Hotel Indigo brand to be overhauled

IHG has selected Manchester-based design and marketing agency Pixel8 to carry out the brand refresh on its boutique brand Hotel Indigo. The refresh comes in advance of 10 international openings planned for this year, including London, Liverpool and Glasgow.

The company launched Hotel Indigo in the UK in London Paddington in 2008.

Pixel8 has been chosen from a pitch list of four agencies, which also featured US branding companies Design Continuum, Marshall Strategy and Brand Logic.

Pixel8 will report to Ed Thorne, director global brand management, Hotel Indigo, at IHG’s Atlanta office. Thorne is a former UK marketing manager for IHG based in London.

He says: “Refreshing the branding is the next step in the continuing story of Hotel Indigo, cementing its position as an upscale branded boutique product.

“Hotel Indigo is an international brand and it was vital that the agency we chose could think globally. Pixel8 demonstrated a more outward looking focus than its US counterparts and gave us greater confidence that they could align our brand all over the world.”

Pixel8 will also prepare the guidelines for all in-hotel materials and develop tool kits to help deliver the look and feel across the internationally franchised brand.

The hotel sector has suffered during the economic global downturn but is showing some recovery in revenue per available room in selected territories. STR Global reports rising revenues in Europe for April, year on year.

“Demand for European hotel rooms continue to improve. With a relatively flat increase of new supply across the region, we saw occupancies and average room rates picking up against weak results in early 2009”, said Elizabeth Randall, managing director of STR Global. “Europe continues on its path of recovery with European RevPAR for the first four months of this year being (US)$6 higher than year-to-date 2009, but (US)$26 lower than year-to-date 2008”.