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The easy path to brand destruction

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A great brand is a terrible thing to waste … or destroy. It can take decades to build a brand and months to kill it. The Holiday Inn was once a great brand. It was ruined because it became inconsistent. You had no idea what kind of hotel you might end up in when you selected a Holiday Inn.

McDonald’s went through a similar bout of inconsistency from which they appear to be recovering. In Ray Kroc’s day you could count on a McDonald’s to be a McDonald’s. That consistency began to slip away after his death and became very noticable in the 1990s. However, they do appear to have re-focused.

This brings me to today’s rant about the DoubleTree Hotel chain, which is part of the Hilton Family. I am writing this post from the DoubleTree in Farmer’s Branch Texas. This is not the first DoubleTree I have stayed at that can make you wish you could upgrade to a Motel 6. I’m not real picky about my hotels, but I do expect certain things from a business class hotel. A work desk (got one of those). Power outlets at the work desk. Well, not so much since the lamp and coffee maker are plugged into the only two there are. Not a big TV watcher, but I do like a modern selection of TV channels so I am not stuck only with left biased media (need some right bias as well to balance things out). Gonna get a big dose of one-sided bias for the next two days and will wonder what else is going on in the world when I get out of here.

And then there was the shower. I’ve not had a hot and cold shower like that in many a year. Random water temperature is great fun … just not what  I had in mind this morning. I was thinking about how long it had been since I had this much fun in a hotel room and I realized that the last time this happened it was at another DoubleTree. Is a pattern emerging? Could be, but I don’t plan to find out as I am taking DoubleTree off my acceptable hotel list.

BTW, one reason for this rant is that Hilton only gave me 500 characters to explain my issue to them. I told them to visit the blog since 500 characters wasn’t anywhere near enough. I’ll let you know if I hear from them. Remember, if you make it hard for your customers to complain to you, they will just complain about you.

Mitch



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