According to an article in the WSJ, Holiday Inn intends to "edesigning and expanding its hotel bars to make them livelier." Holiday Inn is a part of InterContinental Hotels Group. InterContinental's reasoning for turning Holiday Inn's bars into social hubs is "dogged midmarket full-service hotels" with 150 rooms or less do not have enough customers to provide full-service food 24/7 that will make a profit.
Another reasoning is frequent customers of Holiday Inn, which are primarily "middle managers, route salespeople, entrepreneurs, and government supervisors, want to be around other people than holed out in their rooms." Holiday Inn came across this through a survey it offered to its most frequent customers. It is replying to its customer's wants.
The way Holiday Inn is approaching this request is impressive. By making the bar area more of a social hub, Holiday Inn plans to have the bar staff serve food, which would allow the hotel to reduce restaurant staff - which will reduce labor cost. This applies to all meals during the day. For breakfast, there will be "buffets and cook-to-order stations." This will also cut labor costs for the Holiday Inn.
However, Holiday Inn will "go slow" with the idea of social hubs, especially because most of its hotels are owned by franchisees. The social hubs will be tested in newly renovated and newly built hotels, most likely beginning in 2012. Holiday Inn is planning to have all of its hotels have the new menus and the breakfast programs (at the least) by 2012. The "pricier changes" will probably happen while the hotels are under periodic renovations. As of right now, Holiday Inn does not have an estimate of the cost of installing these hubs because "the concept is likely to undergo changes during the test during next year."
I think this is a great idea! I feel like these midmarket full-service are too impersonal (obviously not for the people sharing a room). The feeling of these types of hotels are "come in, sleep, wake up, leave, do work, come back," and restart the cycle. There aren't many opportunities in these hotels to meet other guests. Even though some people think of a hotel as just a place to sleep on the go, I believe they will benefit from these social hubs. I also believe these social hubs will attract more people to the hotel, which should raise its profits and help the hotel industry recover in general.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303443904575578613162270270.html?mod=WSJ_Hospitality_leftHeadlines
I think that this is a really good idea and Holiday Inn has the opportunity to make a great profit off of this since it is responding to its customer's wants. This is also a way to differentiate themselves from other hotels, drawing more guests to stay there. It is also important that hotels are always updating and coming up with something new so that guests do not get tired of their services, and this is a great way to increase customer loyalty.
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