels will either transition to the new standards of the core Holiday Inn estate as part of the relaunch, or they may consider converting to the Crowne Plaza brand.”

SunSpree resorts, meanwhile, will have the chance to transition to the core Holiday Inn brand, or to apply for a new Holiday Inn Resorts designation, the standards for which are currently being defined by brand executives. As part of the Holiday Inn relaunch, an additional sign was designed for those properties that will be designated Holiday InnResorts.

Direct comments to: derek.gale@reedbusiness.com