BWH Hotels looks east for expansion

LONDON – BWH Hotels has ambitions to add 850 hotels – 20% of its current 4,300 total – over the next five years and hopes to double the number of properties in its upmarket WorldHotels brand to 300 by adding around 30 properties a year for the next five years, leadership stated last week at its 2025 WorldHotels Annual Conference in London.

The growth, said Ron Pohl, president of International Operations for BWH Hotels and president of WorldHotels, “is not in North America and it’s unlikely that much of it will be in Europe. It’s going to be the Middle East, it’s going to be Africa, it’s going to be India, it’s going to be Vietnam, potentially Brazil.”

Pohl said that pricing is giving his company an important advantage. “Competing hotel brands’ fees are four to five times ours,” he said. “Our fees are 3% or 4% of 5% a year versus 15%.”

More broadly, BWH Hotels’ annual revenues currently sits at US$8.5 billion annually. It has properties in 100 countries, with roughly half of the company’s hotels – 2,300 – in North America. According to Pohl: “If we are going to be successful, we are not going to do that by being just in North America.”

Ron Pohl

“It’s in these new markets that we will see most of our growth,” he said. The company has 30 hotels in India at present and can double that number, he said, “fairly easily because of the market and the demand.” In China, Pohl said, “We have 15 hotels there now, we should have 100.”

Pohl acknowledged during an interview with Hotel Investment Today that the attraction of markets outside North American and Europe boils down to a couple of familiar factors. First, there are many more gaps in the geographical locations of coverage and second there are emerging domestic middle classes prepared to spend disposable income on hospitality.

“I have been with BWH Hotels for 18 years now and we were always North America-centric until four years ago,” Pohl said. “Now, we are a global company, we are focused on all regions of the world and North America is only one part of that.”

Providing context for BWH Hotels’ global growth ambitions, overall market wide data published separately by Hotstats, the statistics and analysis firm, indicate that total RevPAR in North America grew 2.9% in the calendar year to November 2024 compared with 8.2% in the Middle East. Hotstats, which draws data from 12,500 hotels, 790 data providers, and 160 countries, said Europe grew at 4.6% and the Asia Pacific region by 2.2%.

The strategic shift away from North America has seen the company adopt a single global business planning policy where before there was one for North America and one for the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, the combination with WorldHotels, completed in 2019, was made in part to counter Best Western’s reputation as a midscale operator. It now has brands and expertise across the whole range of categories. Pohl predicted that 2025 would be a “very strong” year in the luxury segment.

As well as the luxury-end WorldHotels, the company has 270 hotels under the midscale and upper midscale BW Collections umbrella. It has 3,100 midscale properties flagged Best Western Hotels and Resorts, and 430 properties in the SureStay economy brand.

Among the WorldHotels being added to the portfolio and mentioned at the London conference are the Grand Jiaxing, Hunan, in Changsha, China; The Pearl of Africa in Kampala, Uganda; and a new hotel project in the southeast European country of Georgia currently undergoing construction. The Kobuleti site, on the Black Sea, is due to open in in 2028. The project will have 1,100 keys.

It doesn’t matter how we are structured. Our contracts are similar to others except with lower fees. So what if we are an association? That just says we spend our resources on our members’ businesses rather than giving money to shareholders.

Ron Pohl

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Among other recent additions to the WorldHotels portfolio are the City Hotel Gouda in the Netherlands; Elm Hurst Inn & Spa, in Ontario, Canada; and the Saga Hotel Oslo, in Norway.

Changes coming

As part of the push for growth, BWH Hotels is investing $100 million in technology infrastructure. Among the goals of the investment is to knit booking systems together in ways that simplify the online booking. “We need to think differently about the subject and ask how we can meet the hyper-personal expectations of customers,” Pohl said.

The group is also going to combine its loyalty and rewards programs – which have 62 million subscribers at present – under a single new scheme due to be unveiled in the next 12 months.

Sustainability is part of the expansion strategy. All BWH Hotels have a mandatory obligation to hold accreditation with the Global Sustainability Tourism Council by the end of 2026. He also suggested that increases in the costs of utilities such as energy mean that payback times on capital investment designed to meet sustainability goals have reduced.

Unique structure works

Pohl conceded that the BWH Hotels structure – it is owned by network of independent hotels it serves – can make it difficult to compete in larger deals where focus lies in financial architecture and real estate investment returns.

He said that BWH Hotels’ membership model also makes some financiers and investment professionals uncomfortable. But in the context of negotiations involving other suppliers of hospitality services he said he tells partners: “It doesn’t matter how we are structured. Our contracts are similar to others except with lower fees. So what if we are an association? That just says we spend our resources on our members’ businesses rather than giving money to shareholders.”

Pohl joined the company in 2007. He oversees the global operations team and works closely with BWH Hotels' international partners. He also has overall responsibility for sustainability issues.

During his tenure, Pohl has helped reposition Best Western’s leading brands, launched new brands including Executive Residency by Best Western, and introduced the company’s newest franchise model, SureStay Hotels.

Pohl is responsible for growing the WorldHotels brand while providing revenue-enhancing support to its hoteliers. At present, 65% of the group’s hotel guests are travelling for leisure and 35% for business. Pohl said the company is likely to continue to be one with leisure bookings as the main stay.