Super 8 by Wyndham, commonly known as Super 8, is an American hotel brand, being the world's largest budget hotel chain with over 2,000 locations worldwide. The chain is a subsidiary of Wyndham Hotels and Resorts.[3] The original room cost was $8.88 per night.[4] As of October 2022, the brand website listed 2,091 hotels worldwide.[1][2]
History
Launch
Ron Rivett and Dennis Brown created the new Super 8 Motel corporation with each of them owning 50% of the stock in the new company.[5] The original room rate was US$8.88 (equivalent to $50.07 in 2021), hence the numeric brand name.[6] The first Super 8, with 60 rooms, opened in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1974,[5] built near a Holiday Inn with just some drawings made by Rivett as blueprints. The stucco exterior with an English Tudor style was inspired by Rivett's father-in-law, who was a stuccoer; the English Tudor style and placing of Super 8's near Holiday Inns was an established procedure for setting up new Super 8's for years to come.[5]
Dennis Brown died in 1988. The 1,000 locations of the Super 8 chain were sold to Hospitality Franchise Systems, which became Cendant in 1993.[7]
Super 8 had a frequent traveler program, the VIP club, which was introduced in 1976; it grew to over 7.6 million members. The VIP program was dissolved in December 2003 and replaced with the TripRewards program, which was renamed Wyndham Rewards in 2008.[citation needed]
Development
The first franchise was sold in 1976 and established in Gillette, Wyoming. By 1978, Super 8 expanded from the state of New York to the state of Washington and was no longer just a Midwestern company.[5]
In 1981, groundbreaking for the 100th Super 8 Location began in Aberdeen, South Dakota; the birthplace of Super 8.[8] In 1993, Super 8 opened its 1,000th property in Mount Vernon, Ohio.[8] By 2001, Super 8 Motels had more than 2,000 motels worldwide.[8]
Super 8 Worldwide entered the China market in 2004 by opening a Super 8 hotel (Chinese: 速8酒店 Su Ba Jiudian) in Beijing.[9] By 2011, there were 680 Super 8 hotels mainly located in major cities of China.[10]
In 2010, Super 8 replaced the beddings and redesigned the bathrooms.[11]
In May 2013, Super 8 opened its first location in Turkey, in Istanbul.[12] In May 2014, Super 8 opened its first location in the Middle East, in Riyadh. Super 8 came to the UK when it opened at Chester Motorway Services in 2023 after being rebranded from Days Inn, another one of Wyndham's hotel brands
[13] In April 2016, Super 8 opened its first location in Germany, in Munich.[14]
2016 brand overhaul
In May 2016, Super 8 remodelled its 1,800 rooms in the US and Canada and organized a big giveaway of old art and furniture.[citation needed] The brand jokingly organized an exhibition in New York called When the Art Comes Down: Works from the Super 8 Collection and featuring 100 pieces of their "not-so-super art",[15][16] an event organized to communicate on the brand's design overhaul.[17] In December 2016, another edition of the exhibition was organized in Miami.[18]
In November 2016, Super 8 launched a new promotion for US Army veterans which included a reserved parking area in all US and Canada locations.[19]
In May 2017, Super 8 launched a new marketing campaign that focused its targeting on road trippers,[20] followed by the introduction in October 2019 of Super 8's first shared room, the ROOM8, a concept developed for young road trippers.[21] In March 2018, Super 8 launched a concept Jeep Wrangler, the ROADM8, with body works and interiors reminiscent of the brand's redesigned hotels, and some unexpected features such as a coffee machine and a mini-fridge built in the central console of the back seats.[22][23]
Shared room type
In 2019, Wyndham unveiled the shared room type that seeks to make better use of larger, underutilized room types.[24]
The minimum standard Super 8 requires offering guests a complimentary breakfast item with beverages and free wireless Internet access.[25] For a period, beginning in 2004, anyone that purchased a "See You Along The Way" coffee mug was entitled to free coffee, regardless if they stayed the night before or not, at any of the Super 8s.[26]
