This Is the World’s Least Successful Hotel Chain

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 4, 2:00PM EDT

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This Is the World’s Least Successful Hotel Chain — © Fairmont Hotel Vancouver (CC BY 2.0) by Karen Neoh

Domestic travel was crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic. For a time, traffic for airlines, hotels, and cruises nearly disappeared. Some companies needed government assistance to stay afloat. International travel was hurt even more than domestic, as countries blocked visitors from outside their borders. Most restrictions, both international and domestic, have now been lifted. However, as the virus continues to spread, the industry will never be the same again.

As people do start to travel, another industry has recovered. A number of media and travel booking services rate hotels, airlines, and hotels. Some of these ratings are based on customer reviews. Others are the opinion of travel experts. Presumably, these ratings and reviews matter in terms of how people travel and where they stay. (If you’re planning holiday travel, here’s how expensive hotels are at 29 popular Memorial Day destinations.)

The small-business travel website Bounce recently rated major hotel chains by several measures – including Most and Least Successful. And according to their rating, the least successful hotel chain in the world is Park Plaza Hotels, owned by the Radisson Hotel Group – one of the world’s largest hotel umbrella companies, controlling about 1,400 hotels worldwide. (If more intimate lodging is your preference, here’s a look at the best bed and breakfast in every state.)

The site’s Hotel Chain Index considered hotel review scores, number of Google searches, number of countries where a chain was located, number of available hotel locations, number of five-star properties, and annual revenue of the parent company. Information to support these metrics was pulled from BestCompany, Facebook, Trustpilot, Google Keyword Planner, Wikipedia, ZoomInfo, DNB and Five Star Alliance.

These are the world’s least successful hotel chains

Though Park Plaza is an upscale chain, it ended up on the bottom of the ranking because it has only 35 hotels in seven countries, so figures in fewer Google searches than any other chain and has more limited availability than most of the other chains reviewed.

The second least-successful chain, budget-priced Econo Lodge (owned by Choice Hotels), was among the most popular chains in terms of Google searches, but had an average user score of only 2.3/5 and modest revenues. The third least successful chain, Raffles Hotels (owned by the French multinational Accor S.A.), is a luxury operation with 11 five-star properties, but it has only 21 locations in 15 countries, and its limited availability renders it less successful than most.

Days Inn (CC BY 2.0) by Mike Mozart

10. Days Inn
> Rating: 4.92/10
> Countries: 21
> Locations: 1,551

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9. Wyndham Hotels
> Rating: 4.58/10
> Countries: 33
> Locations: 156

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Fairmont Hotel Vancouver (CC BY 2.0) by Karen Neoh

8. Fairmont Hotels
> Rating: 4.58/10
> Countries: 31
> Locations: 82

7. La Quinta
> Rating: 4.17/10
> Countries: 10
> Locations: 928

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6. Embassy Suites
> Rating: 4.08/10
> Countries: 4
> Locations: 266

5. Ramada
> Rating: 3.67/10
> Countries: 75
> Locations: 919

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4. Hampton by Hilton
> Rating: 3.67/10
> Countries: 36
> Locations: 2,833

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Raffles Hotel (CC BY 2.0) by Francisco Anzola

3. Raffles Hotels
> Rating: 3.25/10
> Countries: 15
> Locations: 21

Lauderdale-Econolodge (CC BY-SA 3.0) by Kolossos

2. Econo Lodge
> Rating: 2.17/10
> Countries: 2
> Locations: 779

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1. Park Plaza Hotels
> Rating: 2/10
> Countries: 7
> Locations: 35

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.