REGAL Hotel Group will complete the first phase of a major rebranding programme under the Corus name at the end of this month.
Corus signage is being erected at 17 hotels, including Etrop Grange in Manchester and Westmead in Birmingham.
The three-star UK chain had planned to have 25 hotels completed by March 1 but work has taken longer than expected.
A total of 30 hotels will have the Corus branding by the end of the year and the rest of the 115-strong group is scheduled to be rebranded within three years.
Marketing director Sue Whitehead said the rebranding is being accompanied by a mailing campaign to agents and a series of familiarisation trips.
“We are sending out invitations to agents to visit clusters of hotels on organised, accompanied visits and we are also offering agents the chance to see our properties in their own time for ú20 per room on a bed and continental breakfast basis,” she said. “We launched this offer last summer and we sold 1,000 room nights by the end of the year. It will run until the end of the year and then it will be reviewed.”
Whitehead said the Corus brand, which was launched at the World Travel Market last November, had been well received by the trade and customers.
“We took a fresh approach because we needed to do something different. We didn’t want to use the dark blue look that a lot of the four-star chains have,” she said.
The rebranding includes the County Hotels that Regal purchased in partnership with Intermediate Capital Group earlier this year, although two of the 25 properties were sold last week.