About a half a mile down the road from a Holiday Inn Express, located in the Wisconsin Dells, is the Holiday Motel, with the above shown vintage signage.
I’m sure there must be an interesting trademark story behind the apparently peaceful co-existence of these two highly similar lodging brand names in very close geographic proximity.
Wouldn’t you
A couple of months ago there was quite a buzz about Holiday Inn’s projected $4 million annual savings by moving to a leaner and greener direction with their adoption of LED lighting on exterior signage.
As you may recall, back in June we blogged about Holiday Inn’s interesting effort to federally register a pair of non-traditional lighting trademarks, one employing
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
Time for me to play dumb consumer and ask an honest question. What is the conventional wisdom in relaunching or revitalizing a brand: do you tell consumers that you’re doing it, or not?
I suspect that there is no universal answer, but Holiday Inn’s “relaunch” has admittedly caught my attention. (It caught Steve’s attention here.) Every morning on the way to work for the past several months, I have passed a billboard for Holiday Inn stating, “We’re making big changes.” Since my first viewing of the billboard, my brain has always followed with a thought along the lines of, “Well, you must have needed it.” Why would a company mess with success?
More commentary after the jump . . .Continue Reading Holiday Inn’s Relaunch: Do We Have a Problem, Houston?
Trying my consumer’s hat on for size this Labor Day, I’ll ask the question: Would you pay good money and choose to stay a night or two in the hotel pictured above, without having a personal recommendation from a very, very good friend?
Me neither, says my wife, for our family.
Did the name have anything to do with your decision? In other words, might you be leery of weary desk clerks, eerie hallways, and dreary rooms, at the Drury Inn?
We were. Sorry, Drury Inn.
But, with far more cheery sounding and well-known national hotel brands readily available like Courtyard, Crown Plaza, Hilton, Hyatt Regency, Westin, Sheraton, Hampton Inn, Residence Inn, and Holiday Inn (or, should I say, H?), do you really blame us for our uninformed theory?
Remember my family road trip this past summer that revealed a trend toward single letter chewing gum brands and a discussion of non-verbal logos that can stand alone? Well, on that same trip, driving through the heartland, along the various interstates we traveled, we noticed Drury Inn after Drury Inn, a hotel chain we had never encountered before. We stayed a few nights in downtown St. Louis, near the above-pictured Drury Inn, but we never had the interest or courage to take a closer look.
Actually my wife felt even more strongly about it than I did, she thought that the various Drury Inns we saw (from the outside) looked and sounded, well, quite dreary. Apparently we aren’t the first to make the “dreary” word association with Drury Inn, especially among those who have expressed online their rather negative experiences in spending nights and money (on the inside of one) (here, here, here, here, here, and here). One could say that deciding to use a name so easily a target for a hotel chain starts to make the resulting wounds look self-inflicted.
Sorry again, Drury Inn.
Recognizing the practice of many popular national hotel brands to select and adopt brand names that evoke feelings of comfort and pleasure (Courtyard, Holiday Inn, Days Inn, Sleep Inn, and Comfort Inn), I was left rather intrigued with the peculiar naming decision involving Drury Inn, at least enough to take a closer look online. Armed with a Wikipedia reference along with the hotel chain’s website, I was surprised to learn, having never head of the brand before, that it has been around since 1973, it has 130 locations in twenty states, and it has won some awards too.
Now, while Mr. Drury, and other family members, might defend use of the family name based on the recognized success and longevity of their business, someone less emotionally attached to the surname might ask where the business would be with a better brand name for a hotel chain.Continue Reading Re-Branding and Pink Elephants: Doesn’t “Drury Inn” Need a Name Change?
Notice anything special about this pair of photographs featuring two different Holiday Inn front entrances? OK, putting aside that the one on the right — with green lighting — seems to have attracted, at least, a few cars, whereas the “blue light special” on the left appears to stage a full house with virtually every room light on, but ironically it reveals an empty parking lot.
Well, these aren’t ordinary photographs, they are trademark specimens of use; Six Continents Hotels, owner of the Holiday Inn brand, claims that they depict a pair of non-traditional trademarks, having filed them with the U.S. Trademark Office in April 2009, and asserting that use of the “lighting” marks commenced back in January 2008. So, we aren’t talking about the new H logo previously blogged about here or the old Holiday Inn word mark — those are standard and traditional single-letter logo and word trademarks. In case you’re wondering, no sign of any red or yellow lights for Holiday Inn, at least, on the Trademark Office database.Continue Reading Holiday Inn Lights It Up With a Pair of Non-Traditional Trademarks
Hotel chains appear determined to own single-letter trademarks anymore. Yes, the lodging industry appears headed toward serving up a regular bowl of alphabet soup you might say. Do you recognize any of these single letter hotel marks?
Continue Reading W H O, R U? Exposing Single-Letter Trademark Envy in Hotel Branding