khabah

I don't think elevating certain hotels with the Grand moniker will do anything to cause detriment to non-Grand properties. If I'm not mistaken, Starwood's portfolio by category is something along these lines:

Luxury: St Regis, Luxury Collection
Lifestyle: W
Upper-upscale: Le Méridien, Westin, Tribute
Upscale: Sheraton
Mid-range: Four Points, Aloft
Extended stay: Element

I think Sheraton Grand hotels would edge them closer to the upper-upscale category; they're still Sheratons but with more enhanced and dynamic offerings and designs, so just an improvement on an already good product. The Sheraton brand is being spruced up anyway, so I wouldn't worry about brand standards dropping anytime soon.

Tangent: call me picky, but is it a bit sloppy that within the Grand subsection of the Sheraton brand you've got Grand and Grande? I know it's one letter that doesn't take away from the overall meaning, but if you're going for brand unity then shouldn't they all stick to the same name?

khabah

James Luckard

I'm sure they'll even all that out soon. They just announced this today, they haven't even created a separate website for the new brand. They literally just took 5 Asian hotels (one of which isn't even an actual Sheraton) that happened to have pre-existing names with Sheraton Grande, which was never a specific brand there, and lumped them in the new "Sheraton Grand" brand along with two other hotels in Dubai and Edinburgh that happened to have the word Grand in their names.

It's really not that different from Hyatt, I think. They had the lone Grand Hyatt New York for a while in the early 80s before they started building other hotels and calling them "Grand Hyatt" and eventually started marketing them as an individual sub-brand.

dw

Looks like a new site has gone live: www.sheratongrand.com

George K

This could be exciting stuff. I'm a big fan of non-US based Sheratons and look forward to this new designation.

With the risk of me being overly pedantic though, I just wanted to vent and say that it really gets to me when press releases like this are signed off with spelling mistakes as well as nonsensical wording. "The launch of the brand’s new visual identify"? "New imaginative Paired lobby menu"? If the announcement didn't mention the "$100m Sheraton-focused marketing campaign" I would have probably thought that there was no money set aside for promotion... If you're looking for a wordsmith, I'm available!

Best of luck for the redesign. 2020 is awfully close!

CPRich

I'm not clear on what this means. What is "grand"? How is a hotel brand "grand"? Is Marriott grand? They're now not-grand because of a press release?

MSPeconomist

If the criterion was to look for Sheratons that already have the word Grand in their names, perhaps we should check whether places like Grand Rapids or Grand Forks have Sheratons. There must be some Sheratons already located in Grand cities and towns. In fact, is there a Grand Sheraton in NYC named after Grand Central station?

Cathay Boy

Sheraton is supposed to be an up-scale hotel. In the past the name Sheraton meant something: upscale, full-service, one of a kind. It is ashamed most Sheratons now seems to be dated, ordinary, and subpar services. Adding another tier "Sheraton Grand" doesn't help that. It seems to be Starwoods way of accepting what has happened to their main Sheraton brand (becoming ordinary) and creates another tier "Sheraton Grand" to be what Sheraton was supposed to be: upscale, full-service, one of a kind.

Cathay Boy

These are what Sheratons were supposed to be. Also, hotels in Asia typically are newer and better all around than their US counterparts. I've stayed at Four Points in China that I can honestly say are better than most Westins I've stayed in the USA. Instead of telling property managers in USA to step-up their game with renovations, I guess the solution is to create another tier and simply accept the fact older brands are just that: old and beat-up. I don't get it...

Xiaotung

Correct me if I am wrong. Le Meridien has already had such moniker for a long time in that some properties are Le Royal Meridien rather than Le Meridien.

Cathay Boy

No doubt Starwoods will capitalized on this and create another tier: Le Royal Meridien....

James Luckard

That was a classification Le Meridien used far more commonly till about five years ago. They've almost completely done away with it though, much like "Sheraton Gateway". I think there are only two "Le Royal Meridien" properties left, in Shanghai and Dubai. I'm sure this is again a legacy of long-term contracts.

James Luckard

Depends on how far in the past you're looking. Sheraton used to be a full range of hotels, from budget motels to luxury establishments like the St. Regis in NY. They started breaking them up in the mid 90s under ITT, moving a few Sheratons into the ITT Sheraton Luxury division, which exploded from only a couple of properties as a result of Sheraton buying CIGA Hotels, the Italian luxury chain. Around the same time, they downgraded all the motels to Four Points by Sheraton, so they had three divisions. Even then, however, plenty of Sheratons were only a tiny step above Four Points level, while others were quite luxurious.

MSPeconomist

I don't consider LRM Shanghai to be better than other LMs, just bigger. [And it has a lounge, which other LMs generally don't.] Maybe it should be Le Grand Meridien.

James Luckard

There were loads of LRM hotels like 5-10 years ago. When I stayed at Hotel National in Moscow it was LRM, and the King Edward in Toronto was LRM for a while.

I'm fairly sure that was a classification added to Meridien before Starwood bought them, it was phased out under Starwood.

Dr. HFH

According to the link dw posted, SGS will still be an LC property. AND be part of this new grouping. To me that doesn't suggest a new brand so much as it does some other sort of grouping. But I have absolutely no idea what it means or what the strategy is.