Originally Posted by
tcook052
IHG has as many flavors as Baskin Robbins but few at the luxury end of the market so can see the upside of adding those heritage properties to their portfolio. Swissotel seems the most redundant brand as the ones I've stayed at are to me akin to good Crowne Plaza's. While it looks good from IHG's view however I can't see this as being good for Fairmont/Raffles long-term and hope they continue to grow on their own into a bigger luxury focused chain with their own acquisitions or mergers with like-minded chains such as Steigenberger.
We can perfectly imagine that the most luxurious properties would get the Raffles brand when the other will get the InterContinental ones.
Swissotel has a very poor brand value (and poor consistency) and would certainly disappear in case of merger with IHG.