Skift Take
The pandemic nosedive in business helped IHG accelerate its plan to cut a few bad apples from the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza network. More trimming is likely to boost brand quality and — just as important — get back to 2019 levels of record growth.
IHG Hotels and Resorts cut ties with more hotels last quarter than it opened, part of a plan to address customer service issues across two of its biggest brands.
IHG removed 9,500 hotel rooms, or 61 hotels, from its system over the first quarter, with roughly half of that coming from Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza. The UK-based hotel company only opened 7,300 rooms, or 56 hotels, last quarter.
The greater closure figure follows IHG CEO Keith Barr’s comments earlier this year that the company would target 200 underperforming hotels to remove from its network to improve customer service and better position the company for growth coming out of the pandemic.
“This is the right time for us to have conversations with owners. Guest expectations have changed,” said Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson, IHG’s chief financial officer, on a Friday investor call. “We have been working with the owners to take out the hotels in the system that hadn't met our vis
