IHG CEO Finds Renewed Faith in China for Hotel Growth
Photo Credit: IHG isn't backing away from China despite a volatile recovery and scrutiny over a major real estate developer there (pictured: Shanghai). Flickr / Franck Michel
Skift Take
Next year is the first major test of whether a new brand line-up and self-review is enough to roar IHG back to an era of pre-pandemic expansion levels.
Major hotel companies, like professional sports teams, sometimes need a year to regroup and strategize for a return to explosive performance.
IHG Hotels & Resorts returned to profitability earlier this year, a sign the travel recovery was well underway for the owner of brands like Holiday Inn, InterContinental, and Six Senses. But analysts zeroed in on the hotel company’s streak across several quarters of basically no net rooms growth to its portfolio while its competitors didn’t seem to have the same problems.
Just wait until next year, says the company’s top executive. Growth opportunities abound, even in a market like China where cratered commercial real estate activity in the residential sector sparked concerns among developers.
“Looking at the pipeline under construction today, looking at the scale of the pipeline we have, you'd expect 2022 to look a lot more like 2018,” IHG CEO Keith Barr said in an interview with Skift this week at the NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference.
A return to 2018 is important because, at that time, IHG posted its strongest growth figure seen in a decade. It continued to swell in 2019, and Ba
