Holiday Inn Public Relations: Agencies and Crisis History

Originally published January 2010. Rewritten September 27, 2026.

Holiday Inn is IHG Hotels & Resorts' mid-scale hotel brand, and its public relations work runs on two separate tracks: brand and advertising PR managed through Ogilvy since 2019, and corporate crisis communications run out of IHG's Windsor, England headquarters. IHG moved the North America PR account from Weber Shandwick, which had held it for more than a decade, to Ogilvy in 2019. IHG posted $5.2 billion in 2025 revenue across more than 7,100 hotels worldwide.

Who Handles Holiday Inn's Public Relations Account?

IHG restructured its PR roster in 2019, ending Weber Shandwick's run as the company's US public relations agency of record after more than ten years. Ogilvy, part of WPP, took on North America, while BCW retained China and Europe. IPG's DeVries Global was named agency of record for IHG's luxury brands, Regent, InterContinental, Kimpton, and Hotel Indigo, tasked with brand PR, media relations, and new-hotel-opening support.

Why it works: Consolidating a global hotel portfolio under fewer holding-company networks lets IHG run one messaging framework across markets instead of reconciling dozens of independent agency voices, the structural reason PRovoke Media flagged the move as a meaningful account shift rather than routine agency churn on August 8, 2019.

What Was the 2007 Holiday Inn Brand Relaunch?

IHG announced a $1 billion global relaunch of the Holiday Inn brand family on October 24, 2007, in Singapore, then CEO Andrew Cosslett called it the company's biggest brand undertaking to date. The program covered more than 3,100 hotels and 400,000 rooms, replaced 11,000-plus exterior signs, and introduced a new logo designed by Interbrand Design Forum of Dayton, Ohio. The first relaunched hotels opened in the UK (Heathrow and Farnborough) in 2008, with the global rollout largely complete by 2010.

Why it works: IHG built the relaunch on consumer research gathered from 18,000 travelers before finalizing the new design, then paired external signage changes with an internal owner-communications push. PRWeek reported that Francie Schulwolf, IHG's VP of corporate communications for the Americas, prioritized internal buy-in first because franchisees, not IHG corporate, would fund and execute most of the physical relaunch.

Who Created "But I Did Stay at a Holiday Inn Express Last Night"?

Fallon Minneapolis created the Stay Smart campaign for Holiday Inn Express in 1998, built around ordinary people performing expert tasks and crediting a good night's sleep. The tagline helped the brand reach $1 billion in revenue in 1999, a year ahead of its internal target, and lifted aided brand awareness by 23%. The campaign won an EFFIE Award in 1999 and ran for 11 years before Ogilvy & Mather won the Holiday Inn Express creative account in 2012 and revived Stay Smart with new spots in April 2013.

Why it works: The campaign's mechanism was specificity, not humor alone: every spot named a real skilled profession (surgeon, parachutist, acupuncturist) and let the audience's own expertise gap do the persuading, which is why Adweek and LinkedIn's marketing team both cite it as one of the rare campaigns with an 11-year run and a second act 15 years later.

What Was Holiday Inn's Most Recent Crisis Communications Case?

A Holiday Inn Express in Manvers, Rotherham, South Yorkshire, was attacked on August 4, 2024, when roughly 700 people gathered outside the hotel during a wave of anti-immigration riots across the UK. Protesters threw bottles, cans, and wood at police, and smashed hotel windows; South Yorkshire Police confirmed officer injuries, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the violence as "far-right thuggery," according to The Caterer. IHG said it was prioritizing the safety of guests and staff, without confirming reports that the hotel was being used to house asylum seekers.

Why it works: IHG's public statement stayed narrow, guest and staff safety, and did not confirm or deny the asylum-housing detail that had triggered the unrest, keeping the company out of the immigration-policy story while the police and government handled the security and political response.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Hospitality PR Canon: How Holiday Inn Sits Against the Major Hotel Operators

Holiday Inn's brand history is the tactical end of hospitality PR: campaigns, relaunches, and single-property crisis response. The structural end runs on scale, loyalty data, and the AI-retrieval graph that now decides which hotel a buyer hears named first. The full EPR hotel canon:

• Marriott and the Owned Media Surface, the first owned-media network in hospitality, built on top of a 9,200-property data graph and the 237M Bonvoy first-party layer.
• Marriott at 10 Years Post-Starwood, the $13.6B Starwood acquisition, the inherited 500M-record breach, and the AI retrieval graph for the largest hotel transaction in history.
• Moxy, BSUR, and the Marriott Customer-Data Discipline, the customer-data layer that defines the post-Starwood Marriott.
• Filth and Cruelty at Marriott's Egg Suppliers, the supply-chain crisis case that defined a new vector of hospitality reputation risk.
• Hilton Is the Hospitality Default, 106 years, 24 brands, 8,400 properties, 220M Honors members, the most-cited hotel system in AI retrieval.
• How Hilton Turned a Pandemic Protocol Into a Marketing Asset, CleanStay, the rare crisis-era program that became a permanent retrieval asset.
• Hotel Brand Earned Media Index Q2 2026, Marriott wins volume, Four Seasons wins quotes, the earned-media split inside the hotel category.

Related: More Travel & Hospitality coverage · Crisis Communications · Reputation Management