How can the Holiday Inn brand marry its rich history with guests’ ever-evolving needs? And how can it successfully co-exist with sister brand Holiday Inn Express? You will find the answers here

　　How can the Holiday Inn brand marry its rich history with guests’ ever-evolving needs? And how can it successfully co-exist with sister brand Holiday Inn Express, which has an increasingly distinct product offering and guest profile?

　　These are two of the main questions Holiday Inn is attempting to address with its new Change Your View campaign, launched earlier this week with a TV spot titled “Changing Together.” The initiative represents the latest steps in the brand’s ongoing evolution, and Heather Balsley, SVP Americas for the Holiday Inn brand family, talked to us about the rationale behind the campaign as well as its short- and long-term goals.

　　HOTELS: How was the Change Your View campaign developed, and what was the main message Holiday Inn wanted to convey?

　　Heather Balsley: There are really two objectives behind this campaign, at least this initial launch of the campaign. First and foremost is our strategy to create clear differentiation between Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. We relaunched the Stay Smart campaign for Holiday Inn Express towards the beginning of this year, and it is a real focus for us in how we’re managing these brands, that we’re creating and reinforcing how and why these brands are distinct from one another, how the guest is distinct.

　　For Holiday Inn Express, the guest is all about efficiency, whereas with Holiday Inn, what we’ve learned in speaking with our guest is that they’re looking for a much more experiential hotel environment. These are people who thrive on personal connections. They’re family-first kind of people. Whether they’re traveling with their family or not, they’re always trying to strike that balance, and they’re looking for a hotel experience that allows them to do that effectively. What they love about Holiday Inn is that we find new ways every day to make them feel at ease and like family. It’s about that incredible service experience together with a great hotel stay. It’s that difference between the two brands that we’re trying to bring to life through these two distinct campaigns.

　　The second objective is about the Change Your View platform. We believe this will be a multi-year platform that will build from the message you see today, which is about driving reconsideration of the Holiday Inn brand, reintroducing it to guests who may know us, but may not know about the incredible change we’ve accomplished as a result of the relaunch. We will build from that through to the message around how we will ask guests to change their view of what travel can be, really honing in on what makes Holiday Inn distinct — this incredible service experience, this warmth and engagement that defines Holiday Inn.

　　HOTELS: What else will this campaign encompass beyond the TV spot?

　　Balsley: There’s definitely more to come. We are still developing exactly how we’ll bring the campaign to life in digital and social, but we will have more to share very soon.

　　This is just one step in what will be a multi-year journey. We intend to build from this to more specific proof points around what we’ve accomplished with the Holiday Inn brand. The investment behind the relaunch of more than US$1 billion was one of the largest in the hospitality industry. We removed 1,400 hotels and added another 1,900 since 2004, and our guests are noticing. We’ve won the J.D. Power award in our category three years in a row. We now have more than 20,000 guest reviews from U.S. and Canada stays on our IHG guest reviews website, and more than 70% of those are, on a scale of one to five, four or above. These are huge accomplishments that people just aren’t aware of. That’s really our first barrier to overcome with this campaign — making people aware of what Holiday Inn is today, driving that reconsideration and then building upon that platform.