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In addition to the bedrooms conferencing and bar/restaurant provision the hotel also has an unusual rooftop pool and a substantial gymnasium provision immediately below it. The rooftop pool in July was a powerful suntrap, and also provided an area for barbecue activity. Fully manned the pool is available to guests twelve hours a day when the seasons permit.
Many Holiday Inns will not reach the standards evident here in what is obviously a very heavily used and popular hotel. Comparison with standards ‘across the pond’ is also difficult – but this is the very issue branding is supposed to address. According to Intercontinental some 50% of what you get in a Holiday Inn is fixed by the brand. A guest using knowledge of the brand as their yardstick in choosing an hotel may well be pleasantly surprised by this one. In its way however it raises as many questions about branding as the previous Holiday Inn in Bristol, England raised in a different way.
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Intercontinental recently announced that another brand (Staybridge Suites) is crossing the Atlantic. Having recently sold much of their property interest in favour of the franchising and management contracts, the group has raised the branding higher in rank of importance. Maintaining brand standards and being clear about what they mean has become not just of importance to the independent traveller booking via the web, but has become critical to the long term survival of the hotel group itself, for without the standard attracting customer loyalty then competition from other brands will become hard to beat, especially when franchises come up for renewal.
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