Red Lion Hotels Corporation Set to Join Russell 2000(R) Index

SPOKANE, Wash. -- Red Lion Hotels Corporation (NYSE: RLH) today announced that it anticipates being added to the U.S. small-cap Russell 2000(R) Index based upon preliminary disclosures by the index. The official addition is planned to occur after the Russell Investment Group reconstitutes its comprehensive family of global indexes on June 26, 2009. Membership in the Russell 2000, which remains in place for one year, is based on membership in the broad-market Russell 3000(R) Index. The Russell 3000 also serves as the U.S. component to the Russell Global Index, which Russell launched in 2007. Red Lion would also be added systematically to the appropriate growth and value indexes.

"We were very pleased to learn we are going to be added to the Russell 2000 index, which should raise our profile and help bring our story to a wider range of long-term investors," said Red Lion President and Chief Executive Officer Anupam Narayan. "Inclusion in the index is based upon market capitalization and we are pleased with our momentum in 2009 which reflects our comparatively strong performance in a very difficult business environment."

Russell indexes are widely used by investment managers and institutional investors for index funds and as benchmarks for both passive and active investment strategies. An industry-leading $4.4 trillion in assets currently are benchmarked to them. These investment tools originated from Russell's multi-manager investment business in the early 1980s when the company saw the need for a more objective, market-driven set of benchmarks in order to evaluate outside investment managers. Real-time market analysis on the Russell 2000 and other Russell Indexes is available at http://www.russell.com/Indexes/performance/real_time_market_analysis.asp.