Evaluating the Hotel Indigo Brand - A New, Hip, and Moderately Priced Lodging Option

I've never much given much thought to the InterContinental hotel chain, which encompasses the reliable if unremarkable Holiday Inn family and the luxurious but, for the most part, old-school InterContinental chain. But last year I spend a couple of nights in the then-spanking-new Midtown Atlanta outpost of InterContinental's Hotel Indigo brand. And I liked it. The rates were about on par with middle-to-upper-end business chains (Holiday Inn, Hilton, Wyndham, Sheraton, and so on), but the hotel had a certain panache and happily bold design that reminded me of Kimpton hotels. Indigos don't generally have see-and-be-seen bars and restaurants - they're not so much places to hang out and be noticed. But I like sleeping in them, and that, for many of us, counts for a lot. Indigo now has about 15 properties around North America (mostly in the United States, but there's also one in Canada and another in Mexico). According to the company's business plan, there will be more than 70 of these Indigo Hotels around the country within a couple of years, and in some great gay destinations (San Diego, Savannah, Madison, New York City's Chelsea neighborhood).

IC Hotels has never made a discernible effort to target GLBT travelers, but and it's not a company known for its progressive policies related to gay and lesbian employees (at least not according to the Human Rights Campaign analysis). So if this is important to you, you might want to choose Kimpton, Starwood, Wyndham, or another company with a clear commitment to gay travelers. Some Indigo properties (i.e., the Atlanta and Nashville ones, in particular) have already begun advertising and marketing to GLBT travelers, and others are likely to follow, so this is a good sign. Here's my profile of the Indigo brand, along with a list of some of the more interesting cities that either have or will soon have Indigo properties.