The 20 Holiday Inns and Holiday Inn Expresses in Connecticut are on the verge of completing a three-year, multi-million dollar upgrade of their facilities in a company-wide effort to remain competitive in a struggling industry.
“We will be a brand-new hotel on the market,” said Victor Antico, general manager of the Holiday Inn Express in Vernonwhich spent $500,000 on upgrades. “This will put us on even ground with the new hotels that have opened in the area.”
In October 2007, the InterContinental Hotel Group announced its 878 Holiday Inns and 1,863 Holiday Inn Expresses throughout the country must complete renovations and upgrades by the end of 2010 to improve quality and provide for brand consistency.
The minimum cost per hotel ranged between $150,000-$250,000 for the upgrades that included new lighting, landscaping and design features on the outside, customized music and scent selection in the lobby, and new signage for the brand, said Sarah-Ann Soffer, spokeswoman for InterContinental.
The entire hotel industry has been improving its product for the past five years, said John Fox, senior vice president with PKF Consulting. Even before the record revenue drops of 2009, hotels looked to set a higher standard than the competition.
The Welcome Group, Inc. is betting $1.8 million that the improvements to the Holiday Inn brand will provide long-term benefits to hotels bearing that name. In September, the company purchased the Crowne Plaza in Enfield with the intent of turning it into a Holiday Inn.
To convert to a Holiday Inn, the Crowne Plaza needed all sorts of upgrades — totaling $1.8 million — but with a completely refurbished inside and exterior improvements, the location will be the ninth Connecticut Holiday Inn when it relaunches on July 15.
“They were quite serious about their standards, and they made us work for it,” said Remo Pizzichemi, Welcome Group vice president for operations. “Now, we will have all the full-service amenities with limited service pricing.”
While the Enfield hotel will join the Connecticut Holiday Inn family when it reopens in July, another Holiday Inn Express will join the fold a few months after. A new Express location will open on the Berlin Turnpike in Newington within a couple of months, owner Jay Patel said.
The difference between the Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Expresses is the former is a full-service hotel with a pool, restaurant, room service and banquet space while the latter doesn’t have any of those guaranteed but offers a hot breakfast, Soffer said.
The idea with this three-year rebranding project is to give customers consistent quality throughout the country, Soffer said, so they know exactly what they are paying for when booking a Holiday Inn or Holiday Inn Express.
Of the 20 Holiday Inns and Holiday Inn Expresses in Connecticut, 14 have finished their upgrades, Soffer said. The remaining six are either in the midst of their rebranding or just starting.
“Everyone has tried to differentiate their product and improve their product,” Fox said. “Hotels have provided a much better product overall than what was out there five years ago.”
The hotel industry had record revenues in 2007 and 2008 before the economic fallout in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Since then, Fox said, hotels cut rates and did everything possible to get a leg up on the competition.
“The industry has become competitive and segmented into a bunch of different brands,” Fox said. “Everybody has been scrambling for all the business they could get.”
