Dear hotel chains,
While I completely understand your right to brand your hotels – after all, your guests will often choose to stay with you because they know what the brand name usually offers – you are starting to take the piss.
Let me explain something about names. My name is David Whitley. It is not David Whitley (an Eric Whitley child). Neither is it The Travel Journalist David Whitley, a human being by Eric Whitley Fathering Services Networking Services Ltd (TM).
You see, there is a difference between a name and a sentence. If your name is a sentence in itself, it is too long. And, hotel chains, I’m the one that gets to decide on sub-clauses in sentences – not you.
So if you think I’m ever going to refer to you as the Ritz-Carlton Chicago (A Four Seasons Hotel) or the Hawksbill by Rex Resorts, Antigua, then think again. You can be the Chicago Ritz Carlton, the Chicago Four Seasons, the Antigua Hawksbill or the Antigua Rex but if you insist on branding everything then just pick one name and stick to it. Having two is greedy, long-winded and – 90% of the time – grammatically dubious.
The same goes for you, Marriott Boca Raton Towneplace Suites and Hilton Seychelles Northolme Resort and Spa. And all of your pompous, word count-devouring chums. You’re either the Marriott Boca Raton or the Boca Raton Towneplace Suites; the Hilton Seychelles or the Northolme Seychelles. Decide which brand is strongest, and bloody well keep it to one.
If this trend for turning hotel names into corporate identity statements continues, then who knows where we’ll end up? Why be a sentence, when you can be a whole paragraph? Heck, why not insist that every website using your name plays a little corporate jingle as soon as the page loads, like Intel?
Your sincerely,
David Whitley – not Travel Writer and Blogger Mr David Keir Whitley Esquire of Sheffield, England, by Eric and Rosie Whitley (a UK national) *ding ding ding ding ding*.
They are ALL American chains aren’t they? It’s the same with Disneyland too – in theory you have to include all sorts of stupid symbols and write things in capitals when refering to them. Load of cobblers if you ask me.
“They are ALL American chains aren’t they?” – On the evidence of this place round the corner from me, nope:
http://is.gd/9FwPU
I draw your attention to Nos 4, 5 & 6 in my list of the seven daftest names in travel
The worse thing is how bland these corporate names are – I always have to think twice to remember which is the Sofitel and Novotel here in Melbourne, and I walk past them all the time! If a hotel has a historic name, they should stick to that and just place their corporate logo below the name on visual media like the Web.