Full-year systemwide room revenue generated by business transient travel at IHG Hotels & Resorts increased 2 percent year over year in 2025, executives said during an earnings call on Tuesday.
Revenue per available room from group bookings also rose 1 percent compared to the previous year, while revenue from leisure travel remained flat.
At IHG hotels in the Americas – where the U.S. represents 44 percent of IHG's system size – business transient RevPAR increased 2 percent year on year, but RevPAR attached to groups fell 1 percent despite a 2 percent hike in the average daily rates.
RevPAR in the Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia had the biggest year-over-year uptick across both business transient (up 5 percent) and group travel (up 4 percent).
IHG CFO Michael Glover said the systemwide results were "pleasing to see in a turbulent year, particularly across the U.S.," with growth likely to continue into 2026.
"As we started 2026, we saw really solid business demand coming in," Glover said, even as demand in the US was "affected" by storms and cold weather. "Overall, [demand] is still positive moving forward."
"Looking at groups, what we see right now on the books is almost double digits up year over year. It looks like groups are going to be strong," Glover added.
The company's average daily rate for the year increased by 0.8 percent compared to 2024, while RevPAR increased 1.5 percent year on year and occupancy rose 0.5 percentage points.
IHG reported $5.19 billion (£3.8 billion) in total revenue for the year, up 5 percent from 2024, while operating profits rose 15 percent to $1.2 billion (£880 million).
IHG's Q4 Metrics
IHG's systemwide fourth-quarter RevPAR increased 1.6 percent year on year, while ADR increased 1.1 percent. Systemwide occupancy increased 0.3 percentage points.
Fourth-quarter EMEAA RevPAR increased 7.1 percent, with occupancy up 2.7 percentage points and average daily rate up 3.3 percent.
IHG opened 443 hotels in 2025 and added another 694 into its pipeline, including its "highest ever" hotel openings and signings in Greater China. The company's global pipeline, as of 31 December, increased 4 percent year on year to 339,500 rooms.
New Collection Brand
The company on Tuesday also launched 'Noted Collection' – a new collection brand for independent hotels the premium hotel category. IHG CEO Elie Maalouf said the collection, which was first announced in October, "fills a key space in our brand ladder" and builds on the success of its Vignette Collection for the luxury and lifestyle category, which launched in 2021.
IHG expects Noted Collection to "scale rapidly" and reach more than 150 hotels globally within the next 10 years. Maalouf said the company is already in talks with "multiple" owners, with an initial focus on the EMEAA region "where there is a significant proportion of high-quality hotels with strong individual brand equity".
AI Investments
Maalouf dedicated significant time during Tuesday's call outlining IHG's AI strategy, which he insisted is "broad and enterprise-wide", covering guest acquisition, commercial optimization and cost efficiencies. This includes AI-powered cloud-based systems for revenue management, guest reservation and property management systems, a new content platform, an AI trip planner and a new unified loyalty and CRM platform powered by Salesforce.
"With the new content platform, which will be launched at scale this year, we'll be able to take all [our] digital information and put it in the right channel at the right time to strengthen the digital hooks needed for our hotels to be recommended by AI agents. This matters as travel search patterns evolve," Maalouf said.
The company also plans to roll out "more engaging types of content" such as video, 360 images, virtual tours, automated language translation and floor plans, which Maalouf said will enable "a more conversational search experience on IHG's owned websites and apps". The company will begin testing these capabilities with customers "later this year".
Meanwhile, the new CRM and loyalty platform will "unify all customer data in a cloud-based system, which gives a seamless view of our loyalty members – and all their experiences – to [allow us to] provide more personalized experiences and more relevant promotions, better benefits," Maalouf said.
When asked during the call about AI's potential disruption, Maalouf replied:
"Yes, there is disruption, but there are two things that are fundamentally not changing: There will always be a guest that will want to travel for business or leisure and they want to go to a destination that has a ‘live', real experience. The more that people experience the virtual, the more they favor live experiences… everything in between – the distribution, how you book, how you share, how you search – that is changing. We don't see this as disruption; we see this as an opportunity for us. And we feel were in a strong position to capitalize on these opportunities because of the huge stride we've made in recent years to modernize our tech stack."