Holiday Inn owner IHG reveals boost from 2021’s ‘staycation summer’
InterContinental Hotel Group, owner of Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza, is back to pre-pandemic levels in some parts of the US - but still has a way to go in Britain.
IHG today revealed a significant boost from 2021’s "staycation summer".
The FTSE 100 firm, one of the world’s largest hotel operators, said revenue per available room (RevPar) - a key industry metric - was up 66% on 2020 levels in the three months to end September.
Group RevPar was still 21% down on pre-Covid levels, however, with the UK down 22%.
Recovery was led by strong summer demand in the US, where some hotels saw occupancy levels top 2019.
IHG CEO Keith Barr hailed the "significant" improvement in trading.
He said: “Domestic leisure demand was particularly strong in a number of markets over the summer, where occupancy and rate climbed back to 2019 levels."
The group opened 79 hotels in the period and signed another 91 into its pipeline, and Barr said both optional business and international travel bookings have "also shown increasingly encouraging signs".
In a note entitled "rolling but not yet rocking", analysts at Peel Hunt cautioned that this quarter they "expect the slower recovery in discretionary business travel to weigh on progress".
Shares fell 2.2%, or 112p, to 4886p, on Friday morning.
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