IHG announces 3.3% global growth and plans for third London InterContinental

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has announced 3.3% growth in global room revenue and revealed plans for a third InterContinental hotel in London.

In a third quarter interim management statement the hotel giant said that UK revenue per available room (revpar) grew 1.5%, despite tough comparatives including last year's Olympic Games. It added that growth outside of London was good led by an increase in occupancy.

A total of 16,000 rooms were signed globally in the period, up 18% on 2012. More than 8,000 rooms were opened, taking the group's total number of rooms globally to 679,000 in 4,653 hotels.

Notable signings in the period include a 1,200 room Holiday Inn hotel in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and a third InterContinental hotel in London, scheduled to open in 2015.

IHG Chief executive Richard Solomons said: "Revpar growth of 3.3% in the quarter was led by a strong performance in our Asia, Middle East and Africa region, up 5.4%. We have driven group revpar up 3.6% in the first nine months, with 4.4% in our largest region, the Americas.

We continue to develop our high quality pipeline which underpins our future growth plans. Signings of more than one hotel a day included two new hotels for our InterContinental brand, in London and Sydney, and our second owned hotel for Even Hotels."

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