IHG has 27 hotels in the region’s pipeline: COO

Dubai: The InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has around 27 hotels in the pipeline in the Middle East over the next five years, according to its top executive.

“We are still growing our business and developing our brand. IHG has around 27 hotels in the pipeline over the next five years. And Saudi Arabia, our strongest market in the region, will account for 50 per cent of this pipeline,” Pascal Gauvin, IHG’s Chief Operating Officer, for India, Middle East and Africa, told Gulf News in an interview.

Known for its core brands like the InterContinental and Crowne Plaza, IHG has 76 hotels operating under five brands in 12 countries across the Middle East alone at present, and 94 hotels in all of the Middle East and Africa region, says Gauvin.

Commenting on IHG’s strongest markets in the region, Gauvin said: “We have really two markets where we are concentrating – Saudi Arabia, where we have 22 properties operating today, followed by the UAE, where we are operating 18 hotels.”

IHG managed to grow its RevPAR (revenue per available room – an industry benchmark for performance) by five per cent last year, Gauvin said, without divulging projections for 2013. He added that the AMEA (Asia, Middle East and Africa) region accounts for “11 per cent” of IHG’s global revenue.

IHG has most of the brands from its global portfolio present in the Middle East today. However, one missing brand that the company plans to bring to the Middle East now is Indigo, positioned as the branded boutique hotel and lifestyle brand catering to the younger travellers. “We will open the first Indigo hotel in 2014 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,” said Gauvin. Asked when Indigo will enter Dubai and the UAE market, he said: “It’s just a matter of time.”

Quizzed on if room rates for Dubai hotels were likely to go up given the confidence trickling back into the market, Gauvin said: “The situation that we were in Dubai before 2007 was a bit exceptional. I don’t think we will go back to that. But the RevPAR will go up because the volume is there.”

India expansion

IHG plans to aggressively grow its hotel portfolio in the Indian market, according to Gauvin. “The India market is critical for us. We are operating 13 hotels today in India and we have 47 in the pipeline. So you can see that there is tremendous growth coming that way. We cater mainly for the domestic market and around domestic travellers make up around 80 per cent of the market in India,” he said, adding that brands such as Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express fit perfectly well into the domestic travel market.