REGAL Hotel Group has ended its franchise agreement with Carlson Hospitality Worldwide to bring Carlson’s Country Inns and Suites brand to the UK.
The franchise deal was signed in 1996 and was supposed to have lasted 20 years. But Regal has now decided to focus solely on its Corus brand which it rolled out in March this year.
Under the agreement with Carlson, Regal was to have had a minimum of seven hotels under the brand by 2000 and, at the time of the deal, said it actually planned to have created around 20 Country Inns and Suites in the UK.
But the hotel group recently held a strategy review and made the decision that more commitment to the Corus brand was needed.
The company only ever opened one Country Inns and Suites branded hotel, the former Regal Hotel in Swindon.
It was originally called The Country Inn but is now being renamed to The Madison Inn, and is also being rebranding under the Corus name.
Since Regal’s agreement with Carlson, some 270 hotel sites were appraised and feasibility studies were also carried out on many of them.
Fifteen sites were then shortlisted to become a venue for a Country Inns and Suites branded property.
A spokeswoman for Regal said: “After our strategy review it was decided that this was diverting attention from getting the two brands going at once.”
Regal, which operates a total of 91 properties in Britain, now has 20 Corus branded hotels and plans to have 10 more by next year.