Hilton named world's most valuable hotel brand

Hilton Worldwide's flagship brand is valued at $7.8bn by brand valuation and strategy consultancy Brand Finance, while five of its other brands - Hampton Inn, DoubleTree, Embassy Suites, Homewood Suites and Waldorf Astoria - all figure in the top 50. In total, Hilton Worldwide's brand portfolio is valued at $13.3bn.

Despite its plans to create the world's largest hotel company with its acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International's flagship brand, Marriott, is valued at over $2bn less than Hilton, at $5.3bn and although eight of its brands make the list, their overall value is more than $1bn lower - at $12bn. 

However its takeover of Starwood, due to complete by the middle of this year​, would elevate Marriott International to the top of the list of hotel brand owners. Starwood's six brands on the list have a combined value of $6.7bn. 

UK-based company InterContinental Hotel Group's also had a strong presence on the list with Holiday Inn taking fifth place (value $2.9bn), Crowne Plaza at 18 ($817m) and InterContinental at 32 ($440m). 

Whitbread's budget hotel brand Premier Inn was also included in the top 50, listed as number 14 and with a value of $1bn. 

To compile the list Brand Finance used a 'royalty relief' approach which involved estimating the likely future sales attributable to a brand and calculating a royalty rate that would be charged for use of the brand. The approach included calculating a hotel brand's strength on a scale of 0 to 100 based on attributes such as emotional connection, financial performance and sustainability before factoring in a number of other areas such as historic revenues and forecasts. 

The top 10 hotel brands by value:​

1. Hilton ($7.8bn)
2. Marriott ($5.3bn)
3. Hyatt ($3.4bn)
4. Sheraton ($3.4bn)
5. Holiday Inn ($2.9bn)
6. Courtyard ($2.8bn)
7. Hampton Inn ($2.5bn)
8. Mercure ($1.8bn)
9. Ramada ($1.7bn)
10. Shangri La ($1.7bn)