Premier Inn ‘world's strongest hotel brand'
Premier Inn is the world's "strongest" hotel brand, according to valuation and strategy consultancy Brand Finance.
The company assessed brands by analysing marketing investment and equity, and the impact of those on business performance, to assign each a Brand Strength Index (BSI) score out of 100. Premier Inn scored 88.7 ahead of Holiday Inn at 85.4, Days Inn at 85.2, Hilton's 84.9 and Hampton by Hilton's 84.6.
Premier Inn, the largest UK hotel brand operated by Whitbread, scored highly on awareness, satisfaction and brand investment. Its financial performance during 2015/16 was strong with total sales up 12.9% and like-for-like sales up 4.2%, supporting an 11.9% pre-tax profit increase for Whitbread.
Brand strength is then used to determine what proportion of a business's revenue is contributed by the brand, which is projected into perpetuity to determine the brand's value, and ranked to assess the 50 most valuable hotels brands.
Hilton was rated the world's most valuable hotel brand at $8.4b (£6.7b), with Marriott ranking second at $5b (£4b), Hyatt in third place at $4b (£3.2b), Sheraton in fourth with $3.8b (£3b) and Holiday Inn coming in fifth with $3b (£2.4b).
Airbnb's brand value was found to be growing faster than all hotel brands, up 52% to $3.7b (£3b), making it more valuable than all but four of the world's biggest hotel brands.
Five of the top 10 most valuable brands have lost value and the industry's year-to-year average brand value growth rate (4%) is significantly below the average for all sectors. Although there are notable exceptions, with reasons for optimism for several brands, including Hilton, with a brand value increase of 7%.
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