NATIONAL REPORT— Many hotel shuttle vehicles these days sport special graphics to promote the properties and help arriving guests easily identify the vehicles at the airport. Embracing this as a branding vehicle, Vista Host is using different themes for shuttle vans at some of the properties that it manages. For example, its Hampton Inn BWI Airport shuttle is bright orange and displays the Baltimore Orioles logo, an illustration of a baseball player on the side and the team’s baseball cap on top of the van. There is also an illustration of a crab for which Baltimore is famous. Unveiled late last year, the complimentary shuttle accommodates up to 14 passengers. “We wanted to personalize our vans so guests would know what to look for after they called the hotel for a pick-up,” said Michael Harrell, CEO of Vista Host, which has 43 properties in its portfolio. Up until recently, the airport shuttles all looked pretty much the same, Harrell noted. “There are several hotels using vans at BWI Airport— two Holiday Inns, two Hiltons and others— and all the vans are white and look alike. But with our personalized van, we can tell guests to watch for the baseball cap after they’ve called for a pick-up and they can see it coming.” Flamingos distinguish the shuttle van at the Hampton Inn Fort Lauderdale Airport North. “We have flamingos painted on the sides and flamingo figures on the top, so in addition to serving the purpose of guest awareness, the graphics give them something to talk about. Five minutes waiting at the airport after a long flight can seem like a half-hour, but the flamingos or orange Orioles van can serve as a distraction,” Harrell said. The customized vans are supplied by Comm Trans, Harrell added. Vista Host is now considering using a theme related to the Pittsburgh Steelers as it manages the Hampton Inn at Pittsburgh Airport, Harrell said. According to research done by Comm Trans, customized graphics on vehicles frequently offer 25,000 to 50,000 visuals a day and can be less expensive than running ads in local yellow pages. While some hotels pay $500 a month for a quarter-page ad in their area’s yellow pages, the specialized graphics can range from $1,500 to $3,000 per vehicle and offer many months of repetitive advertising. The customized graphics are part of the service Comm Trans offers its hotel clients. The company’s design staff works with the hotel to create the graphics and then submits renderings showing all four sides of the vehicle to the hotel for its approval. For its part, the Embassy Suites Outdoor World in Grapevine, TX has a five-vehicle shuttle fleet, which includes three vans and two buses. Its vans sport a large fish decal to tie in with the 200,000-square-foot Bass Pro Shop adjacent to the hotel. The vans carry 12 to 13 people and cost from $32,000 to $35,000, according to Kris Brown, assistant general manager at the 329-suite Embassy Suites. The fish decals cost $2,000 per van, he said. Both the vans and decals are supplied by Comm Trans. “The decals are unique and definitely high impact, the guests love them,” Brown said. “There are five Embassy Suites in Dallas so this differentiates our property from the others.” “We even get some people who see the van and want to use it to go shopping even though they are not our guests,” Brown said. In those cases, there is a fee for the shuttle service, which is charged back to the Bass Outdoor World organization. For Embassy Suites guests, the shuttle service is complimentary and available 24 hours a day from DFW International Airport, which is one mile from the hotel. The buses in the Embassy Suites’ shuttle fleet carry up to 22 passengers and are primarily used for large groups. “We don’t use the buses that much because it’s much easier for the vans to get in and out of the airport,” Brown said. The buses cost about $60,000 and feature the hotel’s logo. Van wraps are part of a new program just unveiled by the Hampton bran
