Grand City Hotels continue to push Wyndham

Berlin. Wyndham and Grand City celebrated their future collaboration in the hotel of all places that was recently taken by Grand City from IHG, their franchise partner: the Wyndham Grand Berlin, originally planned as Crowne Plaza. With this, the two partners underline their goal of jointly establishing one of Wyndham's "Grand" flagships in each of the five largest German cities.

Berlin/Parsippany. The deal with Wyndham was obviously brought about with some haste - that Grand City Hotels would in one fell swoop terminate 14 contracts with three franchise partners in Germany came as quite a surprise though. There was confusion at Accor, InterContinental Hotels Group and Best Western last weekend as nobody behind the scenes could discern a sensible strategy. Then, news of the Wyndham deal trickled through. And the listed US chain, the world's largest franchisor, was forced to go public with the deal on Wednesday: As of March 1, 2013, thirty-three and from 2014 a further ten hotels will be rebranded. Overnight then, Wyndham has established a huge foothold in the much-praised German hotel landscape.