Breaking: New Brands Not Growing As Quickly As Originally Planned

May 11, 2009 at 5:11 PM | by Jenna | 1 Comment

Remember when Aloft, NYLO, Element and Indigo were announced [Ed Note: wow, that early Aloft post makes us feel as nostalgic and wistful as our high school yearbook], back in simpler times when the insanely rapid expansion plans of the mid-priced hip hotel brands seemed only sorta-insanely rapid but still somewhat feasible?

Ah, those were the days...and those days are gone. A New York Times article ran today that spelled out just how much the growth of those new budgety brands has varied from those rather-hopeful initial goals due to the recession and its impact on travel.

NYLO, for instance, had always planned on a franchise model for growth — but they'd planned to build and operate the first few hotels themselves and then franchise the rest, and had 40 franchises in the works when the brand first launched — but now a rep told the Times that they'd be "lucky 30 hotels open by the end of 2011."

However, the NYLO exec still seemed to have high hopes for their spinoff XP brand, which he hopes, once the economy turns around, will be a little bit easier to "build and sell" than a NYLO-branded hotel because it is a limited-service brand, not a full-service hotel like NYLO.

Meanwhile, similar-ish chains under large hotel company's umbrellas — i.e. Aloft and Element — seem to think they've had an easier go of it in this economic climate, though the slow-to-grow thing is even more obvious with Starwood's two newbies. The Times article lays this one out for us:

The Aloft chain, announced with big ambitions in 2005, initially expected to have 500 properties operating worldwide by 2012; there are 25 open so far.
Another new Starwood brand, Element Hotels, planned to have more than 15 locations operating by 2009; three have opened their doors.

Yikes. The one bright spot in this article? The Marriott/Schrager spawn Edition is apparently still very much kickin', and the Times insists it's still alive — so alive, in fact, that they maintain the brand "has signed five management agreements for Edition hotels in Bangkok, Barcelona, Istanbul, Mexico City and Waikiki, Hawaii, one of which will be the first to open in 2010." We'll believe it when we see it.

Bottom line here? Don't expect to see a big explosion of new stuff for a while; right now, it's all about turnin' things around.

HotelChatter

Select a Destination:

Tags: Industry News / Aloft Hotels / NYLO Hotels / Element Hotels / The New York Times / → All Tags