IHG’s Maalouf to Succeed Barr as CEO

IHG Hotels & Resorts CEO Keith Barr will step down effective June 30 and will be succeeded by IHG Americas region CEO Elie Maalouf, Barr announced Friday during a quarterly earnings call. 

“I’m delighted Elie will be succeeding me,” Barr said on the call. “I will be here in an advisory capacity until the end of 2023, but come July, Elie will take over as group CEO and be based here in the U.K.” 

Maalouf has led the Americas region for eight years, and under his leadership he has “grown the Americas system by almost 700 hotels, or 20 percent,” Barr added. 

IHG named Barr CEO in 2017.

Q1 Results

IHG in the first quarter had “another strong quarter of trading,” Barr said. IHG’s first quarter systemwide revenue per available room increased 32.6 percent year over year to $74.77, up 6.8 percent over 2019 levels. Average daily rate for the company was $120.13, a 10.6 percent year-over-year increase and up 9.5 percent from 2019 levels. Occupancy increased 10.3 percent year over year to 62.2 percent and remains 1.6 percentage points shy of 2019 levels. 

“Lapping” last year’s Covid-impacted comps, group and business revenue together was up by more than 30 percent year over year, reflecting “further normalization of global working habits and the return of more meetings, conferences and events,” Barr said. 

Business revenue alone was up 20 percent year over year. Group remains the slowest sector to recover for IHG, but the company noted its nearly 30 percent year-over-year increase in Q1.

However, compared with 2019, business transient revenue was “broadly” flat, Barr said, and group revenue was down approximately 10 percent to 12 percent, executives said on the call. 

Development and Pipeline 

IHG opened more than 8,000 rooms across 45 hotels in Q1, while removing more than 5,000 rooms from its system, resulting in net movement of approximately 3,300 rooms for the company. With that said, room openings are up 25 percent year over year, representing the strongest Q1 opening performance for the company since the pandemic, Barr said. This led to net system size growth of 4.2 percent year over year, adjusted for the company’s removal of its Russian business in 2022.

IHG added more than 16,000 rooms to its pipeline in Q1, totaling 287,000 rooms, up 3.3 percent year over year. Among IHG’s development and pipeline includes its expansion plans for its Vignette Collection brand, expanding in Germany, Greater China and the United Kingdom.

Additional Q1 Results

The company highlighted particular improvement in Greater China following the lifting of travel restrictions and remains confident international travel to the region will fully return, “but it will take some time for these areas of demand to fully normalize,” IHG CFO Michael Glover said on the call. RevPAR for Greater China was down 9 percent from 2019, while ADR improved to 94 percent of 2019 levels, and occupancy recovered to less than 2 percentage points down from 2019 levels. 

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