Q3’s additional 16,800 inked rooms within a planned 123 hotels means that IHG’s global pipeline now stands at 292,467 keys and 1,978 properties.
Consistent development
The latest numbers signify that the overall pipeline has grown 5.1% year on year, plus the quarterly signings amount beat the equivalent period in 2022 by 27%.
IHG’s global system now reaches 6,261 hotels encompassing 930,000 rooms, 67% of which are in midscale segments, with the remaining 33% across upscale and luxury.
American advance
Breaking down the group’s development progress geographically, the Americas and Greater China are battling it out to lead the pipeline totals.
Within Q3, the Americas region added 55 hotels of 5,100 collective keys to the pipeline. This takes the year to date total to 18,416 keys, with the overall regional pipeline currently standing at 106,788 rooms.
Signings in the latest quarter included eight avid hotels, 16 hotels across the Holiday Inn brand family, and a further 26 across the group’s extended stay brands.
Chinese competition
Hot on the Americas’ heels, over the quarter, Greater China signed a larger number of keys to the pipeline than its western competitor, but in fewer properties, with 6,900 rooms planned in 37 hotels.
This means that in the first three quarters of 2023, the region signed 17,758 keys, taking the overall total to 106,423 – mere hundreds of rooms away from the American development amount.
As Chinese development activity continues to improve following the extended period last year of covid-related restrictions in the region, this was IHG’s highest quarterly signings performance in the area since 2021.
EMEAA overview
The remainder of IHG’s network is in the combined Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia (excluding Greater China) regions. This EMEAA pipeline now stands at 79,256 keys, with 14,766 of these being added in the year to date.
In Q3, 4,800 rooms/31 hotels were added to the pipeline, with conversions representing around 40% of these. Luxury and lifestyle brands performed strongly, also representing 40% of all signings.
Signing surge
Elie Maalouf, CEO, IHG Hotels & Resorts, summed up: “We opened nearly 8,000 rooms across 50 hotels in the quarter, and added 17,000 rooms to our pipeline across 123 properties. Year to date, signings are up by 16%.
“Reflecting the breadth and attractiveness of our portfolio, ‘quicker to market’ conversions have increased this year to be over one-third of openings and signings. This will soon be further boosted by our new midscale conversion brand, Garner, which became franchise-ready in September. There was good development progress across all our categories, and our six luxury and lifestyle brands continue to represent a growing proportion of IHG with over 800 open and pipeline hotels in that category.”
Demand drivers
As to the company’s outlook, he added: “We expect to close-out 2023 with very strong financial performance. Looking further ahead, whilst there are macro-economic uncertainties and some short-term financing challenges holding back new hotel development, I am excited about the future for IHG and the attractive, long-term demand drivers for our markets.
“As such, we’re confident in the strengths of IHG’s business model, scale and in our strategic priorities to capture sustainable, profitable growth.”
