Starwood Hotels & Resorts' artsy Le Meridien brand this year by a hair ended JW Marriott's three-year reign atop the upper upscale tier in Business Travel News' 2010 U.S. Hotel Chain Survey, which tabulated ratings from 387 buyers.
The upper upscale tier had the most varied and heated results, and other tiers saw a mix of familiar winners and newly emergent top brands. Among multibrand hotel companies, InterContinental Hotels Group and Hilton Worldwide fared the best, with the former boasting at least a third-place finish in all eligible tiers and the latter garnering three of the top five upscale slots and nearly sweeping the midprice tier with its Hampton brand.
Business Travel News' U.S. Hotel Chain Survey annually measures corporate travel buyer opinions of the lodging brands they use. BTN e-mailed corporate readers responsible for hotel buying decisions, asking them to rate hotels, arranged by tier, with which they did business in the past year. Equation Research tabulated ratings from 387 respondents.
The survey bases hotel tier division on price point data provided by Smith Travel Research and industry knowledge. Buyers rated hotels in each segment on as many as 13 attributes. BTN reported results only for hotel tiers and chains with significant usage.