The Story

IHG, a publicly traded global hotel chain, acquired Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, privately held and US-based. The goal: expand the IHG boutique hotel offering by growing the Kimpton footprint. While preserving the Kimpton brand and strategic expertise, IHG also needed to integrate systems, teams, and processes in order to scale. From a commercial standpoint, this included loyalty, digital, sales, analytics, customer support, and the entire integrated campaign approach. One of the most challenging aspects to the integration was the requirement that four major commercial technology platforms had to cut-over on the same day.

Strategies and Tactics

Clear project plans were critical to ensure integration success, but also to ensure as little disruption to the Kimpton team and their day job. In addition to concerns for marketing operation disruption, the brand integration campaign and launch plan had to align with the tech road map for both B2B and B2C. Coordinating logistics across the organization was a massive undertaking, but maintaining employee satisfaction and keeping folks motivated through the transformation was deemed equally important to success.

The Result

The system cut-over was complete in one day. The Kimpton brand was now set-up to scale, and it continues to expand it’s footprint overseas. And the cherry on top - the year after the integration was complete Kimpton earned #6 on Fortune’s Best Places to Work List.