Best Western ha ido reduciendo su presencia. La solución de BWH Hotels pasa por orientarse hacia el segmento de lujo y expandirse al extranjero.

Key Points

• BWH Hotels is pivoting upmarket—reviving WorldHotels, launching a WorldHotels 'hard brand,' and growing lifestyle/outdoor brands (Aiden, Backdrop)—to lift margins and make its soon-to-be-unified loyalty program more aspirational, targeting 5,000 hotels globally by 2030.
• The group's nonprofit cooperative model is its key sales pitch to developers: all-in fees near 8% of revenue versus 12–13% at Marriott, Hilton, and IHG, plus shorter contracts—but it also blocks access to equity capital, a constraint members voted to keep in 2019.
• Despite added hotels, BWH's room count has fallen ~9.7% since 2019 and the Best Western family lost 107 U.S. hotels in three years to attrition and brand defections; Cuculic is betting on first-generation owners in markets like India to fuel a turnaround.

Summary

BWH Hotels, parent of Best Western, has seen its room count shrink nearly every year since 2019 (down 9.7% to 333,457 rooms) while larger rivals grew, but CEO Larry Cuculic insists growth is now underway, pointing to 200+ hotels added last year, a ~300-property pipeline, and a target of 5,000 hotels worldwide by 2030. The strategy centers on moving upmarket—reviving the WorldHotels collection acquired in 2019, launching a WorldHotels "hard brand," and expanding lifestyle and outdoor concepts like Aiden and Backdrop—to boost margins and make its loyalty program more aspirational. BWH is also merging Best Western Rewards and WorldHotels Rewards into a single, newly named loyalty program to debut in October. Cuculic firmly denied rumors the company is sidelining the Best Western name, calling it foundational, while leaning on the group's nonprofit cooperative structure as a competitive edge: all-in fees of roughly 8% of revenue versus 12–13% at Marriott, Hilton, and IHG, plus shorter contracts—though that same structure locks BWH out of equity markets and limits growth capital.