Europe’s independent hotels turn to global chains to attract wealthy visitors
Family-run businesses are signing up with brands to tap into lucrative business travel market in sign of continent’s growing ‘chainification’
Leading chains are taking a growing share of Europe’s hospitality market, as the continent’s independent and family-run hotels increasingly sign up with global brands to access business travellers and the boom in big-spending US visitors.
More than 41 per cent of the 6.5mn hotel rooms in Europe were part of a chain brand as of August, up from 36 per cent in 2020, according to industry data provider CoStar. The continent’s “chainification” still lags the Americas and Asia-Pacific regions, where about two-thirds of hotel rooms are branded.
Major hotel companies such as Marriott and Hilton do not typically own most of the properties that operate under their brands. Instead, they partner with investors, developers and operators who run hotels under their names and gain access to the chains’ loyalty schemes and booking platforms.
Recruiting existing hotels to their networks offers a relatively speedy and inexpensive way to expand without having to develop new properties.
Hoteliers in Europe, where many have long operated without a brand, are increasingly open to partnerships that can provide access to new technology and distribution capabilities that would be expensive to develop independently.
Elie Maalouf, chief executive of InterContinental Hotels Group, said his company had in recent years struck deals for new openings and conversions in the Italian cities of Rome, Florence and Milan.
“These are great destinations where I’d say five years ago, the conversations wouldn’t have been the same,” said Maalouf, whose company owns the Holiday Inn, Kimpton and Six Senses brands. “But today you have a lot of local players reaching out.”
Chain brands can help European hotels take advantage of the surge in US travellers, who are more likely than Europeans to be members of hotel loyalty programmes.
US citizens made 23.3mn trips to Europe in 2025, up more than 1mn from 12 months earlier, according to the US National Travel and Tourism Office. Tourism Economics, a research group, predicts that figure will rise a further 5 per cent this year.
Becoming a franchise partner for Hilton’s Tapestry Collection of hotels had allowed the Chania Flair Boutique Hotel in Crete to access a wider and more “international” customer base, said Labros Tsiledakis, chief development officer at Hotelleading, its operator.
Name recognition also aided recruitment, with more than 1,000 people having applied for jobs at another Hilton-branded hotel opening next year, he added.
The eagerness of European hoteliers to lure high-spending Americans has come even as some locals, particularly in Spain, have become antagonised by what they see as overtourism in the Mediterranean.
Big brands also provide a better way to tap into the lucrative business travel market, where guests are more likely to seek out familiar names.
“Those are your best customers,” said Richard Clarke, a managing director at research firm Bernstein who covers the leisure sector. “They’ll come back again and again and they’re more likely to eat in your restaurant and buy things from your minibar.”
The major chains have sought to entice independent hoteliers to sign up to their networks by introducing “soft brands” with less stringent requirements for room size and amenities.
Hilton’s Outset Collection, launched a year ago, and InterContinental’s Noted Collection allowed independent hotels to “plug their beds into the brand’s distribution” without undergoing expensive development work, said Matthew Pohlman, chair of hospitality and leisure at law firm Goodwin.
Simon Vincent, president for Emea at Hilton, said European hoteliers were particularly attracted to light-touch brands because it allowed them to retain their property’s heritage while also accessing “technology and distribution capabilities which would be costly and difficult to develop independently”.
Still, some fear the ascent of major brands could damage the local character and heritage that many travellers value in Europe.
Markus Gratzer, secretary-general of the Austrian Hotelier Association, agreedthat independent operators were “under pressure” but insisted they were “not disappearing” from the market.
He saw reasons to believe that Europe’s chainification may stall, as AI-powered search enabled the best independents to access customers without the help of chain brands or via sites such as Booking.com that charged hefty commissions.
“Search engines in the past haven’t rewarded good-quality hotels,” said Clarke. “There is some hope that AI will enable the best hotels to get in front of guests without going branded.”