Eva Ferguson
As InterContinental Hotels Group, the world's largest hotel company by total number of rooms, develops new standards and directions across its brand portfolio, the group's owners association plays a large role in shaping those initiatives. Association president Eva Ferguson—who has been with the association for 30 years, including nine in her current leadership role—spoke recently with Business Travel News senior editor Michael B. Baker about some of the most recent initiatives facing owners that affect both the look and design of hotels, as well as how owners manage their business mixes.
What are IHG brand owners' priorities now?
Six years ago, we did the relaunch of the Holiday Inn brand and Holiday Inn Express. That was something that desperately needed to be done, and we worked with IHG throughout that entire process. Express is 20 years old, so they're coming up with a new prototype: a new room design and new great room, so we're working on them with quite a few components. Now, it will be Holiday Inn's turn, so we'll be starting work on a lot of new components to Holiday Inn. One of the biggest things we'll be working with is food and beverage: What are some creative ways to handle that? Typically, it's not a moneymaker. It typically is a cost, and we just want to work with IHG to share some expanding offerings and expanding new ways of doing business.
Are you considering removing full-service restaurants from some properties?
In some cases, it could be, but I doubt whether we'd ever get to that point. You have to offer something, and maybe there are some creative ways to work around that—a cupboard or a pantry or something—but there still will have to be food offerings at that brand, because it's a full-service brand, especially when you have meeting space. Meetings at the Holiday Inn are a big piece of the business, just like they are at Crowne Plaza.
Has that meetings business been growing?
Yes. We have a midmarket meeting program. That is something that our sales organization put into place, and we check in on that all the time. We are constantly looking at what sales is producing from those midmarket accounts. People still have to travel for business, even though it's had its ebbs and flows [during] the past few years. We have Holiday Inns that are everywhere, and they're the perfect group to capture that, along with Crowne Plaza.
What about your extended-stay brands?
There's been a slight reorganization with those brands under Oliver Bonke, who is the chief commercial officer for the Americas. Oliver is still in the midst of reorganizing, but he's taken those brands and married them in with the Holiday Inn brands: Staybridge is married with Holiday Inn, and Candlewood is married with Express, because of the similarities in operating those hotels and the customer base. That's something they've just done.
What's happening with revenue management standards across IHG?
We have endorsed that, [requiring certified revenue management] as a standard. If a hotel has a revenue manager, we make sure that they're certified. If you don't have a revenue manager, you go through a different type of certification. We've done a pretty good job with hotels that have pretty advanced and robust systems around revenue management as well as with helping those smaller Express hotels that don't have a separate revenue manager, to help them bridge that gap as well. We're also constantly trying to minimize the impact [of distribution costs] on the hotels, in helping train them as to what's a good piece of business to take and what is not.
Recent research indicated capital spending at hotels would be a record this year. How is that playing out at IHG properties?
A lot of that is technology. That's something we're in the midst of working through with IHG: things like bandwidth, guest Internet, secure payment systems. That's even more important space since [the credit card data breach] at Home Depot. Being able to process credit cards and [keeping them] secure is a huge initiative that we're working on right now. The technology piece is a whole separate animal; we have a committee and group working on that as well. Guest Internet is one of the highest things that we get complaints on because bandwidth isn't there, so we're addressing all of that right now. We have a group we call the emerging leaders—franchisees under 40 years old—and we have populated that technology task force with quite a few of them, because they're at the forefront of technology, and they know about it before anybody else does. We're looking at these second- and third-generation franchisees that are coming in and are very savvy in the way they do business.
How does IHG involve owners with big brand decisions like these?
We have brand committees that meet on all initiatives for the brands. Each one of the brands has a group of owners that works with each brand, and those groups deal with everything, such as IHG Rewards Club issues within that brand, online travel agency issues, specific brand initiatives and marketing programs. From those committees, it bubbles up to the board of directors. We don't have endorsement rights on everything, but we do offer advice and counsel on a range of things, from how to deal with minimizing the impact of third-party intermediaries, to revenue management. We have a very robust committee and board system, and we have had for many years. We like to consider ourselves somewhat of a competitive advantage for IHG.
Within the ownership group, are you seeing growth from new owners coming in, or are current owners looking to add properties?
It's a mixture. They do two meetings a year for new owners, and the last meeting was about a month or so ago, and they had over 150 people there, but a lot of those people had different brands, so they had to re-certify. It's a mix of both: people in the system and brand-new people. Their pipeline of new hotels is very, very healthy.