Originally Posted by
Land-of-Miles
I think you have to look at average to average to assess the true quality of the brand not compare best IC's with worst elsewhere.
Then you have to go city by city because in some towns IC will be best and some times StR or RC will be better. Or simply not present. London for example has two decent IC's, but no St. Regis nor a mainline Ritz property. For 99% of travelers it really depends on a small set of cities for them to judge by. There's not many of us who visit 100 different cities per year who might care about average performance.
I am not sure in the brave new world of cookie cutter RA treatment even that is a good differentiator and that is totally different to how good the hotels are anyway.
I don't believe that RA treatment is cookie cutter globally yet and I of course hope that never happens. So far in my travels it is only the US that is like that and even then the property has discretion to go above and beyond.