How Holiday Inn relaunched…right down to the logo

New Holiday Inn Logo

Holiday Inn rolled out a top-to-bottom relaunch effort across all locations over the last couple of years that’s intended to help capture a bigger share of the corporate travel market in these leaner times.  And they’re going up against the longtime powers in the corporate travel space — Hilton Sheraton and Marriott, just to name a few. It’s a $1 billion initiative, the biggest ever in the hospitality industry, and includes everything from bedsheets to customer service, to experiential stunts like the “key card hotel” they erected in NYC to grab media attention.

A key component of the program is a fresh re-branding of Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express, moving the logomark into a cleaner, more modern place…recognizable as Holiday Inn, but injecting new vivacity and life into a logo design that had become a bit too synonymous with budget family travel.  Not that there’s anything wrong with budget family travel — but the work by Interbrand gave real energy back to the logo and the brand, along with a polish and dimensionality that shows up well against its corporate travel competitors.

It’s familiar enough it feels like a natural evolution of the previous logo…the kind of change that signals something new to the corporate customer, yet a change in which a loyal customer could probably find very little to object to.   A Holiday Inn stalwart might even discover they appreciate the new logo as the kind of freshening an old, dependable friend deserves.