Skift Take
IHG has assembled a hospitality collection with some of the most wide-ranging and eclectic brands in the world. Here's what you need to know about every one of them.
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has always been a forerunner of hospitality trends, given how its brands span from just-the-basics road warriors to experience-seeking luxury travelers. Several of its brands anticipated shifts in guest tastes ahead of the pack. Before Instagram and hybrid working, the group created and acquired lifestyle brands with photogenic lobbies for guests who blend business and leisure travel. IHG also invented the concept of a hotel loyalty program. Today, with nearly 6,000 properties in more than 100 countries and with more than $2.9 billion in annual revenues, U.K.-based IHG curates 17 brands serving guests and owners with truly varied needs.
The competition is fierce, a fact of life that the hotel giant's leadership confronts daily.
“We always have to up our game, so we have to continue to invest more and more in technology, reduce friction in the digital experience, and find better ways of reducing costs for owners and our technology platforms,” CEO Keith Barr told Skift in January. “We can’t sit still, but it’s pretty darn hard to replace [the traditional hotel experience], which is the advantage we have.”
Read on for insight from IHG on each of its 17 brands, followed by our own takes.
Note: Global footprint numbers and quoted takes from IHG are from each brand’s home page, with property and room number data from March 31, 2022.
IHG's Categories & Brands
Lifestyle & Luxury: Six Senses, Regent, Intercontinental, Vignette, Kimpton, Hotel Indigo
Premium Collection: Voco, Hualuxe, EvenHotels, Crowne Plaza
Essentials Collection: Holiday Inn Express, Holiday Inn, Avid
Suites Collection: Atwell Suites, Staybridge Suites, Holiday Inn Club Vacations, Candlewood Suites
Lifestyle & Luxury
Six Senses Punakha / IHG
Six Senses
21 open hotels1,412 open rooms33 hotels in the pipeline
IHG Take: “Each Six Senses property commits to guest rejuvenation and reconnection, with an expert focus on wellness and sustainability and creating a place where people can reconnect, in harmony with the local environment.”
Skift Take: Since its acquisition in 2012, Six Senses has been a balancing act of luxury and sustainability. Its well-developed missions to create zero waste, such as by striving to be plastic-free and by growing fruits and vegetables on-site, suggest that this brand is well-positioned for an expected rising demand for greener travel. Many brands struggle to get owners to spend on sustainability, but Six Senses commits them by management contract, said Raini Hamdi in IHG's Six Senses Goes a Step Further on Being Green Among Hotel Chains. Therefore, Six Senses successfully shifts the luxurious hotel narrative into something healthier for the environment. It’s all in the name. This brand appeals to the six senses while also making strides to achieve what one can’t sense, but is becoming more critical by the day.
A Regent guest room / IHG
Regent
7 open hotels2,190 open rooms8 hotels in the pipeline
IHG Take: Regent Hotels “seeks to redefine luxury hospitality through innovation and design based on understanding the modern luxury consumer,” with the goal of becoming one of the world’s “most prestigious luxury brands with hotels in gateway cities and resort destinations around the world.”
Skift Take: Even though businesses struggled during the pandemic, Regent has not given up on its high-lux initiatives. Those who are financially capable are ready to treat themselves, and this brand’s upscale rooms and suites, wellness facilities, and dining options — which are available in 8 locations across the globe — are up for the challenge.
InterContinental Kuala Lumpur / IHG
InterContinental
207 open hotels69,917 open rooms7