IHG Hotels & Resorts facts for kids

InterContinental Hotels Group plc

Trade name	IHG Hotels & Resorts
Type	Public company
Traded as	LSE: IHG FTSE 100 component (LSE)
Industry	Hotels and resorts
Founded	15 April 2003; 22 years ago (15 April 2003)
Founder	Juan Trippe (for the InterContinental Hotels branch)
Headquarters	Denham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
Number of locations	6,028 hotels 884,820 rooms (2022)
Key people	Lua error in Module:Wd at line 1575: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). Lua error in Module:Wd at line 1575: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
Products	Hotels and resorts
Brands	see Brands
Revenue	US$2.907 billion (2021)
Operating income	US$494 million (2021)
Net income	US$265 million (2021)
Number of employees	350,000 (2022)

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), also known as IHG Hotels & Resorts, is a large British company. It owns and manages many hotels and resorts around the world. Its main office is in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England. IHG is listed on the London Stock Exchange, which means its shares can be bought and sold there.

History of IHG Hotels

From Beer to Beds: Bass Hotels

The story of IHG started a long time ago in 1777. A man named William Bass opened a brewery in England. A brewery is a place where beer is made. In 1875, his company's red triangle logo became the first trademark ever registered in the UK.

Later, the company was called Bass Charrington. In 1969, they started their first hotel chain, called Crest Hotel. This was their first step into the hotel business. In 1988, Bass bought another hotel chain called Holiday Inn International. This happened after the British government limited how many pubs breweries could own.

The InterContinental Story

The Intercontinental Hotels chain was started in 1946 by Juan Trippe. He was the founder of Pan Am, a famous airline. The first InterContinental hotel opened in Brazil.

In 1981, Pan Am sold the Inter-Continental Hotels company to a British company called Grand Metropolitan. Then, in 1988, Grand Metropolitan sold it to a Japanese company called Saison Group.

In 1998, the Saison Group sold InterContinental Hotels to the British brewery Bass. In 2000, Bass sold its beer-making business. It then changed its name to Six Continents.

In 2003, Six Continents split into two new companies. One was Mitchells & Butlers, which took care of restaurants. The other was InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), which focused on hotels. IHG also kept a soft-drinks part of the business called Britvic for a while. They sold Britvic in 2005.

In 2017, IHG announced that hackers had attacked their computer systems. This attack stole credit card details from customers. In 2021, the company announced that it had lost money because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, they hoped their Holiday Inn Express brand would help them recover.

How IHG Operates

IHG's main office is in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England. They also have offices in other parts of the world, like Atlanta in the USA, Singapore, and Shanghai in China.

In 2019, IHG had 5,656 hotels in almost 100 countries. These hotels had a total of 842,759 guest rooms. Most of these hotels are run by other companies under special agreements. IHG manages some, and only a few are owned directly by IHG.

IHG Hotel Brands

IHG has 17 different hotel brands. These brands are grouped into four main collections:

Interesting IHG Hotels

The Crowne Plaza Liverpool John Lennon Airport Hotel used to be the old terminal building of Liverpool Speke Airport. It was built in the 1930s and is known for its cool Art Deco design.

The InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown is the biggest InterContinental hotel in North and South America. It is also the tallest building in Los Angeles.

The former InterContinental Davos hotel is famous for its modern look.

The Willard InterContinental Washington hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. is very old, built in 1847. Many important leaders have stayed there.

IHG is also working to remove small plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner from all its hotel rooms. This helps the environment.

Concerns and Issues

International Boycott

In 2013, some groups started a boycott against IHG. They were unhappy because IHG planned to open a luxury hotel in Lhasa, Tibet. These groups felt that opening the hotel would help the Chinese government, which they disagreed with.

Pricing Rules

In 2012, a UK government office said that IHG might have broken rules about competition. They were accused of stopping online travel websites from offering lower prices for hotel rooms. In 2014, IHG agreed to stop this practice.

Data Security

In 2017, IHG announced that its computer systems had been attacked. This attack allowed hackers to get payment card details from customers. At first, IHG said only a few hotels were affected, but later they said it was about 1,200 hotels. In 2022, IHG had another data breach that affected their booking systems.

Advertised Prices

In 2012, a UK advertising group told IHG that they must include VAT (a type of sales tax) in their advertised prices. A magazine later reported that IHG was still not following this rule.

Fair Pay

In 2017, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said that IHG was not keeping its promise to pay a "living wage." A living wage is an amount of money considered enough for a person to live on.

Food Safety

In 2016, at least 70 people got food poisoning from salmonella after eating at the Intercontinental Adelaide hotel. Many of them needed hospital treatment.

Cleanliness Standards

In 2017, a group checking hotels accused the Intercontinental Beijing Sanlitun of not being clean enough. They used an invisible stamp on bed sheets and toilets. When they checked the next day, the marks were still there, meaning the items had not been cleaned or changed.

Loyalty Program Changes

In 2015, IHG changed the rules for its Priority Club, a loyalty program for frequent guests. Before, points in the program never expired. After the change, points would expire if members did not earn or use any points for 12 months. Many members were not told about this change before their points disappeared.

See also

In Spanish: InterContinental Hotels Group para niños