On 17 August 2026, IHG and the Harilela Group put a family first name onto a global collection shelf.
Under a franchise agreement, The Hari London (85 rooms) and The Hari Hong Kong (210 rooms at 330 Lockhart Road, Wan Chai) will join Vignette Collection this year. The 324-room Holiday Inn Singapore Orchard City Centre, IHG’s longest-running hotel in Singapore since 1985, is converting into The Hari Singapore, Vignette Collection, for 2027, with Tara Bernerd redesigning the house as she did Belgravia and Wan Chai. The partnership now covers six hotels. Golden Mile on Nathan Road still wears Holiday Inn. The boutique doors keep saying Hari.
“Bringing our three The Hari Hotels into Vignette Collection provides a unified brand partnership opportunity, and a powerful platform for growth, combining the hotel’s individuality with the scale, global reach and commercial strength of IHG.”
Dr Aron Harilela, chairman and CEO, Harilela Group
Individuality stays. Scale is rented. For the wider map of Asian families who underwrite luxury rooms, start with Read the Owner Before the Flag. This note is the day’s deal.
What Vignette Actually Buys
Vignette Collection, launched in 2021, is IHG’s conversion brand for one-off luxury and lifestyle hotels. The pitch to owners is explicit: keep your name, look, and feel; gain IHG’s reservation systems, luxury marketing, procurement, and IHG One Rewards, a loyalty programme IHG now cites at more than 160 million members. At the Hari announcement, Vignette counted 38 open hotels and 46 in the pipeline, still chasing a first-decade target of 100.
For a private family office, that is the commercial argument. Independent boutique inventory is hard to fill on bad Tuesdays in Wan Chai or Belgravia. Points travellers already choose IHG for InterContinental and Six Senses nights. Putting Hari inside Vignette means those travellers can earn and burn without the house becoming another Holiday Inn logo. The franchise fee is the cost of that shelf space. Exact percentages stay unpublished; treat them as the price of distribution, not as a mystery.
Rajit Sukumaran, IHG’s Senior Vice President and Managing Director for East Asia and Pacific, correctly timed the emotional lineage. The companies have worked together since Holiday Inn Golden Mile opened in June 1975. Fifty years of American canopy on Nathan Road taught Hong Kong to trust a Harilela Holiday Inn. Vignette is the reverse move: trust a Harilela name, then attach the IHG passport.
What Independence Might Cost
Collection brands sell a useful fiction: that you are still choosing an independent hotel. Part of that is true. The GM may still report to Harilela. The petrol-blue lacquer and the living wall still read as Bernerd, not as a Crowne Plaza template. Guests will still book “The Hari.” On the loyalty app, though, the stay sits beside other Vignette one-offs from Shanghai to Dubai Marina. Standards documents arrive. Brand reviews arrive. Procurement shortcuts arrive. Some of that improves a house. Some of it flattens the eccentricity Aron keeps naming as the point.
The sharper risk is narrative. The Hari was invented so the family could stop living only behind other people’s canopies. Marc & Chantal built the brand around Aron’s warmth and around Hari Naroomal Harilela, the founder whose first name is on the door. Folding that door into IHG’s luxury-and-lifestyle shelf is growth. It is also a bet that guests will still feel a Hong Kong Sindhi family story when the confirmation email carries an IHG footer.
Watch Singapore for the stress test. Converting a long-running Orchard Holiday Inn into The Hari is harder than hanging a Vignette badge on an already-finished Belgravia house. Bernerd has to erase mid-market memory. Emerald Hill and Orchard shoppers have to believe the room is a family boutique, not a reflagged tower. The published welcome year is 2027; treat everything before that as works-in-progress.
How the Family Story Survives
The family story holds if four practical things stay true.
Keep the name. Vignette’s founding promise is that hotels retain their unique character, style, and name. The Hari London and The Hari Hong Kong are not becoming InterContinentals. That is the non-negotiable for a dynasty brand named after a father.
Keep the designer. Bernerd across London, Hong Kong, and Singapore is continuity guests can photograph. The suite velvet, the terrace doors, the Zoku ceiling: those are ownership signals dressed as interiors.
Keep the rituals. IHG’s release links The Hari to Vignette hallmarks such as “Memorable Rituals” and “A Means For Good,” citing The Hari Art Prize. The useful test is whether the prize and the rotating art still feel curated by the house rather than by a brand calendar.
Keep Golden Mile honest. The sixth hotel in the partnership is still a Holiday Inn. Harilela know when to rent a Western trust mark and when to put Hari on the canopy. That judgment, more than any press adjective, is the Asian hospitality identity here.
For diaspora readers booking Wan Chai or Belgravia this winter, the move is simple. Book The Hari if you want the Bernerd rooms and the family name. Expect One Rewards plumbing once the hotels flip into Vignette. Walk Nathan Road afterward if you want the fifty-year prequel on the same ownership ledger. Peninsula on Salisbury Road remains the owner-operator control case across the harbour; Hari-inside-IHG is the other Hong Kong contract, signed in public on a Monday in August.
