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:
- Hilton ($7.8bn)
- Marriott ($5.3bn)
- Hyatt ($3.4bn)
- Sheraton ($3.4bn)
- Holiday Inn ($2.9bn)
- Courtyard ($2.8bn)
- Hampton Inn ($2.5bn)
- Mercure ($1.8bn)
- Ramada ($1.7bn)
- Shangri La ($1.7bn)