Skift Take
Brand trust, fostered by communicating and delivering on a defined guest experience, is what keeps guests coming back year after year. Solomons focus on building trust is what drives all the smaller decisions from tech to training.
Editor’s Note: This interview is part of Skift’s CEO interview series. This particular series is with hospitality CEOs talking about the Future of the Guest Experience and the evolving expectations and demands of hotel guests. Check out all the interviews as they come out here. Also, enjoy the previous series on the Future of Travel Booking, with online travel CEOs.
InterContinental Hotels Group is one of the world’s largest hotel chains with more than 697,000 rooms in close to 100 countries.
Its most iconic brand, Holiday Inn, is designed for a mix of families and business travelers, but the group has also become a force in the boutique and lifestyle sector with the Hotel Indigo and Even Hotels brands. IHG enhanced its stature in the market when it agreed to acquire Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants for $430 million in cash in December.
InterContinental Group now has more than 4,700 hotels and 1,100 more under development.
Richard Solomons, CEO of the group since July 2011, recently spoke with Skift about the evolving guest experience, adopting the experience to the brand or customer, and the thinking behind the group’s recent acquisition of Kimpton.
Skift: What are the biggest challenges you face in improving the guest experience?
Richard Solomons: It’s not unique to the hotel industry but customers are much more clear about they want today, therefore, as a supplier you have to be very clear what your brand stands for. One of the advantages that we have is that our brands are very clearly defined. We can target our brands much more clearly.
If you’re clear about the brand then the challenge is making sure that it is delivered on the ground, partly through the physical product but primarily through the overall experience. That’s a lot about the people. You hear hotel people talk about it all the time but the challenge, especially in a management franchise world, is really training people, helping them understand the brand, and making sure that you give them the tools to deliver a consist
