hospitalitystyle.com

(October 2010) posted on Thu Oct 28, 2010 EDT

Updated bar concept next up for IHG chain

As it wraps up a $1 billion makeover of its 3,400 hotels across the globe, the Holiday Inn chain is turning its attention to redesigning and expanding its hotel bars to make them livelier, The Wall Street Journal reports. Holiday Inn parent InterContinental Hotels Group PLC unveiled a preliminary concept it calls the “social hub” at its annual conference for franchisees in Las Vegas this week

The plan makes the bar the center of several Holiday Inn services, including the restaurant, game room and business center, the Journal reports. The concept is at least partly a response to the findings of a customer study that Holiday Inn conducted in 2007 and 2008, which found that its frequent guests—typically middle managers, route salespeople, entrepreneurs and government supervisors—want to be around other people, rather than holed up in their rooms.

“These are more extroverted, charismatic people who like people,” Kevin Kowalski, senior vice president of global brand management for Holiday Inn's U.K.-based parent told the Journal. "They're not going to hang out in their rooms and watch TV. They're just social animals."

IHG's plans for rolling out the social-hub concept are still in their preliminary stages; it's not expected to start appearing in newly built and renovated Holiday Inns until 2012.