The hotel chain confirms a new brand will launch as early as next year, but was tight lipped on its name, or where the hotels will pop up.
Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. has announced plans to launch yet another new brand in early 2016, on the back of raising its profit forecasts for the year.
Hilton ceo Chris Nassetta said the new brand would be for mid-scale hotels to service more “value-oriented” consumers, the Washington Business Journal reports.
The latest, yet to be named brand, will feature at a lower price point than Hilton’s other mid-scale brand, Hampton Inn, Nassetta said. Hampton Inn most recently expanded its presence into China.
“Hampton Inn was initially targeted to be in that segment, but it’s so successful that it’s grown up out of it,” Nassetta said.
Hampton Inn fell into the “upper midscale” category, along with competitors such as Holiday Inn Express in 2014, according to Smith Travel Research, the paper reports.
Hilton recently launched two other brands since its IPO, Curio and an “accessible lifestyle” brand, Canopy – but both targeting a higher price point.
“There’s a huge swath — something like 40% of the demand base in the U.S. market — that we find we’re not serving as much as we want because they can’t afford basically our lowest chain scale product,” Nassetta said, the paper reports.
Per the report, Nassetta said the new hotels would be all new-build projects, rather than conversions and would not be a “Hampton-look-alike,” but rather Hilton’s attempt to “re-create the segment”.
“There is no good mid-scale product,” he said.
“We think the demand is there, but the reason no one is building them is that there are no products that resonate with the customer.”
Nassetta said he hoped the new brand would eventually grow to “thousands of hotels” in the Hilton portfolio.
