Shareholders see benefit of IHG's strong half-year results

A strong first half-year results for InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has enabled the company to increase the interim dividend to shareholders by 10%.

Revenue and operating profit grew by 1% to $915 (£586m) and 10% to $337 (£215m) respectively for the company, which operates the InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and Hotel Indigo brands.

Global like-for-like revenue per available room (revpar) growth was up 5.1% during the first quarter, with a further increase of 4.4% during the second quarter.

In the UK, overall revpar grew by 6.1%, driven by a strong performance in the provinces, up 8.0%, and to a lesser extent London, which was affected by supply growth and a less favourable events calendar in the period.

Holiday Inn continues to have a considerable impact in driving the growth of the company, with the highest ever number of new room signings completed during the first half of the year. Extended-stay brands, such as Staybridge, also showed the highest number of openings and signings since 2010.

Richard Solomons (pictured), chief executive of IHG, said: "We continued to make strong progress against our winning strategy in the first half, strengthening our brands, loyalty programme and owner proposition. Alongside this, we continue to make great progress delivering against our technology objectives, introducing a number of new digital initiatives that have helped drive almost 50% growth in mobile revenue.

"Looking forward, based on current trading trends, we remain confident in the outlook for the rest of the year."

IHG has a portfolio of 4,900 hotels, comprising more than 724,000 rooms in over 100 countries.

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