About Best Western

Best Western International, Inc. owns the Best Western Hotels & Resorts brand, which it licenses to over 4,700 hotels worldwide. The franchise, with its corporate headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, includes more than 2,000 hotels in North America.[4] The brand was founded by M.K. Guertin in 1946. As of May 2019, David Kong is the president and CEO of Best Western and Dorothy Dowling is the chief marketing officer. In 1964, Canadian hotel owners joined the system. Best Western then expanded to Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand in 1976. In 2002, Best Western International launched Best Western Premier in Europe and Asia. (The other hotels in the chain were known as Best Western.) In 2011, the chain's branding system-wide changed to a three-tiered system: Best Western Plus, and Best Western Premier.

Best Western began in the years following World War II. At the time, most hotels were either large urban properties or smaller family-owned roadside hotels. In California, a network of independent hotel operators began making referrals of each other to travelers. This "referral system" consisted of phone calls between one desk operator and another. This small and informal network eventually grew into the modern Best Western hotel brand founded by M.K. Guertin in 1946.

Best Western Plus in Hong Kong

The name "Best Western" originated from the fact that most of the chain's original operators were west of the Mississippi River in the United States. By 1962, Best Western had the only hospitality reservations service covering the entire United States, and in 1963, was the largest motel brand in the industry with 699 member properties and 35,201 rooms. From 1946 to 1964, Best Western had a marketing partnership with Quality Courts, the forerunner of the chain known today as Quality Inns, whose properties were located mostly east of the Mississippi River, and thus not in direct competition with Best Western. This partnership made sense geographically, but was not successful in the long run, and was eventually abandoned. In 1964, Best Western launched an expansion effort of its own operations east of the Mississippi under the name "Best Eastern" for those properties with the same typeset and Gold Crown logo as "Best Western." By 1967, the "Best Eastern" name was dropped and all motels from coast-to-coast got the "Best Western" name and Gold Crown, a move that would further enhance an already successful marketing brand into the "World's Largest Hotel Chain" by the 1970s.

Best Western's "Gold Crown" logo was introduced in 1964 and would continue with a few minor revisions over the next 32 years, until it was replaced by a blue and yellow logo in 1996. In 2015, Best Western introduced a new family of logos, replacing the core logo and adding signage for Best Western Plus and Best Western Premier.

Best Western purchased WorldHotels in February 2019 adding approximately 360 additional hotels and 81,248 more rooms to its brand.

Best Western GB

Best Western GB began in 1978 when Interchange Hotels of the United Kingdom consisting of independent hoteliers from key locations in the UK elected to trade under the brand name Best Western United Kingdom, effectively an affiliate of Best Western International in the US. Now there are over 260 Best Western hotels within Great Britain.

Best Western Australia and New Zealand

In 1981, Homestead Motor Inns of Australia affiliated with Best Western. This move put 'International' after the Best Western name. The company has since been known as Best Western International.

In early 2007, Best Western Australia took over the rights to operate Best Western properties in New Zealand from the previous company, the Motel Federation of New Zealand. This was a bold but beneficial move for the brand as it made way for better quality properties to be brought into the brand. Currently, Best Western Australia has 205 properties in the group (11 in New Zealand and 194 in Australia).

Best Western Myanmar (Burma)

On May 21, 2013, Best Western International announced that it will take over management of the Green Hill Hotel in Yangon, Myanmar. The acquisition gave the Best Western brand a place presence in Myanmar (Burma) as its first hotel establishment in the country.

Logo History

As of September 2020, Best Western Hotels and Resorts has 18 brands and logos. Since 1948 the Best Western logo has had approximately 13 modification to the main brand logo, with the last brand logo change having been made in 2015. In 2010 Best Western divided the brand into 3 descriptors. The logo stayed the same, but the descriptors of Plus and Premier were added, and all hotels were either a Best Western Plus, or Best Western Premier. In 2015 a complete overhaul of the Best Western logo resulted in a very different logo from the previous years, with the most notable change being the removal of the crown which had been a part of the logo since 1962. Since 2014 the brand has created 11 additional brands, for a total of 14 brands with distinctive logos. The Best Western website has a picture of all of their past logos in their 'timeline and story' section. Best Western also owns (acquired in Feb, 2019) the WorldHotels Collection which includes 4 additional brands, whose logos are all the same, except for the addition of the distinguishing descriptors of Luxury, Elite, Distinctive, and Crafted.

Advantages

  • Hotel options
  • Reputation
  • Amenities

Best Western offers guests a choice of the following hotels based on customer's needs and budget:

BEST WESTERN®

BEST WESTERN PLUS®

BEST WESTERN PREMIER®

BEST WESTERN PLUS EXECUTIVE RESIDENCYSM

BW Premier CollectionSM.

The Best Western hotel brand has a strong global reputation for excellence, with yearly awards such as the following:

  • The prestigious TripAdvisor® Certificate of Excellence four times more often than the industry average.
  • International Quality Assurance Awards 2014-2015

Pet owners will be pleased to learn that Best Western is very pet-friendly hotel with more than 1,600 pet-friendly hotels across North America. Working with Cesar Milan, Best Western provides tips to make travel easier for guests and your pets.

They also offer for an exceptional midscale value with the following amenities:

  • a welcoming environment
  • comfortable room,
  • breakfast
  • free high-speed Internet access
  • great service
  • Business center with copy and fax service

In North America, 49 percent of Best Western-branded hotels maintained an overall rating of four or higher, out of a possible five, as reviewed by TripAdvisor users.

Positive guest feedback includes:

  • comfortable beds
  • clean rooms
  • nice helpful staff
  • close to public transportation and tourist attractions
  • very reasonable pricing

Best Western also offers what they call the "I Care" Cleaning Program. This program empowers housekeeping staff at Best Western hotels in North America to an innovative way of cleaning using tools such as Ultra Violet (UV) sterilization wands and UV inspection black light wraps to clean guest rooms and common areas. They also provide clean remotes or wraps for the remote control device and pillow and blanket wraps.