IHG Rewards Club becomes IHG Rewards in rebranding

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• Colin MacKinnon says:

  5 Feb5 February 03:19

  Are there sufficient hotel rooms in Gib for all these flights?

  Last time I was there the offerings were pretty poor – other than The Rock Hotel.

  • Anna says:

    5 Feb5 February 04:59

    People also use it as an entry point to southern Spain – it can be cheaper to fly there than to Malaga at peak times. I think Gib is set to join Schengen so that’s possibly what the airlines are basing their decisions on. Monarch used to fly there from MAN until its demise.

    • ChrisW says:

      5 Feb5 February 10:51

      Bit of a faff isn’t it? Malaga airport is one of the largest airports in Spain – surely starting your journey from a slightly different UK airport would be better if you’re price sensitive?

      • kitten says:

        6 Feb6 February 04:08

        I’ll always remember a group of us stranded overnight airside in Malaga airport after staff checked in about 180 of us at nearly midnight for an Easyjet flight then all staff just went home and left us. No announcements, no updated info on screens still showing our flight to leave at 00.30

        At 3am with babies crying and stuck there with no way out, no staff and no news we broke into the gate agent’s desk computer and found our flight was not coming in till 05.30.

        So we announced it to everyone. The gate agent complained when she arrived in the morning – we’d decided not to log out again in case there were any more updates and she found it logged in. We told her exactly what we thought of the staff abandoning us in the airport overnight with babies etc. when they’d known perfectly well our incoming flight had not even taken off by midnight and they’d lied to several of us about it being on time. Haven’t visited Malaga since.

  • John says:

    5 Feb5 February 06:25

    There’s a holiday inn express, new modern style not like the old dinky UK motorway junction ones.

    Most people used to stay in Spain even if they were visiting Gibraltar as it’s half the price. Especially when the border goes it will be even easier

    • Colin MacKinnon says:

      5 Feb5 February 08:15

      Ah, my first visits were when you had to go via Tangier to get to Spain!

    • Wally1976 says:

      5 Feb5 February 13:52

      We were meant to be staying there in 9 days time 🙁

  • Mikeact says:

    5 Feb5 February 07:42

    Jeez….sounds like SOU getting desperate.

    • chabuddy geezy says:

      5 Feb5 February 08:39

      The Sunborn Yacht hotel is quite nice. If you get the right side you have a view of the marina and the runway.

• Baji Nahid says:

  5 Feb5 February 04:11

  As a “younger demographic” consumer, the IHG new logo just looks ugly. How come they wanted to change?, I would be interested to know if they ran this through with customers about it. The orange makes it stand out and it doesn’t make really make a difference whether or not the word ‘club’ is dropped.

  • Crafty says:

    5 Feb5 February 07:09

    Of course they did, they’re an enormous global business.

• Michael says:

  5 Feb5 February 04:48

  I like the rebrand. Smart. Professional. Elegant.
  Shame IHG’s customer service doesn’t live up to this, it’s still appalling – honestly if they tried to make it worse I’m not sure they could.

  • Tony says:

    5 Feb5 February 05:04

    Agreed, always felt IHG’s old orangy logo a bit cheap.

  • Baji Nahid says:

    5 Feb5 February 05:24

    Second the customer service thing, they really should’ve invested more in their IT than their branding at the minute to be fair.

  • Andrew says:

    5 Feb5 February 07:14

    Much smarter new logo – the burnt orange colour and the typeface looks like a supermarket logo. Many companies are adopting a more “heritage” logo, often adding an EST. date underneath – it helps signify stability and experience to the consumer and reaffirm trust in the brand.

    • Rhys says:

      5 Feb5 February 08:34

      Which is exactly what Sheraton is doing

      • Rob says:

        5 Feb5 February 09:04

        What is odd about IHG, however, is that it is not a very internet-friendly font. It is too thin and unnecessarily curvy. It won’t look too great when used in a very small font or low resolution screen.

    • Rob says:

      5 Feb5 February 09:10

      I will get our designers onto adding an ‘Est:’ right away 🙂

      We dropped all the ‘social proof’ stuff when we rolled out the new design. We always felt, with the old-style layout, we needed to tell you that we’d got 15,000 people on our email list, had won this or that award and had 1.5 million page views per month. We play that down now, because the site feels like it has all those characteristics anyway and they don’t need ramming home.

  • Rob says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:13

    Having had a points discrepancy email outstanding for a month with no reply, I emailed the Ambassador desk this week and had a reply within an hour with everything fixed (in fact, over fixed!). Odd.

• John says:

  5 Feb5 February 06:27

  I think the old logo suits the lower end IHG properties better. The new one is corporate bland.

• mark2 says:

  5 Feb5 February 06:32

  Well I really like the new logo having used a similar typeface myself in the past.
  But, I shall be 74 in a few weeks.

• EwanG says:

  5 Feb5 February 06:43

  Re Accor offer expiry. The emails I received included the line “we’re adding 10% more value to our ALL Gift Cards until 15th February.” Cards have a 12 month expiry from issue and multiple cards can be purchased.

  • Rob says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:11

    Thanks

• tony says:

  5 Feb5 February 06:52

  Eastern certainly used to be a great airline and I see this marks their return to BHX so presumably the flight will be SOU-GIB-BHX-GIB-SOU.

  Fond memories of the BHX-NCL flight. Being given a full size bottle of champagne getting off the flight the day before my wedding, a few years later it being just me, the missus and our baby on the same leg then (shortly before they pulled the flight), me having the entire plane to myself. Sadly by then they had stopped serving champagne….

  • lumma says:

    5 Feb5 February 08:36

    What if you want a return to Birmingham?

    • lumma says:

      5 Feb5 February 08:37

      Actually ignore that. I read it wrong

• Crafty says:

  5 Feb5 February 07:09

  I don’t think the new IHG logo looks “younger” at all. I think it looks more luxurious and aspirational, which combined with losing “club”, will probably appeal less to a mass-market youth audience, and more to the quality-seeking, less price sensitive crowd of all ages.

  In other words, more Intercontinental, less Holiday Inn.

  But then what do I know.

  • Andrew says:

    5 Feb5 February 07:16

    You’re spot on (and I do know, professionally).

    • Jk says:

      5 Feb5 February 09:12

      +1 agree

    • Super Secret Stuff says:

      5 Feb5 February 16:26

      I agree, it’s changed from mass market to more aspirational.

      I’d be interested to see of the offers disappear too, that’ll be a real deal breaker

      • Chrisasaurus says:

        5 Feb5 February 23:15

        I’d think the hotels want to move upscale first before they start rearrange the deckchairs!

  • Brighton Belle says:

    5 Feb5 February 08:01

    The Holiday Inn brand always strikes me as a dated “Happy Days” US transcontinental sort of thing which really doesn’t match the urban European landscape. But I do aspire to be a young on trend Instagram sort of traveller providing I don’t need to show my bus pass.

    • Super Secret Stuff says:

      5 Feb5 February 16:25

      The new HIs are pretty good. The HIXs are OK considering there cheap, mostly on par with Premier Inn but include free breakfast

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