As an overall brand, IC does not fall into the Luxury segment no matter what IHg believes. It's also upper-upscale. although a handful of IC properties do actually qualify as Luxury. IHG has mentioned previously that they wanted to expand into the Luxury market with the partial acquisition of Regent. Based on some of the things they said last year, I believe there should still be one more high end brand coming, either through acquisition or new creation. voco sounds like the new "soft brand" they talked about, but it really does create a lot of overlap in the upscale/upper upscale range for IHG.. but they seem to believe their brands sit at different points than most of the rest of us.

Regardless of the fuzziness of where each brand sits, this announcement does cement one thing firmly into my mind. Spire, Hualuxe, EVEN, Avid, and now voco.... clearly IHG is really bad at creating new brand names that don't suck. Will they open a voco in Hawaii. You'll be able to go to their cafe and order a voco loco moco.