Originally Posted by
leeky
without divulging insider information on the 96-hotel agreements that I have had on my desk, the current Marriott brand owners have agreements that prevent another Marriott property opening within a certain distance from they currently branded property so what you're asking is for the next Meridien to become a Renaissance and get an injunction filed to prevent it - right, just what Owners look for - litigation costs!
and in the event such a change of flag occured, the changing hotel has various costs from signage, to letterhead to loosing former guests who know the property (such as is happening with the Ren Seoul) so who's going to pay these costs - Marriott, you???? cause the Owners sure aren't going to go out of their way to incur additional costs!
so keep on speculating..............
Now see, that's the interesting information that we are looking for. I am aware that many hotel owners have such agreements with their parent brand company to avoid/minimize competition within their own distribution network.
Obviously, Marriott will not be rebranding any hotels based on contracts that assign the current brands for specified timeframes, nor where such rebranding would cause conflicts with such contracts or ownership issues/problems. Those properties that Marriott determines would be better in a different brand would have to wait until the contracts are coming close to expiration, clearly.
It is possible that Marriott simply will decide that carrying all 30 brands is the best way to move forward for quite some time. But I doubt it. There will be numerous locations where a current Starwood property now comes into the portfolio which has always been a major competitor for a current Marriott property. That inevitably will cause some Marriott or Starwood hotels that are nearing the end of their contract obligations to consider reflagging with a different hotel group to give them better distribution and sales. Which ones those might be will be another interesting story of the merger, I'd imagine.