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Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza Wins Renovation of the Year
The Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza helped shed the shabby image typically associated with the budget hotel chain by winning Renovation-of-the-Year, an industry-wide award given by the InterContinental Hotel Group, for its makeover of the lobbies, restaurants and guest rooms.
Adjacent to the Merchandise Mart and perched on top of the Chicago Apparel Center, the 521-room hotel got J/Brice Design International to give it a facelift. Major changes are visible in the lobby, where designers chose more moveable ottomans and similar backless seating over sofas so that guests could shift things around and their own congregating areas. The design company also put the focus on the view—the hotel looks out over the Chicago River and the city skyline—rather than on installation artwork.
Tags: Loyalty Program News / IHG Hotels / Priority Club / Hotel News / → All Tags
IHG's Priority Club Now Offering Members 'Flights Anywhere'
Staying in this pretty Hotel Indigo could earn you a free flight!
If you're a member of the IHG Hotels' Priority Club loyalty program, you could be jetting off to your next vacation, courtesy of all your hard-earned rewards points.
Today, the Priority Club has officially launched its "Flights Anywhere" program that allows members to redeem their points for flights on more than 400 airlines worldwide, without restrictions on availability.
You can even combine points and cash for flights, if you find yourself a little short or hesitant to binge on all your points for a flight. So far, Priority Club is the first and only hotel loyalty program that offers this option.
However, as with most redemption programs you need a lot of points to get what you want.
Tags: IHG Hotels / Crowne Plaza Hotels / Green Hotels / → All Tags
Sewage Dumping is Not Cool, Says IHG of Crowne Plaza Secaucus
Remember last week when it came out that the Crowne Plaza Secaucus was charged with dumping sewage waste into the New Jersey Meadowlands. Yeah, we were trying to forget about it ourselves but Intercontinental Hotel Group has sent us an official statement about the yucky situation.
IHG wanted to reiterate that the hotel is a franchised property that is independently owned and operated. However, just because IHG does not own the hotel, doesn't mean they don't care about the un-environmentally friendly practices that go on there.
Tags: HotelChatter Review / Hotel Indigo / San Diego Hotels / IHG Hotels / → All Tags
Hotel Indigo San Diego is Proof That a Big Chain Can Do 'Boutique' Right
We've played Guess the Hotel with you and we've shown you the video tour, but now let's really get down to talking about our experience at the Hotel Indigo San Diego, the flagship property for the Hotel Indigo brand from InterContinental.
The Lobby
The Hotel Indigo has a great lobby. It's actually quite pretty, for lack of a better descriptive design adjective. Everything was simply calm and eye-pleasing. No loud music. No too-strange art pieces and no mood-lighting changing every five seconds. Since Hotel Indigo as a brand incorporates as much of the local culture as possible into the identity of the hotel, the lobby actually feels like someone's very upscale beach house — despite being located in downtown San Diego.
Tags: Hotel Deals / Loyalty Program News / IHG Hotels / InterContinental Hotels / → All Tags
Stay Any Two Nights at InterContinental Hotels, Get One Free
With the recent influx of buy-two-get-one-free deals, we sort of wish there existed a cutesy acronym we could employ for this sort of arrangement — you know, buy one get one free has its "BOGO" and rate kickbacks have their easier-to-articulate percentage-off slogans.
But regardless of whether or not it lends itself to especially cutesy headlines and billboards, we've got a pretty good deal to report out of IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group), the company behind not only the InterContinental-branded hotels, but the Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites chains as well: IHG Priority Club Rewards (the loyalty program) members score a free night after they stay at any IHG hotel for any two nights between May 4 and July 3, 2009.
If you're not a Priority Club Rewards member, you can hit up GetAFreeNight.com and register to become one. From there, any two nights you stay in an IHG hotel between May 4 and July 3 (the nights don't have to be consecutive and they don't have to be at the same hotel brand), you score a free night to redeem between July 3 and December 26 as long as you book through the IHG site.
You can earn up to four nights through the promo (that is, stay eight nights, earn four) and Priority Club Rewards members earn these free nights instead of base and Elite points/miles. More info here.
