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Does the hotel industry have brands worth getting angry about?

It seems like most lodging companies lack that emotional connection
Sean McCracken (CoStar)
Sean McCracken (CoStar)
CoStar News
August 29, 2025 | 12:28 P.M.

Let me start this by saying I have no strong feelings about Cracker Barrel. I barely have any feelings at all about the restaurant chain, if I'm being honest.

But recent talk about their logo rebranding effort got me thinking: Are they many, if any, hotel brands that elicit the strong feelings a change in Cracker Barrel's logo seems to have done recently?

Now there are certainly things within the hotel industry that people have a strong connection to. I still remember how angry the Starwood Preferred Guest super users were when Starwood Hotels & Resorts was bought by Marriott International in 2016. And if DoubleTree stopped handing out cookies, that'd definitely grab some headlines.

But those are elements of a brand, not necessarily the brand itself. Is there any logo in the hotel industry that most guests would even register a change to let alone try to lead a movement to reverse it?

Now I could be totally off base about this, and I'm certain that many of you agree that I am. Especially those of you in the brand world whose entire job is to forge a connection with guests and consumers — but I'll note that I'm not trying to say anyone is doing their job poorly.

I do believe that there are specific hotels — often specific hotels within big brands — that do establish deep, emotional connections with guests. It's not groundbreaking to note that guest experience drives connection. We all know this intuitively.

But a guest who is in love with a specific Hampton Inn isn't necessarily in love with the Hampton Inn brand. And at the same time, as the hotel industry moves more toward embracing lifestyle properties that have unique offerings to drive that connection, those are not offered at the same scale as a nationwide consumer brand. And that's necessary for some sort of large-scale backlash.

I do wonder, too, how much of my concern about the lower connection with hotel brands is a feeling of a bit of sameness. For the big brand companies, there's a lot of hotel brands that fit into similar spaces as competitors' brands, so if any one of them changed or went away, I feel like it's less likely for a major consumer backlash as much as a migration from one brand/loyalty umbrella to another.

The harder question to answer is exactly how the hospitality industry might change this — assuming you agree with me — and not shockingly, I don't really have an answer to that question. As I admitted right from the jump today, I don't necessarily understand what drives that consumer connection to a brand like Cracker Barrel, so I couldn't possibly diagnose how to replicate it.

But if my assumption that sameness is a big driver of the problem, maybe the solution is just be different. If you want people to truly, deeply invest in your brand, you have to be offering something no one else is, which is an exceptionally hard thing to accomplish at scale.

Let me know what you think on LinkedIn or via email.

The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CoStar News or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.

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