Best Western Has Been Shrinking. BWH Hotels’ Fix Is to Shift Upscale and Overseas.

BWH Hotels, the parent of Best Western, has seen its room count shrink nearly every year since 2019, even as all of its larger rivals grew. Now CEO Larry Cuculic says the group is shifting upmarket and growth is underway.

BWH Hotels has ground to make up. It has 333,457 rooms, down 9.7% from 2019. The group added more than 200 hotels last year and has a total of 4,300 now. Cuculic pointed to a pipeline of about 300 properties and a target of 5,000 hotels worldwide by 2030.

"Will we be there by 2030?" he said in a Skift interview at NYU IHIF. "It's going to be close, but I think we are."

Moving Upmarket

Cuculic is trying to boost margins by adding more upscale offerings to the portfolio. The clearest expression is WorldHotels, which BWH Hotels bought in 2019.

"One of the reasons we acquired WorldHotels was that we believed in the halo effect on the entirety of the group," Cuculic said.

WorldHotels had about 300 properties at acq