Ryan Hotels will rebrand eight of its 10 hotels using the Gresham name. As part of a £5.2 million (€6.6 million) investment, hotels such as the Metropole in Cork will now be known as the Gresham Metropole, while the Royal Marine in Dun Laoghaire will become the Gresham Royal Marine and so on. The Killarney Ryan and the Galway Ryan hotel will be updated as part of the reinvestment programme but their names will not change.
"It's a rebranding programme that goes far beyond visual identity," says Mr David Bunworth, business development director for Ryan Hotels. "A rebranding has to work across all aspects of an organisation from service to style, right through the entire culture."
Mr Bunworth came to the job last October after one year with Esat Digifone and five years with Aer Lingus. "A lot of what I'm doing here I learned at Aer Lingus, about carrying rebranding through every aspect of the service."
The name of the group itself will change from Ryan Hotels to Gresham Hotel Group, though this is subject to shareholder approval at the a.g.m. in June.
For Dubliners, the choice of the Gresham as a prefix might seem puzzling. The hotel, which was bought by the Ryan Group in 1979, has four stars but has not had a very high profile or indeed a prestigious reputation in recent years. Its location on O'Connell Street, which is due to undergo a long-awaited regeneration programme, hasn't helped.
According to Mr Bunworth, the Gresham name performed positively in research and he feels the hotel is still regarded as the "old grand dame of Dublin".
The group has already invested heavily in the bedrooms and meeting rooms at the hotel and is set to refurbish the lobby and restaurant area. Of the choice of the word Gresham, he says "to recreate a whole new brand from scratch is a prohibitively expensive business". The newly named Gresham hotels which will include hotels in London, Brussels, Hamburg and Amsterdam will be pitched at the corporate market, while the two remaining Ryan Hotels will be firmly aimed at family business.
"Our research showed that the Ryan name was so synonymous with families that it was off-putting for the corporate market. "The Gresham name should help change that perception."
