Mumbai | IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group), the world's largest hotel group by number of rooms, today announced a confirmed development pipeline of 31 hotels to be opened across major metros and secondary cities across India over the next few years. This will effectively add over 7,600 rooms. This growth momentum will be driven by IHG's three brands in India – InterContinental® Hotels & Resorts, Crowne Plaza® Hotels & Resorts, and Holiday Inn® Hotels and Resorts. IHG currently has 11 hotels in India.

India is a growing and long-term market for IHG and presents a huge potential. The upcoming hotels in the pipeline will be located in Tier I and Tier II cities such as New Delhi in the North; Bangalore, Chennai, and Cochin in the South; Kolkata in the East; and Mumbai and Pune in the West. IHG believes that these cities are well positioned to drive growth and investment in India owing to their large potential.

IHG has had a long standing presence in India, dating back to 1962 and has strong business relationships with partners in the region for a long time. Some of the partners IHG is working with include Amrapali Group, Riverbank Developers, Today Group, Emaar MGF, Kuwait Based KGA Group, L&T Arun Excello Commercial Projects Ltd, Brigade Group and others.

Tony South, Chief Development Officer, IHG Asia Pacific, who is speaking at the Hotel Investment Conference South Asia (HICSA) 2009, said: "We have committed sizeable resources to focus on India, these include a team of over 30 hotel support professionals locally based in our Gurgaon corporate office and a dedicated Design and Engineering team to support owners and their consultants – ensuring developments are cost efficient and meeting the needs of the Indian market. Success of our managed hotels is visible, bringing tangible business benefits through effective delivery of brand and service quality standards."

Going forward IHG's preferred business model will be to manage the hotels on behalf of owners. Management contracts will allow partners to leverage a full suite of core strategic business services from IHG such as marketing, human resources, financial, design and engineering to drive better returns.

Tony South added: "With IHG managing the hotels, our business partners are assured of quality delivery of service and brand standards to guests, this is especially important when establishing brands in new markets. Crowne Plaza Today Gurgaon is an accurate reflection of these standards and has already won wide-spread recognition for this. Although only opened in 2008, it has won several awards including - Pacific Area Travel Writers Association Award for Best Business Hotel of Asia Pacific 2008 and World Travel Award – India's Leading New Business Hotel, amongst others."

Holiday Inn is already the top mid-scale hotel choice among business travellers in India and around the world, and accounts for three quarters of IHG's India pipeline. All new Holiday Inn hotels will feature new hallmarks and service, creating a more contemporary brand image, boosting product quality and service and driving consistency. This is a part of the biggest re-launch in the hospitality history. Holiday Inn has been named "Top Midscale Hotel Brand" in the World, and Asia Pacific for eight successive years since 2001 by readers of Business Traveller Asia Pacific.

About IHG^®

IHG Hotels & Resorts [LON:IHG, NYSE:IHG (ADRs)] is a global hospitality company, with a purpose to provide True Hospitality for Good.

With a family of 17 hotel brands and IHG Rewards, one of the world's largest hotel loyalty programmes, IHG has over 6,000 open hotels in more than 100 countries, and a further 1,800 in the development pipeline.

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InterContinental Hotels Group PLC is the Group's holding company and is incorporated and registered in England and Wales. Approximately 350,000 people work across IHG's hotels and corporate offices globally.

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Sheo S. Rai
IHG Asia Pacific
+65 6395 6074
IHG