The company that owns Holiday Inn, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), has had a record-breaking year.
They've made more than one billion US dollars (£794 million) for the first time ever, thanks to more people wanting to travel. The company are planning to give over one billion US dollars (£794 million) back to their shareholders this year.
This will be done through dividends and share buyouts. They made an underlying operating profit of 1.02 billion US dollars (£810 million) in 2023, which is 23% more than the year before. Their revenues also went up by 19%.
Their profits before tax more than doubled to 1.01 billion US dollars (£802 million) from 540 million US dollars (£429 million) in 2022. IHG, who also own hotel chains like Crowne Plaza and Regent, are planning to buy back 800 million US dollars (£635 million) worth of shares. They're also increasing their final dividend by 10%.
A key way to measure how well hotel companies are doing is by looking at their revenue per available room. IHG's went up by 16.1% over the year, and was 7.6% higher in the last three months. This shows that travel is bouncing back, as their global revenue per available room was 10.9% higher than in 2019, before the pandemic hit.
Elie Maalouf, who recently became IHG's chief executive, said: "Travel demand was strong across all markets, with revenue per available room up 16% on last year and 11% ahead of the 2019 pre-pandemic peak. The travel industry has attractive, long-term drivers of demand,"
He laid out his strategy to target high single-digit growth in fee revenue by increasing revenue per room and the number of hotels each year on average over the medium to long term. IHG opened 275 hotels last year and has another 556 signed up in the pipeline. It saw hotel openings rise by 27% year-on-year in the final quarter of 2023 and new signing were up by 50% – “one of our biggest ever quarters for development activity,” according to the group.