Brands of products and services are supposed to give customers an immediate differentiation from competitors — but lodging companies have too many brands that blur the delineation as to the uniqueness of each brand to the point that too many brands may be diluting the lodging experience for guests. To prove that point, let us once again play a game: can you guess the hotel brand based on the room — yet again?
Can You Guess the Hotel Brand Based On the Room — Yet Again?
The general purpose of a hotel property is to give travelers an option to be able to rest well for the night when they are too far away from home. Although the minimum benchmark may vary, guests of all types typically want a comfortable bed in a clean room with a toilet and potable running water. Virtually every lodging option — from a spartan hostel to an ostentatiously luxurious resort property — fulfills those basic requirements…
…but in recent years, the number of brands of only nine multinational lodging companies have increased significantly to 236 — and that was back in April of 2024. More brands have been introduced since then.
Here are ten photographs of rooms inside hotel properties — each of which is part of a different brand — that are different brands from the ten photographs which were used in this article and from the ten photographs which were used in this article. The beds that are featured in each photograph were indeed clean and comfortable enough in which to sleep for the night. Can you guess to which brand of what lodging company that these rooms belong?
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Final Boarding Call
How successful do you believe you were at defining each hotel brand based on the photographs? Please post your guesses in the Comments section below.
Only so much can be done with lodging options to be differentiated enough to warrant a separate brand. They all still need to have a reasonably comfortable bed, be clean, and have potable running water.
I believe that lodging companies simply have too many brands. When too many brands exist, differentiators between them become limited and insignificant — and therefore, the pricing of room rates versus value and the return on investment for the guest then comes into question…
Graphic illustration ©2023 by Brian Cohen. All photographs ©2017, ©2018, ©2020, ©2022, ©2023, and ©2024 by Brian Cohen.
