Radisson targets influencers, gamers with new hotel brand

Radisson Hotel Group Americas (RHGA) is inviting travelers to use its newest brand as the backdrop and creative hub for their digital lives. 

The first Radisson Inn & Suites are slated to open in the United States this fall, each with what the company calls a “Creative Content Studio” that will be filled with large monitors and gaming chairs and promises high-speed internet connectivity.

“We are really trying to celebrate modern consumer trends,” says Tom Buoy, acting CEO of RHGA.

“And if you create that environment, you create the opportunity for people to either play games or use that studio as a means to communicate the stories they have made throughout the day with the rest of the world or with their fan base.”

The company says the concept developed out of conversations with hotel owners and developers about the need for it to offer an upper midscale, limited-service brand in metropolitan markets that would be attractive to digitally savvy travelers.

“While the concept was originally driven to meet demand of our franchisees it really is a consumer designed product – to attract that consumer that is lost in the sea of grey with the products that currently exist in the upper mid-market segment,” says Phil Hugh, RHGA chief development officer.

Along with the Creative Content Studio, each hotel will have a “café-inspired lobby” intended to facilitate communal gatherings for work and relaxation. 

Buoy says these design strategies are well-suited to meet the needs of travelers as the world emerges from the pandemic.

“Over the last two years ... people have shunned being in public, shunned being together, which is very much opposed to being human,” he says.

“When you think about being human it’s about celebrating connections, it's about being together, it’s about making new relationships, forging new friendships. When I think about this hotel it creates the environment for doing just do that.”

Buoy predicts that as more people begin to travel, these sorts of settings will become more popular than private rentals.

“People want to get out and they want to be seen. The alternative lodging segment – I’ll say Airbnb, I’ll say Vrbo, I’ll say all of those - people are going to move away from those platforms because it’s hard to be seen in an Airbnb,” he says.

“I want to go back into a hotel and celebrate what it is to be in that environment, to be seen and to see a lot of people. And to have an opportunity to create those connections again.”