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“We have an aspiration to impact 30,000 lives through our community activities”


expansion opportunities in building up that network. We have 12 hotels open and a pipe- line in place for voco and there’s still plenty of opportunity for Hotel Indigo, which is a real success and an expansion brand for us in the UK. Vignette collection is new to market and there’s plenty of opportunity there, and also Six Senses is soon to open in London. So with those new brands in addition to very estab- lished brands like Crowne Plaza and Inter- continental, we are well set for expansion and we have a lot of appetite for it.


Hotel Indigo Exeter So what does that mean for us? Well, we’ve


looked at each and every one of our brands to ensure they are fit for conversion. For exam- ple, voco was designed to be very appropri- ate for conversions because it has fewer hard standards and it’s more about embracing the individuality of each hotel. But similarly, for our Holiday Inn and Holiday Express brands – the powerhouse brands – we have many exam- ples of taking existing hotels and converting them into those brands in a way that has been really thoughtful while still giving a level of consistency to the guest. At the other end of the scale we have new


brands, such as the Vignette collection, which is specifically designed to take hotels that are great in the luxury space and bring them into the fold. Our first UK hotel under that brand will open soon.


When you’re assessing conversion opportunities, how much consideration is given to the sustainability credentials of a building? When we do an assessment of what it will take [ for a hotel] to join an IHG brand, we build into that measures to help the owners make sustainable choices. Typically, if there is a refurbishment, that’s the opportunity to address every part of it, so maybe introducing a building management system with flexible zones to minimise use of electricity, installing heat pumps if possible, tackling all the low- hanging fruit and retrofitting energy conser- vation systems. We’re also spending a lot of time thinking about how we can decarbonise the existing estate, in order to help all owners get to more efficient hotels.


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Looking further ahead, IHG Hotels & Resorts has a 10-year sustainability plan – can you tell me about that? In the midst of the pandemic, we decided to look ahead and we published ‘Journey to Tomorrow’, our responsible business plan to 2030, in which we address people, planet and communities in order to be able to say that IHG Hotels & Resorts is absolutely committed to a brighter future across the board. We talk a lot about the planet side of it and


the environmental footprint, but equally, we put an enormous amount of effort into our community partnerships. We have an aspira- tion to impact 30,000 lives through our com- munity activities and on the people side we have a very ambitious plan for diversity, equity and inclusion, whether that’s to achieve a gen- der balance in our corporate hotel communi- ties or a more ethnically diverse population, which we’ve got a big focus on. When you work at IHG, when you stay at an IHG hotel, we want everyone to feel welcome and heard and cared for.


What are your expansion plans in the UK? We still look at the UK as a market that has tre- mendous possibilities for us. We have around 350 hotels and plenty more in the pipeline, and this year we’ve really seen development activity pick up again. That’s driven by the fact that we continue to demonstrate the power of the IHG Hotels & Resorts enterprise and the fact that we can capture customers from around the world and bring them into our hotels. Our largest footprint is Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express, and we see plenty of


And how is the performance in the UK? We have all been positively surprised by just how strong it has been and how consistent it has continued to be after the peak of the sum- mer. It’s very much driven by corporates hav- ing returned with meetings and events. We’ve also had a good year in terms of big events in the UK, with King Charles III’s Corona- tion and Eurovision, and they all help bring demand into various communities. It’s obvi- ously a precarious economy at the moment, and the cost of living crisis clearly has an impact, but we are well-placed in environ- ments like that, because we play all the way from very affordable breaks to luxury experi- ences in capital cities.


We hear a lot about sustainability and clearly IHG is investing heavily and working with franchisees to achieve its ambitions, but how far can your influence extend to customers? It’s about choice. Consumers choose how they spend their time and there will be different degrees by which they are informed in what they believe is the right way to travel. I think we have a role to play in doing our very best to make sure they tread lighter when they stay somewhere, but we need to do that without preaching because, fundamentally, travel is a force for good. There are so many benefits and we want


people to continue to travel, to expand their minds, to expand their understanding, to foster the connections that make business happen, to connect families and feel more emotionally grounded. Let’s not forget hotels are there to help people build those connec- tions, to discover new things and leave feel- ing a little bit more enriched, whether that was through a business interaction or some special time with loved ones.


24 November 2023 | The Caterer | 19


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