Red Lion Sues Hard Rock Hotels for Infringement in Race to Win Over Millennials
Skift Take
There are literally only so many ways you can appeal to Millennials in hotel design, and copycats are inevitable. That's why hospitality really can be a “me too” industry, as hotelier Ian Schrager so often laments.
When it comes to appealing to Millennials — of which there are now 75.4 million in the United States alone — hotel companies are doing all they can to launch wallet-friendly, yet still-stylish accommodations that emphasize such features as co-working spaces, communal stadium seating, artisanal goods, and craft beers.
Often classified as midscale hotels, these brands include the new Tru by Hilton and Marriott’s Moxy, for example. And there are more of these brands in the works: Trump Hotels’ American Idea, for one, and InterContinental Hotels Group’s yet-to-be-named one.
And now, one U.S. hotel company is suing another in an effort to either protect its intellectual property rights or keep the competition at bay, depending on your perspective.
On July 12, Red Lion Hotels Corporation (RLHC) filed a lawsuit against Hard Rock International for “trade dress infringement, injury to business reputation, and unfair competition.”
RLHC alleges that Hard Rock’s newest hotel brand, Reverb, is a carbon copy of its own Hotel RL brand, which it launched in October 2014 and currently has seven properties throughout the United States.
Hard Rock announced its Reverb by Hard Rock brand at the NYU Hospitality Investment Industry Conference in June, and it currently has no properties. Hard Rock trademarked the name in 2015, however.
In court documents, RLHC said that not only does Hard Rock’s Reverb brand go after the same audience (“millennial mindset travelers”) and copy its “Internal industry model” of opening up these hotels in urban markets, but that the “copying” of “
