IndeCorp Launching Fourth Brand To Target Meetings, Conferences

CHICAGO— IndeCorp Corp., the parent of Preferred Hotels & Resorts, Sterling Hotels and Summit Hotels & Resorts, is creating a fourth brand category for its portfolio designed to address the needs of independent hotels that cater to meetings and conferences. Called “The Conference Collection,” the brand will launch this month, first in North America, then cross the ocean to Europe where it will roll out in July or August, said Peter Cass, president/CEO of IndeCorp. Thirty properties are already on board, Cass said, among them The Michelangelo in New York, The Greenbrier in West Virginia, The Broadmoor in Colorado, The Peabody Orlando in Florida, The Boston Harbor in Massachusetts. “Most of these are existing properties that are doing 35% or more of their business in meetings and conference business,” said Cass. To qualify for the Collection, a property “must meet meeting-planner standards” and be at the four- or five-star level. “This is a brand that will target hotels that specialize in areas ranging from board meetings of eight or ten rooms to as much as 200-300 rooms. The group may be part of a convention group or a standalone,” said Cass. “It brings additional synergies and creates an opportunity for independent hotels that really specialize in meetings to have a brand that’s very focused, to bring to bear some operating scale so they can compete against all of the meeting-planning brands in Starwood, Marriott, etc.,” he added. Those hotels that join the Collection will get promotion and direct sales, a Web site and other features still under review. Brands under the IndeCorp umbrella also stand to benefit, said Robert Cornell, IndeCorp’s svp-development and interim managing director for Preferred Hotels & Resorts. “The Collection only promotes the conference and meetings capabilities of those hotels, so if a Preferred or Summit or Sterling participates in Conference Collection, it wouldn’t mean they would have to leave their affiliation with the other brands,” said Cornell. “I think in some cases a meeting planner would be surprised at the extent of the facilities and capabilities some of these hotels have. Part of the reason independent properties have to band together in groups like this is to overcome that.” Cass noted the new brand models after IndeCorp itself. When the holding company was created by a unanimous approval of Preferred Hotels & Resorts shareholders in 2000, the idea behind it was to bring operating scale and competitive standing in marketing to independent hotels to position themselves against chains. “We had been working on this [launch]for a year, planning to announce it earlier. But when Sept. 11 happened, a lot of meetings were either postponed or canceled. So now, we’re putting out this brand to meeting planners to try and help pull the market along a little bit,” said Cass. He felt “there’s a good chance” of having 60-70 hotels within a year in the Collection. That includes heading to Europe with the brand in late summer. While the name will be maintained, “the European version will have a little bit of a twist to it, a little bit of a different cultural focus on it,” said Cass.