Hilton Launches New Brand

Jeff Sachs, Senior Managing Director, JLL’s Hotels & Hospitality Group, Atlanta

As it celebrates its centennial in the hospitality business, Hilton has launched its latest brand, a meetings-and-events-focused product called Signia Hilton.

Each Signia property will feature a minimum of 500 guestrooms and 75 square feet per key of flexible meetings and events space, as well as:

• An impressive lobby intended to also serve as a social destination for guests throughout their stays;
• Guestrooms with premium designs and quality finishes;
• A destination bar that references that city or resort destination;
• A signature restaurant based on a chef-driven concept;
• Top-notch wellness experiences, such as infinity pools, spas, fitness classes and facilities.

All of these are in addition to large ballrooms and pre-function areas with smart design and the newest technologies.

Signia Hilton will be a global brand, with properties in major urban and resort locales, and will start off with Signia Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek, Signia Hilton Atlanta and Signia Hilton Indianapolis. The latter will be a 38-story, 800-key property at Illinois and Georgia streets in downtown Indy, and should be completed in 2023, according to a local news report.

“Signia Hilton grew from feedback from top meeting professionals, owners, developers and guests,” David Marr, senior vice president and global head, Full Service Brands, Hilton, said in a prepared statement. 

Big fish, big pond

So, what is Signia’s niche and what are its likely competitors?

“Signia will compete with the typical meeting-oriented hotel brands: Marriott, Marriott Marquis, Renaissance, Hyatt, Omni and even Hilton itself,” Jeff Sachs, senior managing director of Strategic Advisory & Asset Management at JLL’s Hotels & Hospitality Group, in Atlanta, told Commercial Property Executive. “Every brand has good, better and best examples of hotels within their brand; Signia is striving to be the ‘best’ in the meetings segment. Rebranding Bonnet Creek, which is attached to a Waldorf Astoria, is a purposeful statement of what they want the brand to be.”

As to how much of a market there is for a hotel with this focus, he said, “Everyone wants high-end meetings, and the market is robust. Group ADRs in the high-end group hotels we asset manage exceed transient ADR in many cases. Add on the F&B spend, and group hotels blow away other segments.”

“Many convention hotels have not kept up with client demands and existing brands are tied up in existing owner agreements,” Sachs added. “Signia allows the new-tech convention hotels to be developed that meet the needs of groups that ‘old-tech’ hotels cannot provide.”

Video courtesy of Hilton