Louvre Hotels Group brands are known to generations of UK travellers through France. My first visit to a Campanile in the 1980’s amused me. I watched travel-experienced Brits taking their own pillows to their rooms to use instead of the traditional French bolster. Thirty years on and the Louvre Hotels Group has undergone major change.
In 2005 Barry Sternlicht, the brain behind the revamp of Starwood and the introduction of the ‘W’ bought Louvre Hotels through his Starwood Capital investment arm and set about modernising and growing the Group. Sternlicht has enlarged Louvre Hotels acquiring Golden Tulip hotels as well as a number of luxury five star hotels, making Louvre Hotels Group the tenth largest hotel group globally with 1,000 hotels in 40 countries.
Kyriad is the two/three star brand within the group. Established in 2000 there are now 220 hotels with 12,700+ rooms in the brand and as with Campanile they have been redefined and over 30% have now been brought up to the new standard. (A similar process is analysed in the Review of the Campanile Northampton as that brand too is redefined and modernised) The outline of group brands is in the DesignClub Download area .
Kyriad claims to be a guarantee of quality. In the past many British tourists would avoided an hotel at this level in France as they have been very poor. Kyriad challenges this perception, intending the brand to stand for quality with the “charm of variety” (as Camille Sassi, the brand manager describes it). Certainly, the quality achieved in approximately the 14 square metre rooms of the Kyriad Epinal I stayed in indicates that this challenge is being met.