[Photo: InterContinental Chicago]
Tags: Hotel News Briefs / Aloft Hotels / Hotel Hell / Odd Hotels / IHG Hotels / → All Tags
The Aloft Harlem Is Back On and Set To Open in 2010
There's tons of hotel news flying around this week and we don't have time to give each and every story the love and attention it may deserve, so you will have to settle for some news briefs.
· Aloft Harlem Will Rise in 2010: Another Aloft is planned for the NYC area. Curbed has some renderings and predictable Aloft room photos. But before this one hits town, Aloft Brooklyn should open first. [Curbed]
· Problems with the Gaylord's Tap Water : A water main break caused the hotel guests to go without tap water for three days. A new round of tests is being done but until then, bottled water only please. [Wapo]
· IHG Drops Holiday Inn for Indigo?: While plans are moving forward to expand the Hotel Indigo brand, the planned refresh for Holiday Inns across Europe gets delayed. [Marketing Magazine UK]
· Jumbo Hostel is Now Open: Do you love hostels and jumbo jets? Then this is your ultimate fantasy. [Jumbo Hostel official site]
Tags: Intercontinental Hotel Group / IHG Hotels / Hotel Technology / Google Earth Hotels / → All Tags
InterContinental Hotel Group Wants You To Google Earth Your Hotel Plans
The InterContinental Hotel Group might have failed at Facebook but when they got their hands on Google Earth, they did a lot better.
If you head to the IHG Google Earth page you can download their file and pop it into Google Earth and suddenly the globe is populated with IHG brand hotels.
Well, not entirely populated--you can easily see the concentration of hotels across North America and Western Europe--but you get the idea. Little green Hs pop up for Holiday Inns and the rest of their logos scatter in between them, until of course you zoom in and start seeing hotels at street level. It's all linked in to their booking system and is technologically pretty clever, we think.
But. (Always a but). Their idea is that you'll actually look for a hotel by Google Earth-ing your way around. We love seeing the logos pop up all over the place but we're not sure if we'd use this as a hotel research method. Maybe once we'd found a hotel in the right city we could check it out here to see what's nearby ... or maybe we're just not geeky enough. Yet.
Tags: Facebook / Facebook Hotels / Intercontinental Hotels / IHG Hotels / → All Tags
InterContinental Hotels' Facebook Page Isn't All That
Where: United States
Like other hoteliers reaching out to a whole new Generation X, Y or Z of guests, InterContinental Hotels has a Facebook application called Hey, Get A Room!
Seems more like "Hey, who cares?" Only 5 active users. (To be fair, the IHG Official Page has 176 "fans.")
At the page you gotta download the concept application to get started. So we did. A box with our Facebook friends came up first (yeah, we're all on Facebook), then another box with a bunch of reasons why we'd think to tell my friends to "get a room." Instead we thought about junior high. Among the reasons were:
·"It's fun to jump on the beds"
·"It's time for a pillow fight"
· "Two words: mini-bar."
The one discussion topic made us chuckle. Bella in China wrote she was gonna try out the application. To which Greg in Atlanta wrote back, "Glad you like the concept. Spread the word."
Obviously Bella's no gossip. The discussion ended there. And get this. The page is rated 5 out of 5 stars. Hmm...who does that one reviewer works for?
What's sorta surprising is that the company's official website is pretty sophisticated with flash, some cool destination videos, even a Travel Advisory. So at Facebook, what on earth were they thinking?
Tags: Loyalty Program Guide / IHG Hotels / → All Tags
HotelChatter's Guide to Loyalty Programs:: IHG's Priority Club Rewards
Until recently we thought hotel loyalty programs were for Account Executives rolling their business travel points into a family vacation at a bland resort every year or two. However, funny thing happened when we started investigating these programs -- we found some of them are downright useful if you know how to cut through the red tape. This series is meant as a jumping off point to full fledged discussions on each loyalty program we feature. So comment, contribute, question, and cajole here.
Intercontinental Hotels has a very successful Priority Club Rewards program that includes all of their hotel brands such as ICH flagships, Holiday Inns, Crowne Plazas, Staybridge Suites, Candlewood Suites and the new boutique brand Hotel Indigo.
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