BWH Hotels, which since 2023 has been the parent company to brands including Best Western, SureStay and Aidan, has rebranded under the WorldHotels name, a move company President & CEO Larry Cuculic called an “enterprise transformation” that will bring together its 4,000 hotels across 18 brands and include a new loyalty program, new website, new app and enhanced digital capability across all properties.
BWH acquired WorldHotels in 2019, a brand that sits within its Aspirational category, encompassing WorldHotels Luxury, WorldHotels Elite, WorldHotels Crafted and WorldHotels Distinctive. At around 250 hotels globally, WorldHotels is a smaller portion of the overall portfolio.
The pivot to WorldHotels as its global master brand is the culmination for a company that 16 years ago was one singular brand. In 2010, it transitioned to a three-tiered system introducing Best Western Plus and Best Western Premier alongside the classic Best Western brand in North America. It’s added multiple brands since and has now grown to a global scale of 18 brands across 100 different countries and within multiple segments up and down the chain scale. “If a traveler just thinks about Best Western, we’re not allowing them to appreciate everything we have to offer,” Cuculic said. “We have to change that mindset.”
The Best Western name has strong brand resonance with the consumer in North America, but, as Cuculic pointed out, fewer understand the breadth of its global portfolio. “We’ve done the research. We’ve looked at the data. We’ve consulted experts. And the conclusion is that WorldHotels gives us a simple way to tell this story and makes the full portfolio easier for travelers to discover and understand,” he said.
At first blush, choosing WorldHotels as the global master brand could be construed as marginalizing since WorldHotels is a luxury name and luxury brand. The choice, however, was much more simple and logical, Cuculic said. “It is a name that says we have hotels all over the world.”
There is precedence of lodging companies using an upscale or luxury brand as its master brand, even if that brand constitutes a smaller portion of its overall properties. Consider InterContinental Hotels Group, or IHG, whose Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express brands overshadow InterContinental in global property count.
The announcement includes the joining of Best Western Rewards and WorldHotels Rewards into one singular loyalty program called WorldHotels Rewards, which will launch in January 2027. The fundamentals of the program will not change, Cuculic promised. “Our points never expire,” he said.
The name change coincides with a digital transformation inclusive of a brand new website that is intended to focus on how guests like to shop—efficiently and quickly. “It’s not just about a new website: It’s about how people search, what the content looks like and how we are going to have that content rich with regard to AI searching.”
The name-change decision was not made unilaterally, Cuculic said. Unlike a pure franchisor, BWH Hotels, now WorldHotels, is a member organization with voting rights accorded to each of its members. As Cuculic described it, there was a “tremendous” amount of collaboration with members and a recognized need for change to have the portfolio fully recognized. “There was unified support,” he said.
The name change did not require full membership vote. The board of directors, elected by members, made the final decision. “I can tell you this: Not a single member came to me and said, ‘Don’t you dare change how we’re doing business.’ Everyone recognizes that we have changed as a company and that we need to unleash our potential,” Cuculic said.
The name change coincides with a new logo, as explained by SVP and CMO Joelle Park. “It’s a window symbol because when you stay with us, you see the world differently.”
