IHG Americas CEO Elie Maalouf talks:
- 2017 outlook
- Crowne Plaza
- New brand potential
InterContinental Hotels Group is coming off a successful 2016, reporting gains in revenue and
room rates despite a challenging environment. In the Americas, the company
signed 37,000 rooms in 2016 and grew its pipeline to more than 102,000 rooms across
846 properties. The company also announced a planned $200 million redesign of
its Crowne Plaza brand last year. BTN lodging editor Julie Sickel spoke with
IHG Americas CEO Elie Maalouf.
BTN: What's IHG
Americas' outlook for the year ahead?
Maalouf: The industry has strong long-term
fundamentals in the United States and globally. Those may fluctuate from year
to year closer to GDP, but the fundamentals of people wanting and needing to
travel, wanting and needing trusted branded accommodation where and when they
travel isn't changing. Our strategy is informed by that, and it's continued to
bear fruit, leading us to a high number of signings, to a pipeline of almost a
hundred hotels, to almost three-quarters of a million rooms open around the
world, to the largest loyalty plan around the world. Given that the
fundamentals of the industry remain sound, given that our strategy is working,
we're confident in the future without focusing on the next quarter or the next
four quarters.
BTN: Where does Crowne Plaza Accelerate, IHG's
three-year investment plan, stand?
Maalouf: It was announced last year and launched
in January. It's such a huge program that required a lot of preparation and
planning and hiring of people, as well as design of the guest experience
products, design of the new marketing, of the new uniforms, the new restaurant
bar. We have about 10 or 15 new lobbies with the flexible meeting spaces under
production right now in hotels. We have several full design hotels with the new
work-life room that are being executed around the country. We're positioning
Crowne Plaza as a place that makes business travel work and bringing that
proper blend of work and life together where people are really not switching
off when they're traveling. We're giving them ways to be productive and work
but also to enjoy themselves.
BTN: Are you building new Crowne Plaza
properties as you enhance the existing portfolio?
Maalouf: There are new hotels coming. This year,
we'll open the flagship Crowne Plaza in Manhattan, and many others are signed
and under construction. We're in the Americas region, so this is not just about
the U.S. In Mexico, we had a very good year of new deals last year.
BTN: What is IHG's philosophy for adding
brands?
Maalouf: If we look at Holiday Inn Express, it's about smart
travel: everything to create simplicity and smart travel for you at a high
quality. All the way on the other end, InterContinental's positioning involves
a lot of thinking about the lifestyle of those guests, the occasion they're
going to visit us on, what they want to feel like and sense when they're there.
It could be the same guest going to InterContinental and going to Holiday Inn Express
at different times of the week for different occasions. So we start with that
thought for the brand portfolio: What occasions and what mind-sets and what lifestyles
are we trying to meet? We've developed a highly differentiated portfolio today.
Eleven are represented in the Americas region while Hualuxe is currently only
in China. The last brand we launched in the United States, Even Hotels, was
launched to meet the needs of a wellness-minded business traveler. We may, at
some point, have more. But the strategy doesn't come from, "Well, I just
need one more a year." It's more about: What needs and stay occasions and
mind-sets and lifestyles are we targeting around the world for our guests?