Marketers Rethink Promotions to Accent Value†

Holiday Inn Offers Flight Vouchers, and TiVo Tees Up Freebies, but Figuring Out What Will Resonate With Consumers Isn't Easy

Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2008 — Marketers are working overtime to overhaul their promotions, trying to snag customers who are increasingly in penny-pinching mode.

Holiday Inn recently considered the idea of offering guests a $50 credit they could use to play videogames. Instead, the hotel chain decided to attract travelers with print and online ads that offer a $99 flight voucher.

The ads, part of the "Stay Here, Fly There" campaign, began running last month.

Holiday Inn chain gives itself a face-lift

USA Today, July 19, 2007 — The roadside Holiday Inns that became fixtures in towns across the USA beginning in the 1950s are disappearing. London-based InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), current owner of the brand that pioneered franchised motor hotels, is in the process of shedding roughly half the nearly 1,100 properties that it had in 2004, mainly by ending franchise agreements with operators of substandard properties.

Q+A: Declaring 'War Against Beige,' IHG Personalizes†

Brandweek, February 15, 2007 — The plan called for Holiday Inn Select to be recast as a hotel for Gen X travelers by stuffing guest rooms with such gadgets as MP3 clock radios and applying feng shui principles to design rooms. But that decision came before executives at parent InterContinental Hotel Group began gleaning through what they are calling the largest marketing research study ever conducted in the hotel industry.

Price points†

Good customer service costs money. Some expenses are worth it -- and some aren't.

Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2006 — Holiday Inn president Mark Snyder has figured out what he needs to do for his customers, and what he doesn't.