Marriott's 10-property mega-deal with Sun Group in Vietnam sounds like a brand strategy triumph until you count eight different flags across two destinations and ask who's actually going to deliver on all those distinct brand promises simultaneously.
IHG's largest voco in the Americas is now open on Seventh Avenue, and the press release reads like a victory lap. The real story is what a 32-story new-build in the most competitive hotel market on Earth tells you about where brand fees are headed and who's actually holding the risk.
Major hotel companies doubled their brand counts in a decade chasing Wall Street's favorite metric: net unit growth. The problem isn't that they built too many brands. It's that they built too many brands that don't mean anything.
One-point redemptions for Coachella VIP access sound like loyalty genius. The real question is who's paying for the experience the brand just promised.
