Business and leisure travelers looking for an alternative high-end hotel brand will soon have another option. Chicago-based Global Hyatt Corp. has announced the launch of its new Andaz brand of upscale urban hotels, opening first in London and New York, and eventually in other domestic and international destinations, including Beijing and Moscow.

Hyatt already owns and operates seven hotel brands and will position Andaz--whose name means “personal style” in Hindi--between its high-end Park Hyatt brand and its Hyatt Regency properties. The first Andaz is set to open in September in London’s financial district, with a second property in New York under construction on Fifth Avenue and 41st Street.

Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian said in a statement that Hyatt’s “worldwide customer base is looking for fresh, uncomplicated luxury that is timeless and gimmick free.” The company says its Andaz brand is focused on “casual elegance” and “local identity.” Each Andaz property will be allowed to illustrate its local autonomy through various design differences and offerings. The brand will also incorporate green initiatives, such as serving organic food and using environmentally friendly building materials.

The Andaz brand is aimed at the maturing Generation X market--a major market segment for business travel, says Mark Ritson, associate professor of marketing at the Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne, Australia. “X’ers are notoriously uncomfortable with generic global brands and prefer to seek out local specialties and experiences instead,” he wrote in the magazine Marketing.

“Once Andaz is launched later this year, watch out for a major restructuring of the existing Hyatt sub-brands,” Ritson wrote. “In the world of brand architecture, new brand creation often goes hand-in-hand with old brand consolidation.”

Click here for the list of all the 24 new hotel brands that launched in 2005 and 2005 in the U.S., according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.